In common with most web forum software, MPNews allows each user account to have associated
"profile" information. This includes such things as name, e-mail address, number of messages
posted, comments and more.
Enabling/Disabling User Profiles
The option to allow this profile information to be stored can be enabled or disabled for
individual users. The way to decide whether to enable this option is to ask "is there only
going to be one person authenticated as this user?"
As MPNews users do not necessarily have to have a username and password that are known only
to one person, it is quite possible for one "user" to actually represent more than one person.
For example, anonymous access is granted by creating a user with no username or IP address
restrictions. In this case, you should not enable the user profile option. Another example
would be a user that was restricted to an IP address range that represents an entire office
internal network, as everyone using the newsgroups from that network would be authenticated
as that user.
When you are creating a user that does represent only one person, you can enable the user
profile options on the "Edit User" admin page by checking the "Add extra information about
this user" box.
Editing a Profile
When a user is logged into the web interface and their user account has the profile option
enabled, they can click on a "Profile" link to view and change the information stored about
them. If the user attempts to change their private e-mail address, MPNews will send a
confirmation e-mail to that address to verify that it is valid.
Viewing a Profile
When reading a message in the web interface that has been posted by someone who has a profile
in MPNews, the author name is shown as a link to a page that displays the profile information.
Only the "public" parts of the profile are displayed, so the person's private e-mail address
is not revealed.
Trouble Shooting
If a person cannot edit their profile, or their profile information appears to be continually
reset after they edit it, this normally indicates that either:
- the profile options are not enabled for the user. An administrator will need to log into
the admin site, edit the details for the user and check the "Add extra information about
this user" option.
- the person is authenticated as two or more users that both have the profile options enabled,
e.g. an anonymous user and a user with a username. An administrator will need to log into
the admin site, edit the details for the anonymous user and uncheck the "Add extra information
about this user" option.