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Building App - Need username?

T

TechBoyJK

Lifer
Hi Guys,

I'm building an app that is kind of like myspace+craigslist..

Anyways, my initial design was to give everybody usernames. Kind of like AT forums.

Someone would sign up, pick a username, they'd get that username as a url, aka company.com/username, and that username would make each account unique.

The problem I have with this design now, is that users will be able to create url's from the same domain for listings..

So my member url would be company.com/techboyjk

and if I was selling a car I could pick company.com/2011PorscheGT or something like that.

My issue is that the only REAL need for the username is the URL that people pick, and I'm worried that with people being able to create their own URL's, this will eventually conflict with usernames.. like.. someone wants the username of 'johndoe123' and even though the username is available someone already used up the URL for an ad or something.

I'm starting to think I should just ditch the username altogether.

When someone signs up, they provide first name, last name, email, and pick a URL for their homepage. Each account would be made unique by a unique, numeric member_id, and users would provide their email address and password to login.

Thoughts? Now that I'm almost done with the app, I don't see a real need for a username.

Unique Number to identify accounts
Email address to login
Pick URL independant of username or anything
 
Without knowing the details of your project, the way your seem to explain it means you are right. Technically their email address is their username. (to login). It's really dependent on your application, because if there is a user "profile", you'd probably want to show someones username and not their email address, at least not without their consent.

The question is, do you want people to have access to company.com/username? Can listings be company.com/username/2011PorscheGT ?
 
If you're happy with your unique identifier, then, there really is no point to having another unique identifier(username), IMO. If the user must remember this unique identifier, however, it is often times must much easier for them to remember a username vs a unique number of some length.
 
Right now you seem to have a 1:1 mapping between user name and url. Isn't it the case that a user may have multiple urls?

Regardless of whether you choose to use email address, or a user-created unique identifier, you still have a user name. In other words, I think you're looking at the information model a little cockeyed. A user needs a unique id at the database level, in most scenarios, but a user also exists in reality, and needs a type-able unique identifier by which they can be addressed by other users, admins, etc. The only difference between using email address and having the user type something is in the assumptions made about uniqueness. In the first case you rely on the system, and in the second you have to satisfy the condition yourself. Other than that they're just identifiers.

My guess is what you really want is [user.1...n.url]. If that's the case then you can either generate some random temporary value for the subdirectory portion of the new url, or follow a blog-like model and create a permalink out of the listing title, or something along those lines.
 
Markbnj said:
Right now you seem to have a 1:1 mapping between user name and url. Isn't it the case that a user may have multiple urls?

Regardless of whether you choose to use email address, or a user-created unique identifier, you still have a user name. In other words, I think you're looking at the information model a little cockeyed. A user needs a unique id at the database level, in most scenarios, but a user also exists in reality, and needs a type-able unique identifier by which they can be addressed by other users, admins, etc. The only difference between using email address and having the user type something is in the assumptions made about uniqueness. In the first case you rely on the system, and in the second you have to satisfy the condition yourself. Other than that they're just identifiers.

My guess is what you really want is [user.1...n.url]. If that's the case then you can either generate some random temporary value for the subdirectory portion of the new url, or follow a blog-like model and create a permalink out of the listing title, or something along those lines.
Click to expand...

Right now the app is written so that the user selects a username, and that username is created as their url. They don't pick a url, it just says "your username will also be your url".

But if the person also lists a classified ad, or creates a redirect, they'll use up another URL..

I'm just afraid that the 1:1 mapping of username to url will create conflict as people start using creating url's for other reasons, especially since many url's will only be temporary (such as for a classified ad). So by doing away with usernames, I do away with that conflict.

The database will have it's own unique identifier, but I think elsewhere the user's email address should be enough, especially since emails to accounts are 1:1 as well.

Facebook doesn't use usernames. You login with email address and password, and everyone's initial URL is based on their ID number.. like facebook.com/id?=23493489540

You can then pick a custom URL if you wanted to. I might even make it so picking a url isn't mandatory, since I already automatically create a url for the user based on their ID. (like facebook).
 
I would think a separation should exist between users/listing/etc. That way users know that they're going to a listing. I also like what Jason posted about listings underneath users.

domain.com/<username>
-- this would work fine if you take the time to edit your rewrites quite a bit.

domain.com/listing/911-porsche-gt
-- should probably strip to web-safe ur
 
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