Hey all,

I think that something that some of us are missing in Silverstripe is a preferences page where to change some user settings or global settings without the need of editing a config file. In my case this would include the preferred user language or the default site language, but some other settings could also be changed, such as the username or password or some class-statics. I've seen that Markus has implemented a custom form to change the password if you have lost it, but i'm not aware of a way to change it through the cms interface if you don't have access to the security administration section.

A possible option could be to add a main menu link to a Preferences page where this fields are displayed and can be changed. Each of this settings can have an associated required-permission. Classes could add new fields by registering them in some way, in order to be extensible and modular.

Another issue is where to store this preferences: the database option is perhaps the easier one but if we read/write dinamically _config.php we'd be able to modify this file to change things if we wanted it, same as now.

What are your thoughts on this?

Did my post (about Authentication problems) get deleted/moved/replaced with this one?

Hi tmcw,

Very sorry, but your post seems to have been lost. :(

It seems that this is a bug in the forums, it has happened before: http://www.silverstripe.com/silverstripe-development/flat/2130?showPost=2132#post2135

- Elijah

Okay, I reposted here: http://www.silverstripe.com/bugs/flat/2771?showPost=2771 . Could somebody check it out, because it's rather important if my cookie to my own site expires and my password isn't valid? Thanks.

Bernat:

In general we DO need to have more thought about a preferences system, but for the moment putting some things into _config.php as methods manually, and others into the existing database schema is preferred.

You example of preferred language is very much something that should be on the Member profile. In terms of the "absolute default language for all (new) users", I see this as something that defaults to English can be can be overriden manually by putting something like this into _config.php;

BernatsCoolI18nCode::SetDefaultAdminLang("DE"); // german

FYI, unless I'm mistaken, I only see the need for
a) Only having a single lagnuage preference for the user (i.e. if I personally select german then both the admin and website, if they contain german, are now in german)
b) Having seperate admin and 'public site' language defaults, as you may want the CMS to default to German and the public site to default to Spanish...

One reason I don't want to just go off and add a settings page is that the CMS is designed for those managing a website, and this is NOT a geek. There's a lot of flexlbility in having the code for the developer...This is an important benefit of using SilverStripe over other systems where your normal website updater gets confused by system. While there is ofcourse a set of geeks who make websites for themselves, the majority of websites are made by web developers and then passed onto people who are not web developers.

Only user-specific preferences should be stored in the database, in the member table.

Sig: What about how SilverStripe 1's IA Designer? It wasn't ever visible from the CMS, but could be used by any admin just by adding /design/ to the URL.

The IA builder had modules in it anyway, an interface similar to that might be good?

Aargh, I'm getting email updates for this topic, which ate my other topic, and I can't unsubscribe to it because I never did in the first place...

Guys, bugs that corrupt data should be at the top of your list. Just sayin.