Profile fields

Members fill in a few optional profile fields themselves: first name, last name, phone, headline, the Show my real name switch and a time zone. This page covers where they edit them, the routes behind that, which name other people see, and the two controls you have. Role settings decide who may edit, and the API config decides which fields exist.

Personal informationCopy Anchor Link

Members set firstName, lastName, phone and headline at Settings → Overview (/settings). The Profile card lists them read-only; Edit profile opens one sheet with every field, the Show my real name switch and the time zone, saved together with Save changes. Every field is optional and stored as null when cleared. The session payload carries them, so anything that already reads the session can show them without another request.

The PATCH body takes any subset of { firstName, lastName, phone, headline, showRealName }. A field left out stays as it is, and a text field sent as "" or whitespace is cleared. Saving clears the user's cached session and emits user.updated.

phone is the one field with a format: digits plus +, spaces, -, ( and ), up to 32 characters. The form and the route both reject anything else. It is not on the public profile; only the account's own session carries it.

Time zoneCopy Anchor Link

timeZone sits under Region in the same Edit profile sheet. It takes any IANA name, like Europe/Warsaw, and Use this device's time zone fills it from the browser (it still waits for Save changes). null means "follow my language", then UTC. Notification digests go out in this time zone, and c.get("user")?.timeZone is there for anything else that needs local time.

The body is { timeZone: string | null }. An unknown name answers 400. Saving clears the cached session and emits user.updated.

Which name the public seesCopy Anchor Link

showRealName decides whether a profile is headed by the nickname (name) or by firstName lastName. The public profile route resolves this on the server and returns the result as name, so a real name the user has not published never leaves the API. When the switch is on but both halves are empty, the profile falls back to the nickname.

People shown in content, such as a post's authors, carry the same answer as fullName, which is the real name when it is published and null otherwise. UserFormat shows it in place of the nickname. To publish a real name from your own route, use publicFullNameOf from @vitnode/core/lib/user-personal-information, and never send firstName or lastName to other people.

The AdminCP and search always show name, because staff need the name the account is filed under.

What the profile header showsCopy Anchor Link

GET /api/@vitnode/core/users/profile/{nameCode} returns everything the header needs: id, name (already resolved), nameCode, headline, avatarUrl, coverUrl, avatarColor, createdAt, the primary role and any secondaryRoles. The header shows the headline, the role and the join date as one row with an icon each, stacked under the avatar on a phone.

With users.personalInformation.headline set to false (see below), the route returns headline: null for everyone, so turning the field off removes it from public profiles without touching what members wrote.

Next to the username the header shows the member's online status - Online now, Last seen 5 minutes ago or Activity hidden. It is fetched in the browser on its own, so the profile itself stays cacheable; User Presence covers how it works.

The Edit profile button is the header's action slot and shows only on the account's own profile. A host that renders ProfileContent itself can pass any action: a follow button, a message link, or nothing.

Browse anonymouslyCopy Anchor Link

The Privacy group on Settings → Overview holds Browse anonymously. Turned on, other members see Activity hidden instead of the member's online status and last activity, while staff with users:can_view_hidden_presence still see it. A role can take the choice away: the switch then stays visible but disabled, with a tooltip saying why. See User Presence.

Who may editCopy Anchor Link

Each role has Allow editing personal information on its Profile tab at AdminCP → Core → Users → Roles (allowEditPersonalInfo, default true). A user may edit only when every role they hold allows it; one role that switches it off locks the fields.

That is the opposite of the image allowances, which any single role can grant. Since this setting defaults to true, "any role grants" would let every other role a member holds quietly undo an administrator who switched it off on one role.

A locked member's Edit profile sheet shows only the time zone, which everyone may change, and PATCH /users/me answers 403 whatever the UI showed. Staff can still edit locked fields from the AdminCP.

Turn fields off for the whole installCopy Anchor Link

Every field is on unless you set it to false under users.personalInformation in the API config:

export const vitNodeApiConfig = buildApiConfig({
  // ...
  users: {
    personalInformation: {
      phone: false,
      headline: false,
      showRealName: false,
    },
  },
});

The keys are firstName, lastName, phone, headline and showRealName. A field switched off disappears from the settings card and its form, and PATCH /users/me refuses to write it even when a request sends it, so a stale browser tab cannot get around the switch.

Switching a field off never deletes data. The column keeps what members had set, and turning it back on restores it. With showRealName off, every profile is headed by the nickname. With every field off there is nothing left to edit, so the Edit profile button disappears too.

RelatedCopy Anchor Link

• Current user shows the full user record and how to read it.
• Avatars and covers covers the profile images.