One of our forum guides asked...

For those of you who wish to try this, my hack is below:

1. Edit newthread.php to add the code in bold...

2. Go to your control panel and choose "Templates: Add"
Template name: error_forumnewbie
Template set: your standard set (Default)
Template: "Thanks for trying to post a new message.<P>Until you've taken part in a few discussions, you can only reply, not post a new topic. Try searching for what you were going to post about, using the "Search" facility, and see if you can add your comment to something there."

3. Upload newthread.php

This will create a standard UBB error if you try to create a new topic and you've posted less than ten messages. (Change the "10" in the code snippet above to change the number of messages needed to be able to post new threads).

Improvements...

Want to turn this off for a particular forum? Look at the forum's URL in your browser to to discover its "forumid" number. It's the one right at the end of the URL.
Then change the "if" statement above to...
if($bbuserinfo["posts"] < 10 && $forumid<>11 && $forumid<>23)
This will let newbies to post new topics to my forum number 11 or forum number 23.

Want, also, to insist that this user has been a member for longer than two days?
Then change the "if" statement above to...
if(($bbuserinfo["posts"] < 10 || ($bbuserinfo["joindate"]+86400*2) > (time())) && forumid<>11 && forumid<>23)
The "86400 * 2" is the bit that mentions the days... change the second number to "1" to make the probation period only one day, or "5" to make it 5 days.

Hope you find this useful: see it in action at http://forums.mediauk.com/

Can't this be done with user groups anyway?

That means manually changing peoples' user groups...

how about making the statement:
into something like a set statement (or values in an array) so you can avoid putting multiple &&. I'm still learning PHP :)

Awesome! Our vB is a professional board and we don't have much traffic. But, of course, people will post new threads all of the time without bothering to contribute to the community. Now I can force them to reply and contribute at least once without manually changing user groups.

Thanks!

Please update for 2.2.0 when possible. It might not even need to be updated......Thanks!

this hack is very practical, and something I've been wanting for about 2 years (going all the way back to UBB). Thanks man

I did exactly the same hack a long time ago (never released it though), but with one different aspect: It's a combination of the number of post and how long the newbie is registered, this stops them from posting useless posts to get the right to open new topics. EG: When a newbie has 50 posts AND is registered for more than 30 days he can open new threads. I also made a special error message for it. I must say this is a very usefull hack on my forum, newbies can still ask to open a topic by asking a mod.

I allready suggested a new vb-feature to accomplish this kind of things automaticly: Create an option to let members fall into a kind of usergroup when they reach a certain number of posts. This way you can create to usergroups: one with new-thread-posting abilities and one withouth. Specify that a member falls into the second one only when they reach a certain amount of posts and when they're registered for a certain amount of days... voila :)
This would make vb even more flexible. Endless possibilities

is your coding similar to James' or a totally different method?

This sounds like a better way to go about doing this. how about releasing your hack Mas. ;)