Tiki is very powerful and this power comes with complexity settings for beginners.
The profiles are supposed to help by duplicating a set a configurations / options ready to be used or ready to be customised.

Many ideas and discussions are in the air (from name change to advanced profiles).

Goals

• Make Profiles the best way to configure a Tiki with a specific and complex setup
  IE: Setup a shop, a CRM, an Accounting system, etc
• Make Profiles the best candidate to create simple and quick documents (kind of google forms)
• Make Profiles usable on existing Tikis that contains data already
• Make Profiles configurable during the install process
  IE: Configure fields name, trackers or trackers name, currency, etc
• Make Profiles "rewindable"
• Make Profiles predictible

Roadmap

1. Find a better name for it.
   • I don't think this is necessary; I can live with "Profiles". It will only make it more difficult and add more work to rename everything where the term "profiles" appears
2. Remove and unify the version category
   Profiles list should display the "installable" profiles for the running version
3. Do a soft revamp (quick win) so the feature look less confusing.
   https://dev.tiki.org/item6767-Profile-soft-UX-UI-revamp-proposal
4. Evaluate the code improvement and the missing parts to decide how we complete the revamp

Code revamp

• ...

Ideas

• Profiles password protected and Profiles Shop
  • Add the opportunity to use password protected profile websites
    An IT company or a freelancer offers services where he/she needs specific reproducable configurations on a regular base, but does not want to publish everything of his ideas, as consulting and skill is the base of creating income in the Free Open Source Software world. It would be useful for him/her to password protect his/her personal profiles website and use it for own development of customer projects only
  • Add a profiles shop on top of the previous password protection to allow to sell profiles with limited access to specific profiles on a profiles website
• Profiles loading and installing files like template files and complete themes
  • How/Does that relate to https://doc.tiki.org/Addons ?
  
  Currently profiles an only set configurations which requires to manually download these files and put them into specific folder in Tiki. It would be nice, if Tiki Profiles could also fetch Theme files/folders and install them on a Tiki.
  This could be a useful addition for the Tiki themes market place
• Improve filtering of profiles from Tiki UI: Profiles Wizard and/or Profiles Control panel. Ideas:
  some profiles do many things, and are not suitable for production sites BUT are very appropriate for new power users testing Tiki in a brand new tiki installs. So allow easy filtering for end user would help reducing dissapointments of one end or the other, imho
  • https://dev.tiki.org/item6433-Add-a-grid-masonry-display-for-the-profiles-in-the-Profiles-Wizard-with-filters?from=Profiles+Wizard
  • https://dev.tiki.org/item5894-Provide-a-tablesorter-powered-list-of-profiles-in-the-Profiles-Wizard-bundled-in-Tiki-to-filter-on-features-tags-names-and-such?from=Profiles+Wizard

Cases

Complex configuration

Often Tiki developers find solutions for specific minor administration or productivity tasks with Tiki, which require a certain set of configurations and optionally to install a set of files. Many functionalities of Tiki can be implemented by configuration only. In case files would be needed, that are usually either single template files or themes.
Given this developer creates and publishes a profile, other developers or users can apply the profile to their Tiki and get use of the same functionality in only a few clicks and minutes.

Use Case Examples

• Back to Top button by luciash
  see also: (https://profiles.luciash.eu/)
• Specific menus, navbars or off-canvas navbars
  ex: setup a wordpress like flavor of Tikis Main Application menu in a left off-canvas menu
  ex2: setup of a standard Bootstrap fixed-to-top navbar with specific menus and modules inside
  This setup and published as a profile would save a lot of time, when used by a developer on many projects
• Specific setups with Trackers and List/CustomSearch on a related wikipage (might need additional template files)
• ...

Duplicating existing configuration

Given a developer does a certain set of complex configurations for most of his projects and thus needs to do the same set of complex configurations every time from zero, when he/she installs a new Tiki. Setting up a Profile can ease his/her work and saves a lot of time.
This profile would transform to a personal reproducable Tiki App or Tiki Flavor.
see also Profiles

Use Case examples

• Shop
• Task management tool for specific use cases
• Project management tool
• ...

Pre-packaged Tiki Apps and Flavors

Use Case examples

• A developer want to offer a product for specific Use Cases as a downloadable App or a Tiki Flavor. He/she could create a Profile. If this profile could be preset in a downloadable Tiki package, his/her community or customers could download the modified Tiki which has the profile pre-apllied, running out of the box without the need to setup anything. For user/customer specific settings a modified Wizard could be offered to only set domains, logo etcetera.
  This Tiki App / Flavor would still be a full fletched Tiki that could be altered and further developped as any other Tiki and optionally switched to be run from the SVN-repository.
• ...

Wish related to profile