The best practice for a registration and then getting user to fill up extra information

[Ramdas S]

Hi,

I am using Django-registration. It works like a charm as far as registering new users and validating them from potential bots. However, what is the best practice as far as getting users to feed in more information.

Currently in apps I have written, once someone clicks on activation key and is account is activated, we ask the person to fill up a form, and thus capture the data. The form is displayed in activate.html (as in the original django-registration app .4x written by James Bennet). So 60% of users do fill it up immdly.

The form is connected to a model UserProfile, that stores all data from address, telephone numbers and so on.

Now I am writing an app, where we need to take certain calls based on the User's profile, and then provide some offers everytime they log in. Hence it is almost mandatory that we hook the user with his UserProfile, with a hook in from AUTH_PROFILE_MODULE

In such cases, somehow, I am not sure, whether this is the best method. Can someone advise what is the best way to do?

Do I create a separate model like UserProfile and capture data there much the way I've done so far or is there a better practice.

Thanks

Ramdas S

[Steven Armstrong]

Ramdas S wrote on 02/09/08 16:37:

If I understand you correctly you want to force users to fill out their
profile.

I do something similar, but without Django-registration. For that I've
written my own login view (see attachment) that checks if the user has a
profile. As long as he hasn't created one he always gets redirected to
the 'fill out profile form' after login.

hth
Cheers
Steven

[Ramdas S]

Hi Steven,

Thanks.

However. I am quite keen on Django-registration. I am not very sure about oldforms. Let me see whether I can take some ideas from your code and implement it in mine.

Ramdas

[James Bennett]

On Feb 9, 2008 9:37 AM, Ramdas S <ram...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am using Django-registration. It works like a charm as far as registering
> new users and validating them from potential bots. However, what is the best
> practice as far as getting users to feed in more information.

See django-registration's lesser-known companion application:

http://code.google.com/p/django-profiles/

--
"Bureaucrat Conrad, you are technically correct -- the best kind of correct."

[Ramdas S]

James,

Thanks! I need to learn to ** search better ** :)

RS

[Prairie Dogg]

Just thought I'd add that I went through the exact same thing, spent a
couple hours integrating django-registration only to find django-
profiles later, gotta say that the little google maps locator in
django-profiles is really nifty. I've had to make some modifications
to django-profiles to correct what I'd consider deviations from "best-
practices", but that may very well be my own bias. Specifically, I
added email address collection at registration, auto-login on
registration, etc.