What are we going to do and why?

Before we get started, let's take a closer look at what we are going to do in this chapter and why. At the moment, our users can interact with the website and contribute content, including through their own personal blog. Apart from the blog, there isn't a great deal which differentiates our users; they are simply a username with a blog! One key improvement to make now is to make provisions for customizable user profiles. Our site being a social network with a dinosaur theme, the following would be useful information to have on our users:

• Details of their pet dinosaurs, including:

  • Name

  • Breed

  • Date of birth

  • Hobbies

• Their details for other social networking sites; for example, links to their Facebook profile, Twitter account, or LinkedIn page

• Location of the user (city / area)

• Their web address (if they have their own website)

Some of these can be added to user profiles by adding new fields to profiles, using the built in Field API; however we will also install some...