“Userbase” is a project I’ve been thinking about, but will probably never get around to doing, hence its categorisation in the “somedaymaybe” part of this wiki.

In short: Userbase is a web application which does nothing but handle users. The core of it provides user registration, login, preference management, roles, permissions, admin interface, and all that… but doesn’t actually let the users *do* anything. However, it’s the absolute best user management system it can be.

In order for it to do anything, you then install plugins: CMS, blog, wiki, photo upload, discussion forum, project management, workflow, social bookmarking, whatever.

Userbase+Plugins, in combination, would provide a really powerful way to build any kind of community website.

• New user registration (two-stage, with email confirmation)
• Choice of authentication methods (including existing databases, LDAP, etc)
• User preferences (providing hooks for plugins to extend)
• User profiles (incl. photos, etc)
• Roles and permissions (providing hooks for plugins)

Things I’d want to be in place to make this workable:

• MVC framework – using Catalyst, if it were to be done in Perl
• Elegant plugin API
• Automated test harness

• Must be easy to install. No, *really* easy. As easy as PHP apps generally are.
• Plugins need to be installable simply by uploading to a given directory
• Ditto themes
• Plugin activation should look like Wordpress’s (it’s nice!)