Chapter 18. Using the Members List Module

The Members List module isn't one of PHP-Nuke's most exciting pieces. Figure 18.1 shows it in all its glory.

Figure 18.1. The Members List module.

Simply put, this module lists all the members who have registered on your site. It provides a couple of message-sending functions, including the capability to send a private message (via the Private Messages module), send an e-mail, or visit the member's Web site (assuming one has been entered into his profile). It also lists the member's location (if provided in the member profile) and lists the number of Forums posts the member has contributed.

As you can see from the visual appearance of the module, which is slightly different from the rest of PHP-Nuke, the Members List is actually a function of the integrated phpBB software, which is better know as the Forums module. That's why the Members List module also includes buttons labeled Forum FAQ and so forth.

One major problem I have with this module is that it exposes members' e-mail addresses, which is just plain rude. The E-mail button shown in Figure 18.1 is an HTML mailto: link, which means that clicking the E-mail button pops up a preaddressed window from your e-mail software, allowing you to immediately send an e-mail to that member. However, less scrupulous individuals can write software utilities that scape (or harvest, as they put it) the e-mail addresses from a Web page generated by the Members List module. In other words, you could be exposing your members' e-mail addresses to anyone, which is just plain rude. For that reason, I recommend always disabling the Members List module. You can do so from the Modules section of the Administration menu in PHP-Nuke. At the very least, you should restrict access so that the Members List module can be accessed only by other registered users of your site, but ask yourself how much you really know about the registered users of your site. Can you be sure one of them isn't a spammer, come to harvest e-mail addresses from your site?

One valid use of the Members List module is its capability to show the top 10 members according to Forums posts, meaning that you can quickly see who your most active Forums users are. You might use that list to send those members a special reward, or at least a thank-you e-mail. But you don't need to enable the Members List module for that functionality to work; as the administrator of the site, you can access it any time you want to.

UNDER THE HOOD

By the way, you might notice that not every member of your site is listed in this module. That's because PHP-Nuke actually contains two lists of members. The first list contains everyone who's registered for your site but not yet responded to the confirmation e-mail that PHP-Nuke sent them. This is the list of temporary users.

Once a user responds to that confirmation e-mail, he becomes a regular, active user and shows up in the Members List module.