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Good Morning all – new boy here!

Having recently moved from webtrees and upgraded to 3.0.0 this week, I have a hit a problem with the handling of Favourites. There are two different issues:

1. Having defined ‘Favourites’ as one of the widgets, enabled the Favourites module, and defined the Favourites menu as being available to all (visitors) I was surprised to see, when logging in as my test member, that although the heading ‘Favourites’ appeared in the widgets sidebar, I was given no opportunity to ‘add favourites’. I clicked on ‘Favourites’ top-right (in webtrees theme), next to Login, and nothing appeared either.

2. When logged in as myself (administrator) the widgets sidebar shows the heading ‘Favourites’ and the option to add favourites, but none of my five existing favourites were shown. Similarly when I clicked ‘Favourites’ top-right nothing happened. I returned to the widgets sidebar several times whilst checking out other things, always with the same appearance, then suddenly the next time I accessed the widgets sidebar, there were my old favourites (no idea what I had done to trigger this!). I logged out then a short time later logged in again, checked the widgets sidebar and the Favourites were no longer there – just the heading and the option to add. I then added a new favourite via the option on the widgets sidebar, whereupon all my old favourites plus the new one were displayed. But clicking on ‘Favourites’ top-right still yielded nothing. Logged out, logged in again; opened widgets sidebar – no favourites shown – just the heading and the option to add new.

Has anyone experienced the same? Any suggestions?

Ron in France Website: https://clan-davies.kiwitrees.net/ kiwitrees 3.3.11; PHP 8.0.14

Ron:

Have the same exact problem. The tree wide Favorites seem to be working but not the user favorites and the visitor or member user/widget form.

Roy.

Roy

Apache 2.4.27  PHP 7.19 MariaDB 10.2.8

Thanks.

I was surprised to see, when logging in as my test member,

Before I look too far into this, can you confirm what access level your test member has.

I think there may be multiple issues here. It is possible (I haven’t been able to check yet) that the move from ‘My page’ to widget has broken the user-setting. Perhaps as simple as the different module name.

But it is also important to understand the difference between, as Roy points out, site-wide and personal (user) favourites.

I think it is also worth asking if the concept of “user favourites” is really valid with the widget bar concept. Is it an important feature? The site-wide favourites can be found from the very top menu item (if you use it).

Also, I hope to expand the functionality of the new “Quick links” widget so that links to anything can be easily added or removed and a choice of icon for each included. I would personally like this as it allows temporary quick access to parts of the family tree I might be currently working on for a period of time. But links to individuals would be just that, links, with no detail displayed except perhaps name and birth/death date.

Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info

Nigel,

My test member id has ‘member’ access level.

As for site-wide versus personal user favourites, most of my users tend to fall into one of four distinct ancestor groups so it would be difficult to establish ‘site-wide favourites’ which were not 75% irrelevant to most of them, whereas I know that a number of them (myself included!) use personal favourites as a convenient way in to a number of frequently accessed ancestors.

Perhaps I have misunderstood the difference between the two. Please clarify, in kiwitrees (3.0.0):

1. How/where should I set up ‘site-wide’ favourites (or should that be ‘tree-wide’ favourites?)
2. How/where should users set up personal user favourites
3. Am I right in assuming that personal user favourites are referred to by the ‘Favourites’ widget and that ‘site-wide’ favourites are referred to by the ‘Favourites’ menu item at top right, next to ‘Login’ (on webtrees theme)?

Nigel is used to my dumb questions from the past – hopefully others will tolerate!

Ron in France Website: https://clan-davies.kiwitrees.net/ kiwitrees 3.3.11; PHP 8.0.14

clandav wrote:

My test member id has ‘member’ access level.

Thanks Ron, that’s helpful information.

I won’t answer this fully right now, as it’s getting late on Sunday evening.

However I have confirmed that there is a bug(s). In setting up the widgets I created a replacement for the “user_favorites” module, calling it “widget_favorites”. Unfortunately in a number of places the system is hard coded to use “user_favorites” 🙁 Easily fixed though. This should re-instate the missing functionality, including a couple you probably haven’t yet noticed 🙂

I’ll answer your ‘how to’ questions tomorrow. Suffice it to say for now that you are on the right track for some but not others.

But meanwhile can I also get some feedback in general to my suggestion:

I hope to expand the functionality of the new “Quick links” widget so that links to anything can be easily added or removed and a choice of icon for each included. I would personally like this as it allows temporary quick access to parts of the family tree I might be currently working on for a period of time. But links to individuals would be just that, links, with no detail displayed except perhaps name and birth/death date.

I see this (possibly) as an alternative to “user favourites”, providing instead a broader option to add “quick links” to anything.

Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info

Nigel:

I like the concept of expanding the Quick Links widget and limiting the Favorites module to site wide. Personally, it would be more useful than the current two levels of Favorites. The longer I am involved in this business, the more I support simplifying things to include reducing the number of, sometimes confusing, options to the average user. This concept eliminates one of them while actually giving the user a more useful tool.

If a new link in the Quick Links widget would be simple to create and simple to remove when no longer needed, it would be a really handy tool for any level of user access. I can think of several uses for it. For me personally, they would involve short term/ temporary situations and I would want to be able to remove the links as easily as I created them.

It sounds like a great idea if not too difficult and time consuming to code and it doesn’t break something else.

Roy

Roy

Apache 2.4.27  PHP 7.19 MariaDB 10.2.8

In principle, I agree Roy. I’m also keen on keeping things simple; but also – particularly for the occasional user – intuitive.

I have many users who seem to be very active on the website for relatively short periods, then disappear, returning again to be briefly active a month or two later, etc. For users like that, each time they return to the site, the more features which are unique to that site the more difficult it is for them to become immediately effective. For them, I would have thought, seeing the word ‘favourites’ as soon as they log into the site, either as a top menu item or in the drop-down menu under their name (My account, my pedigree, … my favourites ..) would be far more logical than having to remember the widget – quick link – favourite icon route). I also think the concept of ‘site-favourites’ or ‘tree-favourites’ (i.e. a set of entry points decided by the administrator as likely ‘favourites’ for everyone) tends to conflict with the traditional, and therefore intuitive use of the term which is essentially a personal-level set of preferences, and using the term in this context could even be misleading, so I would see it as less desirable to retain than the user’s personally determined favourites.

From a personal point of view I would welcome – as would probably my relatively few users who have editor-access and who make regular and substantial contributions to the database – an easy-to-add, easy-to-change quick link ‘entry point’ to where I left off or where I frequently or currently work, and this could be as simple as individual name and birth-death dates (with all my common Welsh names the dates are essential!) – no need for photos or other details.But perhaps best to avoid the use of the term ‘favourites’ for this.

Ron in France Website: https://clan-davies.kiwitrees.net/ kiwitrees 3.3.11; PHP 8.0.14

Again, lots of useful feedback.

I have now committed the bug fix for this issue, that does at least get the original functionality back to working as it should. Unfortunately it touches 20 different files, so not one I can provide an interim fix for. Perhaps ver 3.0.1 will have to be released sooner rather than later 🙂

However, if I am interpreting responses so far correctly, there is some interest in the alternative “quick links” solution. So perhaps I should explore that further before releasing a fix to the old feature.

Ron, one question though. In your comments about “tree-favourites’ seem to suggest using a different descriptor for those. It sounds logical, but what might that descriptor be? Bear in mind that a common use for these is to display them in a block on the Home page. I have seen sites with as many of a dozen or more ‘favourites’ in that block. Not my taste, but it is an option.

But it might help if I address your earlier questions:

clandav wrote:

Please clarify, in kiwitrees (3.0.0):

1. How/where should I set up ‘site-wide’ favourites (or should that be ‘tree-wide’ favourites?)
2. How/where should users set up personal user favourites
3. Am I right in assuming that personal user favourites are referred to by the ‘Favourites’ widget and that ‘site-wide’ favourites are referred to by the ‘Favourites’ menu item at top right, next to ‘Login’ (on webtrees theme)?

I shall answer this on the basis of the “fixed” functionality, or how it ‘should’ currently be working.

First – there are definitely no ‘site-wide favourites. They are only tree-specific or user-specific. Of course many sites only have one tree, so tree-specific and site-wide would appear then to be the same thing. But once you have two or more trees the difference is obvious.

1. How/where should I set up ‘tree-wide’ favourites?
The only way to do this is to add a ‘favourites’ block to the Home page. But the block is not necessarily required once the favourites are created. They will appear in the “Favourites” menu list (page top) if you have that activated; or you can add a ‘favourites block” as a component inside an HTML block.

2. How/where should users set up personal user favourites
Two ways:
a) By adding a “favourites widget” to the widget bar (now fixed so any member will see an “add favourite” option in the widget.
b) by clicking on the “Add favourite” option that (now its fixed) appears in the “Favourites” menu item (page top) when viewing an individual, family, source, or repository page. On an individual page, simply clicking that option adds that individual to the users favourites widget.

3. Am I right in assuming that personal user favourites are referred to by the ‘Favourites’ widget and that ‘site-wide’ favourites are referred to by the ‘Favourites’ menu item at top right, next to ‘Login’ [on webtrees theme]?
As you will probably have gathered already, no that is not the case. It is more complicated than that.

a) A favourites block on the Home page will only ever display “tree-specific” favourites.
b) A favourites widget will only ever display the user’s favourites
c) The page-top menu item “Favourites” will display BOTH tree-specific AND the user’s favourites if they have any.

(Note: user favourites (where they are individuals) are also displayed on the Charts menu as a sub-sub menu against the ‘Relationship’ chart option. This allows a quick view of the relationship between the individual you are viewing and any one of your personal favourites. I quite like this feature, but sub-sub menus make the issues we are discussing on the other thread about menus even more complex, and we will almost certainly have to abandon these. Webtrees has already done so.)

Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info

Many thanks for taking the time to lead me through all that Nigel – now all is clear.

Ron in France Website: https://clan-davies.kiwitrees.net/ kiwitrees 3.3.11; PHP 8.0.14