thanks man best hack :)

Does this have to be installed on the same domain as your forum? I'm looking at having it on a 2nd domain.

eg forums is www.myforum.com and this is www.yourforum.com can this be done or can it only be installed on sub domains?

Thank you

looks like a good mod but does it have to link to zoints? I mean when you have your own forum etc you want to keep users on it and not wondering off in all directions (as little foreign site interference as possible).

If you know your way around PHP you can "hack" out links leading out of your site in the Zoints section. I've also disabled any blocks that link out and changed the search button to go to memberlist.php?do=search instead of the Zoints search. (After the last upgrade I need to re-hack this stuff, so it's not fixed up on my site right now...)

So yeah, it can be done -- to an extent.

Hi C.Birch,

I've been waiting back to hear on a response for whether or not this can be done, but I am relatively sure that Zoints needs to be installed on the same domain as it calls for various vB settings and such to configure and sync the two up. If I hear otherwise, I will let you know as soon as possible.

Zoints is set up to be installed in your forum root at the /z/ directory.

Hey AndyPandy,

It does have to link to Zoints, regardless of what the below user mentions. Zoints is not a hack for everyone, especially those with concerns like those. I would suggest analyzing some Zoints forums, especially if you see any direct competitors on Zoints, and possibly even asking a few users with Zoints how it has effected their traffic. From my experience, and what I have seen from other forums with Zoints, it's not an add-on that will give you significant gains or losses with member activity. If you're concerned about this and would like to reduce the chance for it, you could set up an initial usergroup that members go into that would not give them the ability to access profiles until they hit the promotion you defined in Admin CP. Most establish forum goers aren't going to leave that easily for greener pastures unless they want to, and if they wanted to that badly there is always search engines and directories. (The last few sentiments aren't really of Zoints, but my personal opinion and experience so take them for what they're worth.) I can understand your concerns though.

Again, Zoints isn't for everyone. If the autonomous licenses open up again, I ensure you that the news is posted here as that would accomplish what you seek to do Andy.

Hi ChurchMedia,

Links that go out to Zoints.com are mandatory to stay unless you are using an autonomous license (which currently aren't for sale, and take care of issues such as the search if you have one.) We've released a hack to the community that while not yet perfect, we feel is unique, a positive add on to many sites, and all we ask is that the forum community respects a few things such as not removing links going out to Zoints, which is not permitted. We've tried to leave Zoints to be a tool that forum owners can modify and tweak, giving their own spin to it via their design and coding talents; all within a few restrictions. To quote a post made by one of our coders at network.zoints.com:

Obviously you might of not had been aware of this, so please don't interpret my post as harsh. Hopefully this is informative to you.

- Reid

No, I wasn't aware of any rules or conditions concerning the Zoints hack. I am surprised, however, to actually get a response from anyone at Zoints. I would really like to see the hack progress in development -- fixing bugs, adding features (like RSS for members blogs, etc.) and better integration with vBulletin (VB Ajax conflicts with Zoints Ajax). I've been monitoring this thread for some time and this is the first response I've seen in quite a long while (maybe I got your attention ;)).

So, does this mean that the Zoints hack will continue to develop? What is on the horizon and what kind of ETA do you have?

And I'll respect the conditions of using the hack. ChurchMedia.net strives to be above reproach in everything we do.

Thanks!

Check the thread for the past few weeks. I have been addressing concerns here, via PM, and on network.zoints.com (along with others.) With the transfer of ownership, things were lackluster to say the least regarding our support but we've been making serious strides with answering tickets, responding to posts and so on in a very timely fashion as of late (for nearly all of April essentially).

As for the future of Zoints, I really can't comment on that as we have finally begun to shore up our support once again and address other areas of concern for Zoints. Frankly, a lot of the development is still in the idea stage. We do have every intention however to further the development of Zoints through improvement of the modification and getting it to be as stable of a release as possible. Since I am not a coder or one resourcing the project, a timeline would be unfair to provide as that is really out of my area. However, my area does involve idea generation to further Zoints towards being more featured rich, easy to use and improving items of integration. I am a big dreamer by nature, so I am just excited as the rest of you regarding future Zoints development. At the very least, I guarantee continued support at a much higher level than what some sadly experienced a couple of months ago. We are most certainly progressing though in nearly every front, even if it's most of it is just setting the initial concepts down behind the scenes.

And thank you for respecting those restrictions ChurchMedia. A few areas of Zoints Local are a bit murky (such as that) so I don't blame you or others for being confused to that.

- Reid

Sounds good. I'll be looking forward to seeing what develops. The hack is awesome as-is, so thanks. My members love it. :)

We have it running fine. Just one odd detail I need to mention;

I blocked a user from my profile on a recent occasion and it gave me a "no such user" message. Blocked them as normal anyway though so I assume it's a phrase issue or something.

I got it installed tonight and have a few questions

- I changed the My Vehicle block to another name but it still shows as my vehicle? What am I missing in the admin area?

- I am not sure how to change the default color so my users cannot alter it, any ideas, might of missed it somewhere

- is there anyway to stop linking out to the Zoints page in the "My Interestes" page. I dont think I will keep the mod if there are many links leading to outside my forums. I feel it defeats the purpose of having the system if memebrs are forced to go outside when they click a link

thanks