[development] Getting both better internal and external APIs intoDrupal 7

[Michelle Cox]

On 12/29/2007 11:46:34 PM, Khalid Baheyeldin (kb at 2bits.com) wrote:
> Users as nodes has 3 modules at least in contrib:
>
> - bio: the most straight forward of them.
> - node profile: a more complex way.
> - usernode: the original concept.
>
> The need to customize how profiles look is the driver here, plus cck and
> views.
>
> Core profile should go away soon, replaced by node + cck.

Most of this discussion is over my head but I wanted to comment on this. My 
upcoming Advanced Profile module uses Panels 2 for displaying the user 
profile on the view tab of the user page. It currently uses bio but will 
eventually be able to use bio, node profile, or even the core profile 
module. I'm designing it so it doesn't care where it gets the profile 
information from. What would be ideal is to have in core some way of 
optionally associating a user with a node type as bio does and also include 
in core a lightweight non-node solution for holding profile data for those 
who don't want a node for every user. Then people could use Panels 2 (which 
would be lovely to have in core someday) to display this "user profile 
object" as well as anything else they want on that page. For now, I'm making 
this possible in contrib, but having some of it in core would reduce the 
module dependency for this method.

Michelle