Annoying Guests
 

Some of the guest at my forum are wearing out their welcome. They come to the site everyday and go through every message, but never join.

I'd really like to have a pop-up message or screen that informs them that "Don't you think it about time you joined".

I know their IP addresses are ascertained and I believe their date of last visit is also kept. Is someone interested in putting together hack that would limit guest to N visits????

thanks

- jeff

there is a recently relesased hack that limits their view to xx threads only which you can use...

Or you can disable their access to many forums and leave a them a few to force them registation.

Many internet users have dynamic ip's and it would not be practical to trace the ips for guests. One solution may be inserting/checking the cookie in their computers and warn them after a certain amount of time though.

And here is another temporary solution for you: (not tested writing on the fly!)

1- edit your showthread.php
find

-- cut --
if (!$getperms['canviewothers'] and ($thread['postuserid']!=$bbuserinfo['userid'] or $bbuserinfo['userid']==0)) {
show_nopermission();
}

-- cut --

AFTER THAT insert this:
-- cut ---
$random_num = mt_rand(1,3);
if ($random_num == 1 AND $bbuserinfo['userid']==0)
{
eval("dooutput(\"".gettemplate("guestwarning")."\" );");
exit;
}

-- cut --

Now login to your admin cp and create yourself a template named "guestwarning" that asks your guests to register.

So what does this hack do? Simple: Checks if thread viewer is a logged-in user and if not (so he is most likely a guest) guest randomly receives the please register warning and thread not dislplayed to him. Randomly once in his every 3 showthread attempts. You can change 3 to any number you like in the code above. You can also add he same code to forumdisplay.php to have the same results when guests are browsing the forums.

Hope this helps..

Regards,
Logician

Don't forget to use mt_srand() before using mt_rand().

i can find this anywhere, can someone tell me where to disable the guest account?

thanks

In your Admin Control Panel, go to Usergroups > Forum Permissions..... then "edit" the Unregistered/Not Logged In usergroup. (Go back here later and do the same for your "Awaiting Email Confirmation" usergroup.)

From here, you can deny them whatever permissions you want to turn off --> canview, cansearch, canemai,l canpostnew, canmove, canopenclose, candeletethread, canreplyown, canreplyothers, canviewothers, caneditpost, candeletepost, deletetimelimit, canpostattachment, canpostpoll, canvote, cangetattachment.

Good tip from an old post by Logician there. :)

Is it? Well I guess it's pretty standard stuff. It sure took me a while at first to figure out the vB settings. (And I still get lost in there.)

I couldn't remember exactly for this so I had to call up my ACP to get the right steps. (Guess now I'll have to find what Logician posted.)

Just did a search using "Logician forum permissions" and found this one, Erwin:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...um+permissions

Doesn't sound like that's the one you were thinking of. He's done others, but those were way more complicated.

If you need, I have a pop-up hack for guests.
Logician, why doen't you release it as mini-hack?
Many admins would lave to have that option ...

Guests that visit the site more than 5 times and doen't register could be added to the DB with the IP and they're host. It would be good for statistics also.

I have literally hundreds of hack codes given in hack requests forum. If I had released them all in Full Releases, I would be commiting my full time to vbulletin.org to support them (answer questions, solve bugs, help installers etc.). As you can guess this is not possible.

So my policy is, I release a hack in full releases ONLY IF:
a) I use it myself too.
b) I find it useful to many
c) I tested it for a long time
d) It is not a work done in 2 minutes.

The hacks I gave in hack requests forum do not comply with these so I prefer not to release them.

IMO vb.org users should have a habit of searching a hack in hack requests forum too instead of only browsing full releases section. This forum is a great library. And I guess veteran members already have this habit so I believe such hacks are not completely lost in the dust..