Best forum ever, but.. ! It’s even better!

Thanks for pointing that out… it looks like they have made things better since I looked into this a long time ago. The main problem I had was the custom fields were not public (not stored in the normal database table with user name etc) and they were all but impossible to get at. But it looks like there is now an extension which allows you to lift some fields to being public now.

That said, it looks like you need to write a theme component to get it to work. Also all of these customizations have been very brittle and upgrades cause them to fail. Maybe it has gotten better though. I might look into coding it at some point, or perhaps you are interested?? :grinning: :grinning: :grinning:

@Janne.L yes the USDA zones are not the best, but they are better than nothing. It is not hard to get the zone for any place in the world, just figure out your average lowest low, convert C to F, and look at the USDA zone table.

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It is more of necessity to translate to USDA zones, since it is only realistic way to talk in English speaking forums that have many US people in them. If one visits UK or Canadian forums (public forums), there starts immidiately be more variation when talking about zone maps. I think actually there should be separate discussion about different climate maps, haha, so I am not going to sully this conversation any more.

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Very good Scott. I like the whole first post how it reads.

Hello @Janne.L now if I were you I would begin my profile writing “I live in (here) and this is what grows great here and here’s what doesn’t…” or something other, clever.

First you gotta write something and I’m not talking just about you but anyone that joins that doesn’t list any zone data, (they) should write something. Maybe as broad as I live in Mississippi and it’s hot and humid here and rarely does it freeze. Anything and that broad really helps paint a picture.

Thankfully if someone cares enough about your questions they will go to a Europe zone map that the USDA has put together and if they know your location (let’s say you wrote England) and that would begin the painting process of how they’re going to begin to keep the conversation flowing and to invite others to continue to help and eventually who knows… maybe a proper answer is given.

I greet you well.

Dax

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I can give it a go, if you’d like. I’ll need a couple of days to search through Discourse’s forums, & github code, to see if I can code a solution that doesn’t get overridden on updates, and one that doesn’t need to force the user’s db table Zone column public, but respects the user’s “hide my public profile and presence features” setting. Unless, you want it to be forced public (then, following that link’s post may be simplest)? Also, I have 80+ pawpaw seedlings to pot :grinning:

The zone field you added is a text input field, so, if we can get it to show after the user’s name, @Janne.L & others could also write non USDA zones if they wanted (or, anything they wanted to show after their name…). Could potentially be abused, but converting the zone column to some other integer(s)/letter(s) (5a, 5b,…), limited, input, might be much more complicated, and probably force everyone to need to re-update that info. Although, that would make it easy to do things like custom css that colors the zone info differently, If you wanted to - like; zone 2 blue, zone 6 chartreuse, zone 8+, red, etc. but now I’m getting carried away. Might also want to show the Location field, or merge it with Zone field, as they seem to be basically the same thing; into one custom field that user’s can have show after their name, but that’s all up to you.

If you want the zone field forced public, following that link’s solution should work. I think you would just need to change version=“0.8.27” to whatever version you currently have, the number after user_field_ to whatever the Zone field is in user_fields.json, and copy-paste that script into the /header section under Themes, under Customize, after adding the user_field_# to the ‘public user custom fields’ site settings; but, disclaimer, I don’t have experience with Discourse :grinning:, but I can learn it fast enough, just give me a few days if you’d like. I came across some of your posts in that Discourse dev forum; amazing what a site like this can cost every month, and you are providing it to us for free! So, thank you!, @scottfsmith.

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It’s up to you, if you get something working let me know and I’ll try to put it in to this site. Note that if you are not familiar with Rails or Ember I found you will need to have a working knowledge of that to start to understand how to put it together.

Re: cost, you might be seeing the costs of hosting which are pretty high. Since I am managing that it is not so bad. And, all that is paid by voluntary donations to the site as well :smile:

Yes. I do that all the time, Aiden. But, like you said . . . that’s on a computer.
I see you are from near Madison, in WI ! Zone 5A.
And that you joined on Feb 2nd!
I even forget where some of the ‘regulars’ are living . . . so I click on their names when I do . . . and get my bearings again.
Sure does make a difference when you know the Zone info, too.
Good suggestion, @FarmGirl-Z6A !

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Since most forums are for other things, like computer, software, or internet related. That is a very not standard thing. I myself don’t use this forum software, in part to keep the cost of my web hosting down since it costs more for the type of web host that this forum requires. There has to be a way to include the zone near the name, yet it’s very hard to figure out the code for such a thing.

Some Rails, no Ember. I’ll take my time.

plugin-api.js.es6/ “discourse-plugin” :: api.decorateWidget method seems to be built into discourse? If that’s the case, you wouldn’t need to add any extensions, and just implement the solution in that link w/out worrying about upgrades breaking the customization. From the little I’ve looked through, putting a theme customization as <script>…</script> section in the </header> is the safest way to avoid it breaking from updates. Too many frameworks used in Discourse!

Yes Discourse is quite the labyrinth… I was surprised how much work it was to add such a simple feature.

Let me know if you need anything from me. We should probably take this to PM as I doubt anyone else here cares about the ins and outs of Discourse.

As I pointed out elsewhere, this winter our lowest low temperature may not get below the Zone 6 minimum range, even though I listed us as being in Zone 5a, and we were warned when we moved here 20 years ago that we were in a Zone 4 frost pocket.

On other gardening forums I’ve included my zone information as part of my user name. But I just tried to do that here and couldn’t find a way to change(or edit) my user name. Is the user name fixed permanently once you chose it for the first time?

jbclem 9b Topanga, Calif.

Your user name needs to be changed by an admin. PM me and I can do it.

I went ahead and added my Z5 after my name since the inception of this Forum back then and it turned OK.

@tonyOmahaz5 ,
For such a prolific and experienced grower like you, you should add your fruit growing info in the profile, too.

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