great hack :) cheers buddy works a charm, although i had 2 use the instructions off the first page n had 2 ad another ) to the code like in that other post

erm, do I understand you right? you have a "general chat" subforum and posts in there do not count to the users total number of posts?

Is that a new feature I don't know about (still using beta3 - maybe it has been implemented later)? or is it a hack of yours?

You can set a forum wherein the user's posts will not count to their total posts. It is in the Control Panel.

why do i keep getting this. if somebody is not registered and is trying to view the forum it keeps saying
and it is set to 0 views min.

I'm experiencing the same with the unregistered Needing "0" Posts to view threads.

You need to put $foruminfo[minposts] and/or $foruminfo[minviewposts] in your error templates.

yea but the problem is, no matter what value i put down it still doesn't let unregistered users view anything

Alter the line that checks for posting permissions in newthread.php to something like this

if ($foruminfo[minposts] && ($foruminfo[minposts]>$bbuserinfo[posts]) and !(ismoderator($foruminfo[forumid],"",$bbuserinfo[userid]))) {
eval("standarderror(\"".gettemplate("error_forumno post")."\");");
exit;
}

Don't forget to change the same thing in forumdisplay.php also! This worked, Thanks for your reply.

I had posted before that this had to be changed and I thought I updated the files appropriately. I will double check them in the morning and if necessary re-upload.