CUNY Academic Commons

The first pass at cuny.is functionality is in https://github.com/castiron/cac/commit/beb3c75ec739ca66de1f2cc8b11b9c25da70d772 and ready to test on cdev. See http://cdev.gc.cuny.edu/members/boonebgorges/ for an example. Here's how it works.

- When you edit your profile, there is a new section at the end of the black section (in other words, in the same relative location as the public short URL) where you can enter your desired short URL.
- On cdev, no one has an existing short URL, because cdev is using the live cuny.is and I didn't want to autocreate a bunch of junk URLs for testing. For this reason, in your own testing, please be sure to prefix your test URLs with 'cdev' or something like that, so that I can go through and delete them later. On the production site, I'll ensure that every user has their default URL set to their login name at the time of deployment.
- I've implemented a little AJAX to check for URL availability in real time. You'll notice that the check happens on blur (when you move out of the URL input) or if you stop typing for one second in the URL input.
- The logic for availability is this: If the cuny.is URL already exists, it's off limits, EXCEPT if the existing URL points to your profile - in other words, if it's one of your old short URLs, in which case you are allowed to reclaim it. If the cuny.is URL does not yet exist, I first check to make sure that (a) it's valid (alphanumeric characters only; this is a limitation of the YOURLS software), (b) it doesn't correspond to the username of any other user, (c) it doesn't correspond to the slug of any existing group, eg 'omeka' (so that they won't be taken when/if we turn this on for groups in the future), and (d) it doesn't correspond to the subdomain of any existing blog, eg 'cunypie' (mutatis mutandis). If the URL passes all these checks, you're allowed to take it. It's then created and saved to your profile.

Please play around with it. I tried to make the UX and the error feedback as seamless as possible, but additional ideas are welcome.

Yes Boone, great job on this. I have a functional change request and a couple of other ideas for additions or changes.

Functional¶

Right now if you enter something and get a notice and then delete everything you wrote the notice doesn't disappear. So if a user typed chris*stein and got the letters and numbers error and then deleted the name it would still show the letters and numbers error. It should just remove the notice if there is nothing in the input.

Name¶

Matt I think Custom Profile Link is OK but a bit long. I'm proposing Quick Link. It's shorter and maybe more catchy. Short Link could also work.

Explanation¶

For now, and perhaps going forward, I think it's fine to have a relatively long description under the input field. Here's some text I'm proposing and you can see it in the attached screenshot. It's a first shot so comments/edits welcome:

Your Quick Link is a short, easy-to-remember, web address for your profile on the Commons. You get to decide what it is by typing in the box above. Use it to get back here quickly, put it on business cards and résumés or use it in whatever way you see fit.

- if it's not pasting properly the character entity for the é in resume is é

Changed to Quick Link in https://github.com/castiron/cac/commit/e6b83f8eefe14c136f817584cb0fbc20ad667b83

Error/success message removed when the field is empty as of https://github.com/castiron/cac/commit/3b7389c046e005d910049150592f90cf73d3db87

Marking resolved. Other issues, please open separate tickets. Thanks for feedback and review.