Navigating Between Profiles

I am going to be moving an existing site to Dolphin. One of the biggest requests from users is a way to navigate between profiles more easily. Client wants to add previous/next buttons to profiles.

Any idea on how this might be accomplished?

I have experience writing PHP and SQL from scratch, but I am very new to Dolphin. Off the top of my head, it probably wouldn't be too hard to create a link for the next member in the database based on some predefined sort. Although, I'm not sure where to put the code.

However, I think this would be confusing if the user arrived at the profile from a filtered/sorted list of members. And I imagine creating next links that take the filter/search/sort options into account would be rather complicated.

Personally, I always navigate the web with my middle mouse button to open links in a new tab. But the issue of easily navigating to each link in a list seems to be a real issue for non-techy users. Any suggestions?

Hi Swingmaster,

If you gibe me an hour, I'll write you a script and provide you with the sql to create a block.

Gew

Hi swingmaster

If you run this sql in PhpMyAdmin, this will create the block for you to navigate to the next and previous profile.

INSERT INTO `sys_page_compose` (`ID`, `Page`, `PageWidth`, `Desc`, `Caption`, `Column`, `Order`, `Func`, `Content`, `DesignBox`, `ColWidth`, `Visible`, `MinWidth`, `Cache`) VALUES
(11, 'profile', '998px', 'Profile Navigator', '_profile_navi', 3, 0, 'PHP', '$iProfileID = getID( $_GET[''ID''] );\r\n$oDb = new BxDolDb();\r\n$sQuery = "SELECT `ID` FROM `Profiles` ORDER BY `ID` DESC LIMIT 1";\r\n$lastID   = $oDb->getColumn($sQuery);\r\n$lastID = $lastID[0];\r\n$nextID = $iProfileID + 1;\r\n$previousID = $iProfileID - 1;\r\nIF ($nextID > $lastID) {\r\n $nextID = 1;\r\n}\r\nIF ($previousID < 1) {\r\n$previousID = $lastID;\r\n}\r\n$nextName = "SELECT `NickName` FROM `Profiles` WHERE `ID` = $nextID";\r\n$nextName   = $oDb->getColumn($nextName);\r\n$previousName = "SELECT `NickName` FROM `Profiles` WHERE `ID` = $previousID";\r\n$previousName = $oDb->getColumn($previousName);\r\necho ''<p>To view the next profile <a href="/'';\r\necho $previousName[0];\r\necho ''">CLICK HERE</a> or to view the previous profile <a href="/'';\r\necho $nextName[0];\r\necho''">CLICK HERE</a>.</p>'';', 11, 65.2, 'non,memb', 0, 0);
INSERT INTO `sys_localization_keys` (`ID`, `IDCategory`, `Key`) VALUES
('', 0, '_profile_navi');
INSERT INTO `sys_localization_strings` (`IDKey`, `IDLanguage`, `String`) VALUES
('', 1, 'Profile Navigator');

This will also set up the language files too.  Once you run the sql, just goto Page Builder and drag the Profile Navigator to where every you want,

Enjoy

GEW JAMES

I don't understand the logic behind this; unless profiles are linked in some way, why would one want to scroll between profiles?

 Who are we to judge.  Ray has a roulette chat mod, I guess this is not so different.

Gew

@NO118 Thanks. That gives me some understanding of how the blocks work. I understand most of the fields at a glance, but what are the Column, Order,  and DesignBox fields for?

@geek_girl Here's my understanding of the request...

If someone does a member search, they want to view the profile of each person in the result list. If they click on a profile and look through their photos etc, then they would have to use their browser's back button multiple times to get back to the search results and then figure out which profile is the next one in the list.

I could have links open in a new window, but that tends to confuse people even more.

As I mentioned, I always open links in a new tab. I could suggest this to users, but it doesn't work on touch screen.

I'm trying to satisfy client request, but I don't see the value in being able to navigate to the next profile in the database without taking the last sort/search/filter criteria into account. I've thought of a few ways that I could maybe do this, but they all seem to get messy and complicated.

Another thought I've just had is to load the profile page into a frame on the result page or into an overlay. Hmmm, I'm liking the overlay idea. Probably best to create a scaled down profile page to load into the overlay and then have a link to the full profile page.

I know how to do everything I want from scratch. The question is how to do it in the most maintainable way within Dolphin. Is there a module that already does something like this?