Celebrity wants a special PM feature?

[JuicyDuff]

Hey Guys,

It's Zain Jaffer here of www.forum.juicyduff.com (not yet launched, but official personal forum and site of Hilary Duff)

I'm finding vbulletin excellent for the aims I have for the forum (e.g special, private & secure sections for Hilary to keep in touch with fans, staff and friends)

The mod i am requesting: PM Allow Ability

I don't know if this feature is already included or there is already a mod out there that can do what I want but here:

I want to make the forum so that Hilary Duff can only send and recieve private messages from and to people she chooses (perhaps people who belong to a special usergroup?)

E.g: Hilary can only send & recieve private messages to close friends, chosen fans, members of her official staff team and some administrators.

[nexialys]

illogical... you request that your idol is restricted in her PMs ?!

or you want Hillary to be the only one to be able to use the PM system ?!... because what you explain here is quite evasive...

(btw i don't think Hillary is a celebrity for everyone, it's not a seducing request for me!)

[JuicyDuff]

Well the main reasons for this is because of security reasons and obviously - "spam" - the word every member or owner of a forum hates.

[Zachery]

Well the main reasons for this is because of security reasons and obviously - "spam" - the word every member or owner of a forum hates.
Users can turn off the pm system if they choose to not recive pms'

[nexialys]

you can set something different, as i suppose your idol will not visit your site all day long, as set a specific forum for chatting with her...

i've found the Howard Stern website where Howard have his own forum where people can ask questions and Howard reply.... the PM system is absolutly deactivated, because it's not a place for chatting, but to contact Howard... maybe this would be your best shot on that side of the security/spam question...

[dune]

You can give certain usergroups the ability to use the PM system or not. If you're comfortable not allowing your "regular" users to use the PM system AT ALL, then that would work for you (enable only mods, etc to be able to use PMs). But if you want them to be able use PMs as normal, but NOT be able to PM a certain user and STILL allow THAT user to use PMs within the restricted group, that's trickier. ;)

The right way to hack this would probably be to alter the code that checks if a user has allowed themselves to receive PM (A user can elect not to recieve any PMs). Hack this code to allow a certain hardcoded usergroup or groups to override that restriction.

[KW802]

Based upon the original thread I think Dune is correct.

The easiest thing to without doing any kind of 'hacks' is to simply create a new user group (eg: "Friends & Family") and turn off the PM option for everybody except that group. That way if somebody needs to have access to PM who is in the inner circle the site admin then could just add that user to the new group.

If leaving PM on for everybody is still wanted then I think a deviation of Dunes idea might work also. Create a new private custom profile field (eg: "Can PM Hillary?") and then use a conditional in the PM template (pm_newpm maybe) to check for the new private profile field versus who the PM is being sent to.

[JuicyDuff]

Thank's i'll look into this - I'm not too good with using vbulletin to its full potential as I have only used it occasionally ... is the last solution a hard one to do?

[Brad]

Well if you go that route then normal members can't pm each other, the best way to go about it would be to combine the buddy list and pm feture.

Basicly she would have to add certain members to her buddy list, once they are there they would be allowed to pm her. And she could respond/send to them.

You would just need to code some php to pick up on her acount, and her buddy list, it would'nt be a large project and a good coder could probbly nock it out in under an hour.

[SaN-DeeP]

Hey Guys,

It's Zain Jaffer here of www.forum.juicyduff.com (not yet launched, but official personal forum and site of Hilary Duff)

I'm finding vbulletin excellent for the aims I have for the forum (e.g special, private & secure sections for Hilary to keep in touch with fans, staff and friends)

The mod i am requesting: PM Allow Ability

I don't know if this feature is already included or there is already a mod out there that can do what I want but here:

I want to make the forum so that Hilary Duff can only send and recieve private messages from and to people she chooses (perhaps people who belong to a special usergroup?)

E.g: Hilary can only send & recieve private messages to close friends, chosen fans, members of her official staff team and some administrators.
why dont you make a new forum, add only allow special groups to read posts from there ;)
put yourself and your celebrity in that special group.
normal users can post there messages, you can take out the crap from there if irrelevant..

pm system can either be disabled from receiving pms for all users, or you can start adding irrelevant users pm to your block list

a new forum will give you features to add some description to same too ;)
my 2 cents :)

[dune]

San-Deep is right, that's the easiest way. Just make a "private" forum, much easier to configure than what we've talked about so far...

[Natch]

Private forum does not allow one to one private converstaions: Hilary may not want Joe to know what she's saying to Sarah, but she may still wanna converse privately with both Joe and Sarah.

[Colin F]

Private forum does not allow one to one private converstaions: Hilary may not want Joe to know what she's saying to Sarah, but she may still wanna converse privately with both Joe and Sarah.
Doesn't it?

I remember that it worked in vB2.
Just only allow users to see their own threads.

[Logikos]

Yup its in the forum permissions. "Can view other's threads"--> off

[SaN-DeeP]

Private forum does not allow one to one private converstaions: Hilary may not want Joe to know what she's saying to Sarah, but she may still wanna converse privately with both Joe and Sarah.
Thats possible in Vb 3.0.3 (as user uses that version) as replied above by turning off can view others thread
I would say using the private forum will be definetly the best idea

Regards,