1. Overview

Per the Herbert Poul's (the creator of SCT) own words:

"SCT's user registration & co is very basic.. i just did it because Django doesn't ship with any defaults mechanisms .. i fear you have to roll your own solution for this or extend the few SCT views..

--- Vetting Users Discussion 2008-06-03 17:33:12 ---

2. Backlog

• enhance the core captcha framework to allow for settings_local.py control
• optional captcha for registration
• login using user name (aka primary display name) or email address
• Multiple Display names (for use in various areas TBD)
• email availability settings (Google like with a captch between initial display and full display of email names)
• Auto assigning groups based of various criteria (number of posts, number of submissions to tags, weighted posting [replying with acknowledge helpful advice counts as more] and subscription levels)
• Multiple Signatures (for use in various areas TBD)
• Graphical Signatures (based on authorization / user roles)
• Push the captcha into a pluggable module.

3. Backlog Item Notes

3.1. Core Captcha Enhancement

Captcha integration is an optional built in extension to SCT. If set up it is used otherwise it is bypassed. The basic captcha support in SCT almost met all the needed requirements. Discussion with Herbert Poul on the changes brought about the additional changes being directly integrated into SCT Tools see SCT Tools Captcha http://sct.sphene.net/wiki/show/Captcha/ for details.

The SCT captcha support was enhanced in by these changes:

• sphene/community/views.py

  • updated the captcha_image method to allow for optional settings for fg & bg colors and border width via the settings CAPTCHA_BORDER, CAPTCHA_BGCOLOR and CAPTCHA_FGCOLOR the default settings for these are:

    CAPTCHA_BGCOLOR = (39, 36, 81) # background color RGB tuple for captcha images

    CAPTCHA_FGCOLOR = (153, 204, 0) # foreground color RGB tuple for captcha images

    CAPTCHA_BORDER = 2 # border width in pixels around captcha text

  • changed the captcha_image method image generation to compute the size of the image based off of the text written

  • added an autocrop method to trim back the image to the exact size (true type fonts tend to lie about height and width so image size calculations are not really reliable to get the right sized box)

• sphene/community/sphutils.py

  • Fixed the captcha usage for displaying email addresses to flip to True by default if captcha's are active. Since this in internal it is updating the default behavoir leaving the option for direct setting of the behavoir to override it.

3.2. Optional Captcha for registration

• sphene/community/sphsettings.py

  • Added captcha support for new user registration. It is off by default and can be turned on by adding captcha libraries and then setting the sphsetting 'community_register_require_captcha' to True. Example on how do this would be to put this line into the settings_local.py file:

    SPH_SETTINGS['community_register_require_captcha'] = True

3.3. User Vetting

The user system should support optional user vetting. User vetting is the ability to cause a new membership request to require approval by another user with appropriate authority.

3.3.1. Vetting Work Flow

1. New user submits registration request

   • an email validation check message is sent to user's email address
   • If vetting is on a vetting new user email is sent the assigned administrator or GROUP

2. User validates by via the validation page link

   • User's account page shows that the that email has been validated
   • If vetting is on the user's account page shows the account is active or awaiting approval

3. Admin user accepts or rejects the account

   • Accepted means the account is set to active and can interact with the site
   • Rejected means that the account is set to rejected and can only interact at the guest level
   • User is provided on extra button to re-submit for approval

4. User accounts could also be "blocked" meaning the re-approval button goes away.