Best wishes to all of you.
Can't wait to see version 3 showing up :)

I really think this hack would be more complete with a defined offense like (Uber Spammer) that will automatically set a user and all IPS gathered under their name and set to the IP BAN list. I have not ONCE seen a hack that would allow this... and I think it would be a PERFECT addition to your hack.

So what do you say? You think it can be done?

Well, it already has .... half of what you want.

In other words, it does allow you to define a warning type, which is characterized as "Permanent Ban". In other words, when this type of offence is commited and warned, the member is send directly to the banned members with a "permanent" ban duration.

As for the IP addresses, don't you think it's kind of dangerous? I mean an IP is not (unfortunatelly) always associated with one particular user. So, if you ban the IPs that that member has used in the past, it is quite possible, that you might be banning other legit members, who will try to visit the site in the future. Remote, indeed, but possible. Also, I spend some time this morning trying to find out if vB allows you to ban an IP address, I think I remember seeing something like that, but couldn't find it. Cosnidering that I went to bed at 5 am this morning, I am not very sure if my eyes could see what I was looking at. I'll check again later today.

For the time being, I am stuck with an issue which I can't understand. I have added the feature of sorting the Logs list, by the various columns presented there, in ascending or descending order (I thought that would be a useful feature). But for the life of me, I can't pass a certain sorting string to a parameter used in the select query. All other strings are passed find, but a string that asks the query to do an addition of two columns and sort on the result, doesn't work. If someone can help, please jump in or PM, or email me.

Rgds

Well Vbulletin does have the ability to ban IP addresses, however moderators and super moderators don't have the ability to access that part of the forum to do so. Whch is why when the situation arises to be able to do it automatically instead of manually adding in the ipaddresses i figured why not ask.

Are you considering adding a feature like Erwins hack that makes all posts by certain banned members invisible? Like perhaps putting them into the Mass Ignore feature in Vbulletin? That would be great as well.

I didn't get any errors installing this mod. But IN the legacy postbit, when I click Warn UserX or View UserX's Warning, I get a blank page with this url:

warnuserX-
http://www.afrochat.net/forums/Warn....=108&post=9590

View UserX's warnings-
http://www.afrochat.net/forums/Warn....arnings&id=108

So many changes were made, I don' thave a clue where to start digging.

My board seriously needs this mod.

Plz help.

Nevermind, I fixed. Apparently rerunning the installer after all the changes and file uploads fixed it.

I haven't found any errors so far. Testing. This was an extensive hack, so I just wanna say "excellent job" so far.

Is there a way to remove a given warning from a member? This is important.

Two ways, one is to use the Remove link in the View XYZ's Warnings, and the other is to use the Complete Removal from the View Warning Logs in AdminCP.

The second method removes not only the related warning and its points, but also any bans associated with it (it does not unban the member if he is banned, you will have to do that manually, but reduces his bans number by one).

Rgds

Just to wet your appetite, here is a list of the things you can expect in Version 3.0:

In a few words, I've managed to move a big chunk of code, from the various files which issue warnings (Warn.php, editpost.php, newreply.php, newthread.php, private.php), to the functions_warning.php file. This makes the hack much easier to install, in the first place. It also makes the automatic warning feature, much easier to implement, in other parts of vBulletin, thus allowing me to easily expand its functionality in the future. Finally additional features can be added more easily.

I also altered the way the banning worked. In other words, until version 2.3.5, when a member was banned, his total warning points remained into his account. If he received one more point, he was banned again, a second time. This (I think) was wrong, because:

a. Obviously, since the member is already banned, he can't commit more offences, which would lead to another warning. Obviously if a moderator ends up warning a post, posted by a banned user, this offence was commited before he was banned, but the warning for it, is coming after he was banned.

b. Let's take this example:

A member commits the following offences:

offence A : 5 points
offence B : 6 points
offence C : 3 points

The warning limit is 10 points. As the admin issues the first two warnings, the ban limit is reached and the member is banned. The member's total points are 11 at this moment. But the admin still has to add another warning, worth 3 points. The moment he does that, with the old system, the total points the member has, would go to 14, but he would also receive another ban (remember, that he was banned the moment the admin issued the second warning).

To avoid this problem, a member who is banned, can of course still be warned and his points increase accordingly, but he does not receive another ban, while his first is still in effect . In the example above, the last warning is issued and the user points reach 14, but his ban count remains at one. When he is unbanned, and if we suppose that none of his warnings have expired, he still has 14 points and if he receives one more then he will then receive his second ban.

Other functionality added:

It's just natural to add the option of e-mailing those users who get banned, to let them know that they got banned. A PM in this case, is useless, as they cannot log in the forums to read it, so an e-mail has to be used. Some admins however might not want to alert bad members with such an e-mail, so I added an option, with which you can define if you want e-mails send to the members who get banned or not. That required a new template to be added.

Some one suggested that a member might get a ban, but then learn his lesson and behave. Why should that ban be in his account for ever? Wouldn't it be logical to remove it, after a certain period passes? I think it would, or at least it sounds reasonable, so what I did, was to add an option, where you can define the duration that a ban will stay in a user's account. After that period, the ban will automatically be removed from the user's account. In other words, if that period is 6 months (which is entered as days in the program, i.e. 180 days), and he was banned on January 3rd, this ban will be shown in his account until July 3rd. If you check the User Manager page, in your AdminCP, before July 3rd, you will see that ban. If you check it after the above date, the user will appear as if he had never been banned. This required a new table to be added to the system.

Although this feature sounds reasonable, there might be others who will not consider it useful, so again, an option was added to control it. Finally, since maybe some admins want to have old bans expire, but want to see if their users were banned at some time, the above mentionned table can be checked to see if a member has ever been banned.

To see the contents of this table, you should use the "View Bans Per User" selection in the AWS Menu, in your Admincp. The table structure is self- explanatory, each record you see there, represents a warning which caused a ban. The Ban Rank is the order of bans that this user has received, in other words, if this is 1, this was his first ban, if this is 2, this was his second ban etc. . The Ban Status column has the following meanings:

"IUA" (In User's Account) : The ban is still active, so it is included in the Bans number shown in your User Management page.
"NAUA" (Not Affecting User's Account) : The ban has matured (in other words the user has been good for the time you specified and the cron job removed this ban from the user Bans number, shown in the User Management page.
"Permanent" : This warning caused a permanent ban, so this cannot be removed or rendered inactive.

If you do not use the Bans Maturity feature, you should not see any Inactive bans here, the records should either be Active or Permanent.

If you want to be able to see the expired bans, even though your user account bans have been reduced after he was good for quite some time, all you have to do, is to turn on the historical records option. If the Historical Records is set to Yes, the ban records will remain in that new table, but will be marked as Inactive.

The other columns of this table, show the details of the warning that caused the ban (like type of warning etc).

So, by checking this menu option, you can immediately see the bans history of your members.

Some clarification is in order here:

In the View Warning Logs menu option, there are two alternatives, one is to Remove a warning, and the other is to do a Complete Removal of a warning. The difference between these two actions, is not very clear, so here is the clarification.

The Remove action, is sort of a manual maturing of a warning. It removes the warning points from the user's account, it marks the warning as inactive, but does not reduce the number of warnings a user has received in his career in the forum, and it does not remove any bans that the warning might have caused, from the user's account.

The Complete Removal, is like undoing the warning. The warning points will be removed from the user's account, his warnings will be reduced by one, any associated ban that the warning has caused will be removed from the user's account (his bans will be reduced by one). The only thing that the Complete Removal will not do, is to unban the user and the reason for this, is because the program cannot be sure if the user is still banned, and if he is, if the user was banned because of the warning you are removing or because of another warning. As a result, if the user is banned, you will have to unban him manually.

If this is still not clear, do use the hack's thread for your questions.

Another feature that was added, was the sorting of the Log File. When you select to see the Warning Logs now, you will see a set of buttons, at the top row of the list, saying "Asce" and "Desc". You may click on those buttons to sort the list, according to that column, in ascending or descending order. I think this will help the admins, in better evaluate their members actions.

Finally, another feature that I added, was the ability to select if a moderator can enter a comment, when he is warning a member, or if the Warning Type Description will be send instead of a comment. If you want to make your moderators life easier, then set this option to Yes. Keep in mind that this option affects only, post-related warnings. The Non-Post-Related ones still allow the warner to add a comment.

Oh yes, I also added some statistics, warnings per warning type and warnings per moderator (well, per warner shall we say?).

The code is pretty stable at the moment, but since it involved several major changes I'll have a test environment set up tomorrow, where I'll be able to test the installation scripts and the functionality before releasing it. I guess you will have it before New Year.

Rgds

Very nice :) Happy to see the stats are in there.
Maybe one more suggestion, coming from my users. It would be nice if we could set a level of when the warning indicator changes colour. Now it is always displayed in red in the post bit. But why not black or blue up to a warning level of ex. 7 and from then on in red?