Whilst this isn’t directly related to this plugin, the availability of this plugin raises the following:
You know it would be nice if these were two separate settings?
Plenty of users might want to expose their profile whilst not appearing to be present?
Agreed, it might be nice to split them. Certainly pr-welcome if someone would like to work on it.
Otherwise, I’ll see what I can do when we come to rewrite the plugin. It’s still on my list to do… just keeps getting pushed down by other tasks that pop up.
There’s actually another problematic “feature” with the Hide my public profile and presence features profile setting which currently makes it (unintentionally, I believe) much harder to message someone who chooses that setting, since it removes the message button from user cards:
Mind there’s a separate setting for disabling messages, but this is being caused by the Hide my public profile and presence features one. I don’t think one wanting to hide profile and/or presence means necessarily that one doesn’t want to receive messages (as easily, that is). Anyway, sorry for bringing this off-topic.
Back on topic and, for what’s worth, we are using this plugin (which we 
) on a fairly active forum (~140 concurrent online) and look forward for some optimizations. I’m not a Rubyist, but happy to help in any other way I can (feedback, benchmarks, etc).
Just came to the forum to report exactly this issue. On a forum where I’m moderator I just got a response “wanted to send you a direct message, but your profile is hidden so this seems impossible”.
Its Presence I want to opt out of, but my profile must be visible to all members as well as have the DM button on the popup dialog.
This is a bit of an issue for us too right now, as well as for a few others:
https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-whos-online/52345/398
I would love to see these split as well. I have community members that would want to show their profile but not necessarily wish for people to know when they’re online.
Example: Coworkers that also visit our site.
+1 — those are two different things.
+1 — those are two different things.
hide presence is a common function in most messaging apps,
online status it is not related to opening profile public…
hope this could be considered, thanks…
Hey folks 
We’re starting to dig into this idea and wanted to get a sense from you all about your needs here. If you’re interested in separating profile hiding and online presence settings, could you weigh in?
Thanks in advance! Feel free to share more details in a reply if you want to add more context to your choice.
hey @lindsey
thanks for looking into this.
not sure if this is about how often folks want to change the presence,
my understanding, folks want to hide the presence, but still want the profile visible to others…
Totally agree - it isn’t so much about changing my presence frequently. It is more that I’d like my profile to be visible whether or not I hide my presence (and the same for all of my users).
But I can see that it would be useful to know how often people might want to change that setting as for how easy it needs to be discoverable in the UI.
Remember to vote for this if you liked the Topic.
For what it’s worth, I’ll have a PR ready for review this week.
Update on 6/24: a PR is ready for review for those interested.
Thanks @counterleft, I notified the team and they will be reviewing it.
Appreciate it, Sam. The team has already been helping this past week with tips on the localization bits and approving CI runs. It’s been good to have existing tests catch spots that I initially missed.
Brief update to share that this work is planned on our roadmap! I don’t have an estimate for when this might be completed yet, but we’ll check in once work starts to give you a better sense of timing.
We’re preparing to begin work on this feature soon! I’ll check in once that has started and keep you informed along the way.