MePrints

For instructions on how to install MePrints, see MePrintsInstall.

Introduction

MePrints is a plugin for EPrints 3.1+ that extends the user aspect of EPrints with user profiles and homepages. Profile pages are similar to existing EPrint abstract pages, they are public-facing page providing, admin-customisable, information about the user. Homepages replace the current EPrints "Profile" page and provide, user-customisable, information from the repository so that the user can get a quick overview of anything that is relevant to them.

The hope is that MePrints functionality will find it's way into the EPrints 3.2 trunk so that it is available to use with a new install of EPrints.

Features

MePrints brings a number of additional features to EPrints to improve the user experience.

Additional User Metadata

A few extra default user data fields including;

• Biography - A small bit of information which is supplied by the user.
• Expertise - A list of keywords describing the user's areas of expertise.
• Qualifications
• Divisions - This uses the same hierarchy as eprint.divisions, the idea of this is to keep department/organisation for external users but divisions for internal users.

Public User Profile Pages

This image shows an example MePrints User Profile.

Public user profile pages are similar to EPrints abstracts and provide a public static view of a user in the repository. The information that is displayed on these pages is configurable by the repository administrator. If a user does not want their profile page to be accessible to the outside world then they can set their profile to be hidden so that it is not visible to anyone. Profiles also have a search engine friendly URL assigned to them as well in the form http://repository.org/profile/username. This allows the user to easily share their EPrints profile with other people. This is achieved without making any changes to the core EPrints code.

Internal User Homepage

This image shows a screenshot of an example MePrints User Homepage.

This replaces the initial "Manage Deposits" view that a user sees when they first login. The "Manage Deposits" view is still available although it is now accessible through the link at the top of the page. This page is highly customisable for both the repository administrator and the repository user. A repository administrator can create widgets, which are a special type of plugin that provide information from the repository that is relevant to the user. Also the administrator can create different layouts for the homepage so that widgets on the page will be laid out in different ways. The user can customise their homepage by changing the positions of the widgets and adding or removing other widgets.

Widgets

Widgets are small specialised plugins that can be easily added to MePrints if a repository administrator wants to make any additional functionality available on the homepage.

Widgets available with the a default install of MePrints include;

• User Details - Shows the username, biography, expertise and other core data fields.
• User Picture - Allows the user to upload an image of themselves for their profile.
• User Actions - Adds a box containing all of the possible user actions.
• Recently Published Items - Shows items that the user has recently published in the repository.
• Item Issues - Shows any issues with items, owned by the user, that have been discovered by an issues audit.
• Quick Upload - Allows the user to upload a file and attach it to a new record in their inbox, ready for publication on the repository later.
• Most Popular Items - Looks at the number of times a users items have been accessed and displays a rundown of the most popular.
• IRStats Mini Dashboard - If the repository has IRStats installed this widget can display data from it and allow the user to look at a number of different statistics regarding their publications.

There may be additional widgets that are added to the core set at a later date, and repository administrators can add their own additional widgets if required.

Public User Search

There is a new user search provided by MePrints, cgi/search_users, which allows you to search through users in the EPrints repository. This functionality is provided by a new plugin module EPrints::Plugin::Screen::Public::UserSearch. A user can remove themselves from the search results if they wish to by marking themselves as hidden.

Public User Browsing

A new browse view has been added with MePrints that allows you to browse users by expertise.

Installation

Installation of MePrints on an existing EPrints 3.1 repository has been designed to be a simple as possible. Full instructions for installation can be found at MePrintsInstall.