Lack of Support?
 

I have been waiting for a helpful response from Abe1 in regards to the Thank You Mod for almost a week now. I even donated via paypal to help expidite his response. I have emailed him, PMed him and not a single word from him.

Realistically there needs to be some sort of system in place like they have at RentaCoder where members can place money in escrow until the coder writer has gotten back with them and answered their question. To arbitrarily allow coders to take money from the membership and not provide even the most basic support for their codes seems a little wrong.

Sorry for the rant. I just have thousands of members up jumping on me over the loss of their "thank You" system that crashed.:(

what was the problem with the hack?..

They do not allow you to charge for a mod posted here. You DONATED for something you didn't have to, and your thinking rather Illogically. A donation system is nowhere near paying for support even if that was YOUR intention when you donated.

Note also: We have a section for Paid Requests. It may have been more appropriate for you to have used this instead of sending a Donation.

"Rentacoder" is exactly what it says on the tin, you pay money for someone to do something for you. We are a free modification site and as RLShare stated the money you gave was a Donation not a Payment.

I believe you donated the money, I don't remember you stating that money was requested from you. ;)

just a note, and I don't know abe
but just because you donate some money, doesn't make his/her time become available any quicker ;)

Donating money is a gift, a thank you - it does not guarantee any additional support. (We don't require modifications to be supported either.)

If you are having problems, we suggest you post them in the modification thread. That way, if the coder is unavailable, there is always a chance that someone else may be able to help.

There's really nothing the staff can do if a coder becomes unavailable or suddenly stops supporting his modifications.

True, True the donation is great, but time is another thing, some people disappear for months to years @ a time on personal projects (real life other than code).

Shoot a e-mail now and then and/or drop a few posts in related threads, there may be others with answers. Move on and disable that part of the site until it can be fixed. Do not let a glitch stop progress. :D

Never give up never surrender !

And doing all the things you can do to contact a person isn't any guarantee that this person is available to contact you back. As was suggested, he might lack free time to respond, he might be ill, he might be on extended leave, he might have a real job demanding more of his time, he might be under pressure from his wife to spend more time away from the computer. You just never know, and sending money just isn't going to adjust those circumstances, especially that's not the intention of the system.

Nice idea though. If you sent me a donation to get support with one of my mods, I'd probably help you quicker ;) The reality of things is that a lot of us have day jobs, or studies which take up all of our time. It was great being a low-key student with hardly any worries and plenty of time to code random things, but alas once real life takes over and the responsibilities that come with it begin to overwhelm us, giving support to people who rarely take their hand out their pocket to say thanks becomes less appealing. I've released 10s of 1000s of lines of code here, and if you check back to my earlier days here I've probably helped 100s of people with their problems not-related to my mods too. And you know what? I've only ever got one donation :)

So alas, I am sure the reason that Abe1 isn't responding to you is either for the same reasons I don't check my mod threads anymore, or that (s)he simply is too busy to get back to you :)

If I remember correctly Abe travels on business some weeks so he is not able to give an immediate response at all times.

If you post a problem in the forum he will reply when able to..........

and from what i know, Abe1 codes can be understood by most of the hackers here... the ThanksPost hack is a well known engine, and guys here can help... but if you keep your request via PM or eMail, do not think we can support you if you get no answers.

Once again guys/gals I am sorry to rant on this. You are correct it was a donation. I have just been spending way too much time trying to figure this thing out, my mind is strained to the breaking point. I lost the original 65,000+ records in from the original hack when I upgraded and then replaced all the data by hand into the post_thanks table. I have not been able to figure out a way to reconnect that data to the user table.

It's like the answer is staring me in the face but I just can't wrap my brain around it. Having screwed things up during the upgrade I am terrified to experiement with the database unless I know for sure what I am doing. Thus frustration has set in and the cherry on top is thousands of members screaming.

You guys are 100% correct. Once again sorry for the rant. Thank you for what you do here, this site is like the custom car shop for vB and it is much apprechiated.

btw a notice that show up everywhere even on the original hack thread... BACKUP BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING... you did not, so that's why you may be on panic... when you first installed vBulletin it was documented to you to backup your files and database each time you modify it... it's not a suggestion, but a warning .

vbulletin allows you to have a second board to test mods on if you used that they you would have known that their was going to be an issue

And how do you think I was able to restore the lost data to the one table? From memory? I have been admining vB since before it was vB. I kind of sort of know what I am doing. I am just a little rusty when it comes to my sql line codes since I have been out of the loop for over a year in regards to it.

I not only had the backup I made right before I upgraded to the latest vB I have the 8 backups, 6 nightly, 1 weekly and 1 monthly that are on our offsite tape backup system. Once I had upgraded to the latest vB and upgraded all the mods and turned everything back on I did not want to completely blow a days work by returning to the old forum software. There are limits on what my advertisers will allow me to do.:p

--------------- Added [DATE]1216575799[/DATE] at [TIME]1216575799[/TIME] ---------------

Thanks. I knew they did, but until now have never had an issue with upgrading or mods.

There's nothing anyone can do as others' have said. If the modfication author doesn't want to support it, then that decision should be respected. Usually, however, members' help each other out.

There are some poorly written modifications here, some I wouldn't even let touch my database. However we cannot moan as they are free. You are not forced to pay a single penny, unless you want to say "thanks" by sending a donation.

-- Jason

Hmmmm - this is interesting - so a little off-topic - care to start a thread with the list? LOL
It could be like a modification advice column....

Jacquii.

The Thank You mod is not one of them. MY members enjoy it. I do know of one way to improve it. That would be for every time you push the button is clicks on a random Google Adsense ad that brings up a page under the one the member is viewing. LOL

Guys after a very long Sunday reverse engineering the thank you data into MS Access, an animal that I whipped and tamed long ago I was able to upload each section of the data to separate temporary tables and update the live tables that needed it. It was the long way around but it got me where I needed to go.

Thank you for you time, effort and reading through my rant which was placed out of frustration and stupidity not malice towards Abe1 or this site.

If such a thread existed, I don't think the .org mods would care much for the ensuing firestorm that would be created.

LOL - I know :P
I was mainly being facetious which is a specialty of mine.
I would hope NOT to see such a thread - but it IS an interesting notion though.
I do say 3 cheers for no more drama than absolutely necessary Muah!

Jacquii.

That's a shame Jacquii... I was hell bent on endorsing that potential thread which doesn't seem so potential anymore. The list, we have to have the list. :up:

Unfortunately, I will not start a thread. Like I said tho', there are a lot of modifications here that wouldn't go anywhere near my database. ;)

HAHAHAHA! Can you imagine the drama that would ensue if such a thread existed? LOL --- Of course - I would merely sit back and enjoy the show after posting only 1 comment in the thread LOL - Don't want to get another infraction for inciting riot now do I? LOL teheheheheheeee......

LOL - possibly can be an interesting thread you start on your own site eh :P

OK - All kidding aside - I do think it's a wonderful thing that vBulletin.org is all about mostly - Sharing and helping each Member to improve their online Communities from the banal blue that is out-of-box vBulletin https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/

Jacquii.