This is the first step to generate a complete new way to manage your forums. Once you select the type of section you want to have in that forum (we’re in the forum editor here!), you save and have a complete suite of settings that fit the type you selected… permissions are driven the same way, templates and functions as well.

HERE is the actual list of possible types:

‘ads’; # classified ads
‘album’; # personal albums
‘anonymous’; # anonymous posting
‘answer’; # answers.yahoo.com like
‘articles’; # articles and docs
‘blog’; # personal blogs
‘bugs’; # bug report system
‘colophon’; # site references
‘dictionary’; # glossary, dictionary
‘docs’; # pdf, docs
‘feed’; # podcast, rss reader
‘guestbook’; # site guestbook
‘knowledge’; # knowledge base
‘link’; # links repository
‘lyric’; # lyrics related artists
‘movie’; # movie database
‘nfo’; # torrent and the like
‘photo’; # photo albums
‘poetry’; # poetry listings
‘poll’; # poll survey
‘recipes’; # recipes book
‘software’; # software repository
‘ticket’; # support tickets

I’ve created a suite of addons to add to your site when you have a lot of members participating and are interested to know about each others… Meeting, Match-Making sites, Personal Ads etc, this suite can be a good enhancement for you.

Instead of having daily astrology, this tool provide a description of each personality related to the member’s profile… All that is needed is the birthday of the member. Astrology, Chinese Zodiac and others are all driven by the date of birth’s information, and your members can enter their info without having to modify your forum.

So here is a demo in screenshot of the Astrology engine; the others are working the exact same way, with some tweaks to fit each others… (example, the chinese zodiac have a whole calculation process to identify your real chinese sign, not the usual basic 2 dots calculation you find on the internet)…

The default texts related to each elements of the suite can be changed, to fit your needs. They are documented with tons of references to each signs, but you may prefer more inspired details…

Here is the screenshot of the Usergroup management. It is quite easy to manage who and how, as there is nothing else to manage than view/activate.

The settings are also very easy to figure out… each Set have its own config panel, so you are not lost in the different ways to display the featurettes.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]266[/ATTACH]

The user side of things, where each user can activate their astrology when possible… in the UserCP >> Edit Options

[ATTACH=CONFIG]268[/ATTACH]

And the result… this is the default location when shown below the user signature in the old vB 3.5x, but look similar to all other blocks in the new vB 3.7…

[ATTACH=CONFIG]267[/ATTACH]

Note: the files included in this release are the obsolete ones, which cover the 3.0 and 3.5 Legacy versions of vBulletin. Next release planned for september 2012 will contain the engine for 3.6 and above, thru 4.9.9 …

this is simple… in the last upgrade/update of vBulletin yesterday, i forgot to re-install all the hacks i’ve had here…

hacks that are only products are not a problem, they are unchanged… but there is 2 or 3 that have file edits, so they require to be re-installed to see the result!

Just a demo of how you have to do if you want to log more of the edits made by on users by admins and users (by default it log the username, usergroups, email change…)

This is a product file only, and it’s a 2 second change in that same product file if you want to add more fields to be logged.

This product is used to customize log for clients that require a more precise way to track the members profile changes… Can be good for tracking moderators actions upon members.

As you can see in this screenshot, the first two lines are the result of what i added in the product, to log the « usertitle » field. The other details are already by default…

This little system is to be manipulated by someone who knows how it work, or you will break your forum quickly. And it is shaped in a product so you can deactivate it quickly.

… not file or template edits, just import the product.

Make Thread Prefixes clickable on forumdisplay pages, so when you click on the prefix, you will be returned the list of threads related to that prefix only.

as usual, no template edit, just a product upload…

New design for all the RSS Feed you apply to your forum.

Actually, inside vBulletin, you have:

1. a rss feed inside a forum is used only to display small amount of text from the feed itself… having to click the thread title to see the small text of the feed is irrelevant.
2. no capability to show the image attached to the feed is irrelevant too, as it’s one of the gains we had lately with RSS2.
3. having the RSS post have the dateline of the moment the cron will grab the info… this is irrelevant because the feed have to be fluid with its own feedline.

So now, we will see the feeds in a different way:

Does that look professional enough ?!

details of the changes:

1- Creation Date of Thread is now based on the original posting date of the feed itself. if the GMT is different, the creation date will be the moment when the cron grab the info.

2- The attached images of each feed can be retrieved on feed connection and inserted as a thumbnail for the thread.

3- Feed content is displayed in forumdisplay, instead of having to open the thread to read the comment. RSS Feeds are for insights, not for clicking all the way… so displaying the entire feed when you open the forum is better, and the display we use by default is similar to most of the News displays of these Feeds.

4- when you add the https://unpapapro.com/free-visual-elements/post-date-threads-threadbit/431/ hack, it look even more professional.

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though this hack require that you edit 2 files to work properly, because it edit the core functions of the RSS Reader, which does not contain any hook for addons.

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note: update: cloni reported that the search form on top of the page was not working properly… it is now fixed… no version change. was just a at the wrong place…

note: october 23, 2009: updated product file to version 1.0.2, edited template and product so vBSEO is not interacting anymore with the url.

This little addon for the threadbits is very practical for any forum in need of good stats.

usually, on vB, when you post a new thread, the only detail you have in threadbit is the Threat Title and Username of the author…

now, we have this kind of display where you set the read date of each thread, with the very precise dateline detail:
posted by nexia 2 Weeks Ago (06-05-2008, 01:31 PM)

Here is what you get usually:

And here is what you get with this little tweak!

This is the details you see here on this forum…

it’s a product upload, no file or template edits.

detail: if you want the « posted by » to have a different style, you simply have to search for the phrase « posted by », it have the varname « nex_postdatesince_postedby » … you can Capitalize the first letter, as suggested by Shelley, or change its style, like
[html]Posted by: [/html]

note: as suggested by [user]xOBKx[/user], the new version (1.5) now cover the search results in threads list.

like a lot of developers say: when it need instruction, it needs improvements…

i would say the same of our script.. the software have to run by itself… when something is not obvious, it need docs inline, so you do not have to search somewhere to learn how to drive it.

i don’t want to see someone post on the support forum with a question like « i want to know how to activate this or that »…

so instead of minimizing the display of settings, we will make it so easy to understand that my 6 years old daughter can understand and configure it.

not because of the dumb people, but because we do not have to write this engine for the techies… we will earn respect from the average population.

I think we need a script that talk by itself instead of using admins brain to negociate with the server… most of the time, the admins are unable to set their performance-settings properly because they know nothing about the server they have… so if we use the serverside logic to build the preferences and settings, we avoid having havoc due to stupid admins…

like the SEO system… we can simply activate it when the server can handle it… email specs can be set automatically too when the script detect the proper plugins inside php

we can set the configs to handle serverload automatically, setting performances on compression of output etc, based on what we know from the server…

and as a site is not moving from one server to the other each morning, we do it once when we install the script, and weekly a cronjob check if the site was moved to a new machine— because sometimes the hosts do not alert the clients about a move…

does this make sense?

another upgrade, doh?

not anymore… the core itself is untouchable by hacks, so when we upgrade the core, you do not have to rewrite your hacks… they will still work.

brain note here: we have to write the core to be responding, not waiting… the core only give results, does not require any change in the system to be performing an action. It means that it is not executing actions from the user-end but answering requests from execution process… the data is always managed outside the core.

if the Core needs an upgrade, nothing else have to be touched… if a module/product have to be upgraded, nothing else have to be reconfigured… that means we are in control of all the hacks that are provided, in a simple protocol…