first pass at redoing Account Settings tabs

[denise]

So a while back I did an open card sort for people to help us reorganize the Account Settings tabs. The project never went anywhere, because there was zero agreement among the answers: usually when you do an open card sort, things will fall into two or three different major sets of buckets and you can work from there, but this one was all over the place and I despaired at ever doing anything with it.

The settings overrun has gotten much worse since then, though, and it's starting to be more urgent to redo them. I've taken a first stab at what I think is a logical grouping; the items inside each tab category are not organized in any way (just reorganizing the order things are listed in will make a lot of difference, I think) but this is my first pass at redoing the groupings.

The major changes (in addition to reordering the tabs themselves) are the consolidation of the Account and History tabs and the Mobile and Other Sites tabs, and the splitting of both Display and Privacy into Journal vs Site; this means we keep the number of tabs constant but there are fewer items in each tab. That, I think, will take care of 90% of the "auuugh options overload", although some of the things are very borderline as to which tab they should go on. (But it's not like it's any better now.) I've included both the label that's displayed to the user (although when I started out I was renaming some of them to be more clear) and the name of the settings package in the code.

Thoughts? Major objections? Once we go through these I'll work on reordering the settings within each tab, and put up a version on my 'hack for people to see in action.


ACCOUNT & HISTORY
Account Type DW::Setting::Display::AccountLevel
Status LJ::Setting::Display::AccountStatus
Email LJ::Setting::Display::Email
Password LJ::Setting::Display::Password
Login History LJ::Setting::Display::Logins
Email Address History LJ::Setting::Display::Emails
Emailed Entries History LJ::Setting::Display::EmailPosts
Shop Order History LJ::Setting::Display::Orders

JOURNALS DISPLAY
Navigation Strip LJ::Setting::NavStrip
Comment Hierarchy DW::Setting::DisplayEchi
Google Analytics DW::Setting::GoogleAnalytics
Self-Exclusion DW::Setting::ExcludeOwnStats
Sticky Entry DW::Setting::StickyEntry
Journal Entry Style DW::Setting::JournalEntryStyle
New Comment Link Indicator LJ::Setting::NCTalkLinks
Cut Tag Behavior DW::Setting::CutDisable
Viewing Adult Content LJ::Setting::ViewingAdultContent
Safe Search Filter LJ::Setting::SafeSearch

SITE DISPLAY
Comment Pages LJ::Setting::StyleMine (**NB: this is mostly obsolete)
Entry View Style DW::Setting::ViewEntryStyle
Journal View Style DW::Setting::ViewJournalStyle
Timezone LJ::Setting::TimeZone
Time Display Format DW::Setting::TimeFormat
Image Placeholders LJ::Setting::ImagePlaceholders
Video Placeholders LJ::Setting::EmbedPlaceholders
Cut Tag in Inbox DW::Setting::CutInbox
Email Format LJ::Setting::EmailFormat
Entry Editor Default LJ::Setting::EntryEditor
Hover Menu LJ::Setting::CtxPopup
Site Skin LJ::Setting::SiteScheme

JOURNAL PRIVACY
Minimum Entry Security LJ::Setting::MinSecurity
Syndication Level DW::Setting::SynLevel
Off-Site Search Engines LJ::Setting::SearchInclusion
Enable Comments LJ::Setting::EnableComments
Comment Screening LJ::Setting::CommentScreening
Anti-Spam LJ::Setting::CommentCaptcha
IP Address Logging LJ::Setting::CommentIP
Ban and Unban Accounts LJ::Setting::Display::BanUsers
Site-Wide Search Inclusion DW::Setting::GlobalSearch
Searching Your Journal DW::Setting::AllowSearchBy
Community Promo DW::Setting::CommunityPromo
Adult Content LJ::Setting::AdultContent
Adult Content Reason DW::Setting::AdultContentReason

SITE PRIVACY
Email Alias DW::Setting::EmailAlias
Contact Info Security DW::Setting::ContactInfo
DW Private Messages LJ::Setting::UserMessaging
Allow Vgifts DW::Setting::AllowVgiftsFrom
Random Paid Gifts DW::Setting::RandomPaidGifts

MOBILE & OTHER SITES
Domain Mapping LJ::Setting::Display::DomainMapping
Text Messaging DW::Setting::TxtMsgSetup
Crossposting DW::Setting::XPostAccounts (**NB: this could stand a redesign if it will no longer be the only item on that tab)

NOTIFICATIONS (unchanged)
LJ::Setting::CommentEmailNotify
LJ::Setting::SelfCommentEmail

Comments

[jeshyr]

Looks good upon initial viewings, and the first draft is usually the most painful so kudos to that.

My only comment so far is that you'll want a prominent note on the "Journal Display" tab about how to get to the "Journal Style" page because I think that'll be very confusing to newbies who are in the wrong spot. I know there's a tiny bit of text there already where the site skin selection is but I think something more prominent would be appropriate because this could be a big source of confusion.

[denise]

I was planning to make a new settings package to be the first/most prominent setting, consisting only of a link to /customize :) (Or possibly the name of the current theme, linked to /customize.)

[ninetydegrees]

New Comment Link Indicator DW::Setting::DisplayEchi

I think this is Comment Hierarchy instead.

I really like the new groupings (merging Account & History is a great idea!) but I must say I'm a bit confused by the Journals vs Site display settings -- even if I know it's the hardest part and some things can apply to both-- as I don't know if that meant it applied to my journal or any journal or both and then things like "Viewing Adult Content" and "Safe Search Filter" are site things for me and placeholders are journal ones from the description (because of "Reading page") so I thought I had this figured out then went all "uh?".

[denise]

whups, thanks for catching the mispaste!

[ciaan]

Yeah, I was also at first reading it as "how to display my journal to me and others" and "how to display the rest of the site to me" and was going to say that safe search and adult content viewing were site display issues.

[demarafis]

1. Merging Account and History seems intuitive. I'd call it "Account Info" instead of "Account & History" though.

2. Splitting the display settings into Journal vs Site is a good idea. More info for newbies. Though I'm slightly confused by the wording as well. Maybe use "Display (Your Journal)", "Display (Global)", "Privacy (Your Journal)", and "Privacy (Other)"? Unless that's not really what those divisions are... Yikes D=

In terms of order, I'm thinking something like this (* marks moved):

ACCOUNT INFO
Account Type DW::Setting::Display::AccountLevel
Status LJ::Setting::Display::AccountStatus
*Shop Order History LJ::Setting::Display::Orders
Password LJ::Setting::Display::Password
*Login History LJ::Setting::Display::Logins
Email LJ::Setting::Display::Email
Email Address History LJ::Setting::Display::Emails
Emailed Entries History LJ::Setting::Display::EmailPosts

JOURNAL PRIVACY
*Adult Content LJ::Setting::AdultContent
*Adult Content Reason DW::Setting::AdultContentReason
Minimum Entry Security LJ::Setting::MinSecurity
Syndication Level DW::Setting::SynLevel
Enable Comments LJ::Setting::EnableComments
Comment Screening LJ::Setting::CommentScreening
Anti-Spam LJ::Setting::CommentCaptcha
IP Address Logging LJ::Setting::CommentIP
Ban and Unban Accounts LJ::Setting::Display::BanUsers
*Off-Site Search Engines LJ::Setting::SearchInclusion
Site-Wide Search Inclusion DW::Setting::GlobalSearch
Searching Your Journal DW::Setting::AllowSearchBy
Community Promo DW::Setting::CommunityPromo

Display settings aside, I'm happy with the order of the other tabs. Not touching display until I have a better idea of what the Journal vs Site division is.

[sophie]

Maybe use "Display (Your Journal)", "Display (Global)", "Privacy (Your Journal)", and "Privacy (Other)"? Unless that's not really what those divisions are... Yikes D=

Yeah, the split is really more between journals in general (not just your journal, but any journal) and things that display in the site skin too.

At least, that's what I'm feeling from it!

[demarafis]

The thing is, the Privacy division is pretty clear cut on your journal privacy vs other privacy settings. This just makes the journals vs site display division confusing. Though I know what most of the display settings are, I'm having trouble compartmentalising the division. Hence "Not touching display until I have a better idea of what the Journals vs Site division is." I don't think I'll be able to say anything constructive about the display division until I've somet time to try the hack.

[ciaan]

Oh PLEASE don't put adult content settings on top as if they are most important!!!!! I want to pretend they don't exist! I would say the most important for my privacy and what should be on top are:

Minimum Entry Security LJ::Setting::MinSecurity
Syndication Level DW::Setting::SynLevel
Off-Site Search Engines LJ::Setting::SearchInclusion
Site-Wide Search Inclusion DW::Setting::GlobalSearch

[demarafis]

I didn't put the adult content settings on top because they were important. I put the settings with minimum entry security and comment settings because they are all settings that affect how users interact with your journal. Adult warning started with A, so my mind automatically vaulted it to the top of this subgrouping.

Most of the searching and indexing settings were near the bottom of the list. Hence moving the off-site search setting to the bottom with the rest of the search settings.

When I re-ordered the two lists, I was more concerned with grouping similar settings together so they can be found and understood easier, rather than ordering individual settings based on their importance. I did not mean to imply that adult content warnings are the most important privacy settings, nor that searching and indexing settings are the least important privacy settings. Setting importance did not factor into the ordering of either list at all.

[sophie]

I can see people getting confused about "Journals Display" - it's possible that people might at first think it's only about your *own* journal, despite the pluralised title. (I know I did.)

I think I might need to wait for the demo before I can give useful feedback, unfortunately; I work much better with touchy-feelies.

(That said, I think the journal/entry view style settings might work better in the Journals Display tab rather than the Site Display tab.)