vBStatus - Facebook Style Status Updates (v5)
 

vBStatus allows your users to update their status to tell other members what they are doing/thinking at any given time. A user's status is displayed under their names in their postbit, in their User Profile, and anywhere else you choose!

User's can edit their status quickly and easily via AJAX.

Features and Configuration options include:

• Admin Option: Turn modification on/off
• Admin Option: Ban usergroups from updating their status.
• Admin Option: Set a max character count for status messages.
• Admin Option: Set the number of characters of a status message displayed per line. (Word wrapping will occur for status messages longer than this defined value.)
• Admin Option: Define a standard status prefix to be appended to the start of all status messages after the username. (i.e. Attilitus is doing something.)
• Admin Option: Define a default status for users with a blank status.
• Admin Option: Define the character set used for encoding status messages. (The default value of this option should work for most character sets.)

• Feature: Status messages may be updated in-line.
• Feature: All languages and character sets are supported. (Most, if not all, should work with the default encoding option. Others may require some configuration in the admin options.)
• Feature: Users may press the Enter key to confirm their status update.
• Temporarily Deactivated in v5: Admin Option: Allow defined usergroups to modify other user's status updates. (For moderation purposes)

There are 4 template edits for this hack. The installation readme file will guide you through the entire process.

Version 5.1

• Support for non-english characters has been added.
• A small modification was made to the installation script to make it more robust.

Upgrade Instructions: Reupload all files (allow overwrite), and reimport the product (allow overwrite). No additional template edits are required to for the upgrade.


Version 5.2

• Users may press the Enter key to submit their status.

Upgrade Instructions: Reupload all files (allow overwrite). No additional template edits are required for this upgrade. You may reimport the included product, if you desire, to update the version number to 5.2

Version 5.2.1

• Extra white space will no longer appear in the status update input field.

Version 5.3

• Important security update to fix a cross site scripting exploit.

Upgrade Instructions: Reupload all files in the upload folder to your forum root, and allow overwrite. It is not necessary to re-import the product xml file.


Note: The files available in this thread will always be for the most recent version of the modification.

If you previously used vBStatus in vB 3.x your member's old status messages will be preserved.

Please do not forget to click INSTALL

First Post Reserved.

Note: Please let me know immediately if you encounter any problems, so that I can iron out any bugs within the first 24 hours of release.

Brilliant. Rated 5 star and marked installed. Been waiting for this. Thanks very much.

Would be cool to see a forum block widget that displayed the most recent status updates :)

I guess yesterday there was published a very similar hack?

This is an upgraded version of a 3.7 modification that I published about two years ago.

Just one small thing Attilitus.

When you enter the status update and save, there is no space after the username and where the status update begins. This comes only after a refresh?

So immediately after saving the status update, it looks like this with no space;

http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/5577/46428278.jpg

Only after a refresh, does the space appear;

http://img541.imageshack.us/img541/2629/45065882.jpg

No biggie but I, and members did notice it;

http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/6336/60463223.jpg

Nice mod installed and working great!!!!

Bacon Butty,

I cannot reproduce your problem, the spacing works fine for me with the template code I provided in the installation instructions. You should be able to fix template bugs like this by manually editing the template code inside the <!--BEGIN VBSTATUS--> <!--END VBSTATUS--> blocks inside the postbit and memberinfo templates.

Also what browser are you using (including the version number)?

~Tim

nice hack

tried to install but would not let me edit

Did you make all of the template edits detailed in the installation file? PM me your forum's URL and the username/password of a test account so that I can debug with Firebug. (If you want me to look for a quick fix.)

~Tim

Nice mod installed and working great!!!!

Ah. Suspected it was an error my end and it looks the case if you're not seeing the error. I'll have an edit later and see what I can do.

Strange one though, given that it's resolved on refresh/page load. I could PM you a test account login if you'd like to see out of curiosity.

The browser was Firefox 3.6.3.

Fantastic mod though. I'm just hoping some clever sod can work out how to pull all the status updates and display them on the forum home like on here and here

Bacon Butty,

There are some carefully placed whitespace characters in the template code blocks I provided. If any of them got deleted during your edits, things might be visually unpleasing. Its also possible this is an error on my part, or indicative of a "not-robust" component of my work. If that ends up being the case, then I'll issue a fix. (but I will wait until I see if someone else encounters the same problem.)

As for obtaining aggregate status update information: currently the status updates are not saved, nor are they associated with a timestamp. So it will not be easy for third party developers to create addons. I may consider adding these features in the future, or merely adding a status history table to make vBStatus more addon developer friendly.

~Tim

thanks for the help, i uploaded it to the wrong area

Great mod

What is the difference with this hack ?

Allan,

That hack implements similar functionality. Aside from that, they are not related. You can judge the differences for yourself, I have not installed the other modification.

I prefer installing this one instead of the other one :)

ok, thank you ;)

thanx this looks promising
but is it possible to edit this through the homepage instead of the postbit ?
thanx for the hard work

The other one doesn't require any template edits - it's just an upload and install. Any possibility of implementing a similar experience here?

Hey! Installed and tested and working very well on my forum! Thanks for this one, I really like it.

Just wondering how to make the text of the 'status update' to be bold?

SliceofLife,

You can make the status update bold by making a simple modification to the template.

Find <!--BEGIN vBStatus--> in your postbit/postbit_legacy/memberinfo templates and find the first <div> tag in the block. Replace that <div> tag with <div style="font-weight:bold">.

You should be able to figure out how to make other simple edits like this by looking at the template code.

War.Frog,

I am not planning on making these template edits automatic. They are simple, and would make the installation process less transparent.

~Tim

Thanks so much for this Attilitus.

Working very well on my forum, no problems at all. Cheers. Very happy, great job - well done! :D

I too, had a look at the other status update mod and I preferred this one's functionality over the other one, and the members like the ease of use.

would be nice if recent status updates could be listed on the sidebar

BlackHat,

As mentioned before, the status messages are never permanently saved. Once you update your status, your old status is gone forever. If I ever decide to implement some kind of aggregate feed, like the one you described, then I will store a history of past status updates in a table.

Are the phrases still hardcoded? It would be nice to move them to language part of admin panel, to be able to translate them :) Thnx.

ivanp,

Phrasing seems like a good idea, but I don't think it is all that important. Assuming that the forum administrator understands English, translating the sparse phrases in the templates should not be difficult. I believe the only words visible to the user are "Edit" and "Save," and the rest of the words (like the default status and status prefix) are already customizable in the admincp.

We just installed this but it doesn't seem to be working. Where do we go to edit our status?

It is enabled and installed.

Any help?

STORMS,

Did you read the instructions text file included with the modification? There are 4 template edits that you need to make.

~Tim

Awesome .................

Great mod and working fine

I see the other post for the bold but how would i place the bold and a different colour ?

Cheers

betts02,

To make the status related text bold I edited the style attribute of a div tag. You can learn more about the style attribute of document elements at w3schools.com. Here is a link to the specific page that will help you: http://w3schools.com/html/html_styles.asp

By perusing w3schools.com you should be able to learn how to make any basic template change that you want, so it is worthwhile to spend a few hours going through their HTML section chapter by chapter: http://w3schools.com/html/default.asp

~Tim

There is an option, for administartors or mods (basically any entered usergroups) been able to edit status of any user, It doesn't seem to work, also if I have a look into your code to be placed into a template I see only condition for usernames to be equal, nothing about usergroups. Did I missed something??

There is missing the condition "is admin??"
Regards
lucybb

lucybb,

You missed the part of the modification thread in which I stated that this option is temporarily unavailable in v5.

~Tim

I'm sorry my apologies, thanks for your reply, I will be waiting for your updates.

Nice Mod. Installed and working fine!

Great mod, except that I am unable to change the STATUS via the Postbit.

Apparently, this is a Javascript error.

Am on 4.0.0, any idea on how to resolve this?

fire999,

Make sure that you have followed the instructions in the included text file and made all of the required template modifications. If that does not work, give me your URL and I will diagnose the problem.

~Tim

i am having the same problem... it was working for a bit then stopped...

http://www.phantank.com :confused: