Universal User Preferences URL

feature
1

I find myself needing to answer questions for users sometimes and to provide instructions. Having an absolute path with the username (eg https://domain.tld/u/YOUR_USERNAME/preferences/account) for user preferences has become burdensome since I have to provide unique instructions each time and general FAQs are not really possible without sending screenshots on how to click to places.

It would be so much easier if we simply allowed users to go to: https://domain.tld/preferences/account or https://domain.tld/account/preferences

Currently when you need to explain to a user how to get to their preferences, you tell them:

  1. Go to user icon in the upper right beside the 3 horizontal lines (most users don’t know what a hamburger icon or such is).
  2. Click on your username that’s in the upper left of that upper right menu/popdown.
  3. Click on the 2nd item up from the bottom that says “Preferences” and has a gear to the left.

I think it’s pretty clear that it would be both easier for admins and users if we had a simplified URL path so that we could give general URLs that would work for all users to get to their preferences.

I wouldn’t even mind if there’s a /u in there as well. I just simply believe we need to make a simpler URL path available as a usability improvement for everyone.

4 Likes
2

This already exists, use /my/ like so

https://example.com/my/preferences/account

14 Likes
3

Holy cow, this is great to know. I sure wish it would have been the default or somehow more evident! Thanks!

3 Likes
4

Hey @codinghorror after now using the /my/ route alias for a while with users I’ve come to be convinced that we really ought to have the ability to use /my/ for essentially everything by default in the system if so desired instead of /u/Username/ (even /my/profile makes more sense than the /u/Username). Users are copying and pasting their usernames and trying to help other people, but no one realizes that /my/ is functional until they’re explicitly told about it.

Is there a way to set that at this point?

1 Like
5

It already works that way, so I am unclear what you are asking for?

https://meta.discourse.org/my/activity
https://meta.discourse.org/my/notifications
https://meta.discourse.org/my/messages
https://meta.discourse.org/my/preferences/categories

Basically for any link on the user page, replace

u/{username}

with

my

in the URL.

4 Likes