Tell a friend?

[rharbison]

I'm positive I'm not the first to think of this one, but I don't see it anywhere. Is there a script/hack/mod/whatever that will allow members to tell friends about a thread?

You've seen them on other sites, you click on the "tell a friend" link, give it your e-mail and your friends, and it mails them the page and says "so and so" thought you might like to see this.

[Steve Machol]

If you look at the bottom of this page you'll see a link for 'Email This Page to Someone'. This is a standard feature in vB and has been ever since I can remember.

[rharbison]

<font size="4">D'oh! </font>

Sorry... Thanks for the reply.
Think I'll make it a bit more
noticable in my templates.

[rharbison]

Ok, after looking around a bit, I don't feel quite as stupid for not noticing this as it only shows up in certain views.

In the default templates, at least the ones I have, it only shows up when you're viewing a thread. It doesn't show up on the forum or topic page views.

It doesn't look like you can just cut and paste it in either, since it wants a threadid. So is there a way to do it on the home page and the forum pages too?

[Steve Machol]

If you put it in the forum home and display pages then how would it know which thread you want to send. It's in the thread view for a reason.

[rharbison]

Why does it have to be only threads?

All it does is send them a link, why can't it send them a link to any of the pages in the forum, rather than just threads.

What if I want to tell them about the Code Hacks forum in general, and not this just thread? It could just as easily send them the url of https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=3 It doesn't need a thread in that case.

Same for the home page, which is actually where I wanted to put it at first.

I guess you've got a "Tell a friend about this thread" option and I want a more generic "Tell a friend about this Page" option. :)

There's plenty of CGI scripts out there that will do just what I want, except I need to have it strip the session specific stuff. That's why I was looking for a hack here, instead of just using a generic tell a friend script.

[Steve Machol]

That's true, but your original question was,

"Is there a script/hack/mod/whatever that will allow members to tell friends about a thread?"

That's what I was responding to. :)

[rharbison]

OK, you're right. I did ask that, since I thought it would be tougher to do with threads.

So, we've establish VB can and does do that.

Now, what about non thread pages? Any options there?

[Steve Machol]

On that subject you're right - a hack and template edits would be involved. Not being much of a hacker myself, we'll have to let someone else come up with a solution. Good luck!

[rharbison]

That's what I was afraid of...

For now I've compromised on this. I used the "tell a friend" form from bignosebird.com and removed the place where it is supposed to automagically insert the page url. Instead it
simply inserts the url http://www.railroadforums.com/ no matter what page they call it from. (and of course I changed the wording to tell a friend about this site...)

So, no matter where they use it, the url won't break. Bad news is that it doesn't allow you to send a specific page, just the site in general.

Any cgi hackers out there know an easy way to strip the "S=" portion out of the url? If I can do that, I could make this script work.