How to display unique text at the top of a specific thread (not an announcement)
 

Here is a simple way to create a UNIQUE "news" or "topic sentence" display for any thread.

This is something like a "sticky post" RATHER THAN an "announcement".

Basically, it is just a matter of publicly displaying the "Moderator Notes" found in the "Edit Thread" tool. You or your designated moderators can change this at any time for the thread in question. You will, of course, sacrifice the ability to privately display these "notes" to moderators only but you gain a "news" or "topic sentence" capability. Your choice...

Here's how:

GO TO: CPadmin --> Styles&Templates --> Style Manager --> select "Edit templates" from the desired style (or "Default" style) --> scroll down to "Showthread templates" and click on the << >> link. Then select "Customize" for the SHOWTHREAD template (or "Edit" if you have already tinkered with this.)

Find this: Just BELOW it add this bit of code:

That's it! Of course, you can play with the location, fonts, formatting, etc. The key element is the $thread[notes] variable. (I have mine centered and use <smallfont>)

SOME QUESTIONS:

1. Is there a way to make displaying the $thread[notes] field recognize vBcodes by changing something in a template rather than require a hack toa .PHP script)?

2. Is there a simple (non-hack) way to expand the number of allowable characters in the $thread[notes]to more than 250? (Can one change the allowable characters for the "notes" field in the "thread" table using phpmyadmin without messing things up? How?)

Thanks!

Maybe you ought to have a separate release and request threads? And have you got a screen shot? Thx :)

Does anyone have any clues on how I could make $thread[notes] recognize vBBcodes?

It is either being filtered or is somehow "out of the loop" for recognizing them for some reason. (It also does not recognize HTML.)

I don't know what you mean. Please explain a bit more. Thanks

Any ideas on how to make the $thread[notes] field accept vBBcode and/or HTML, anyone?

Thanks

If the $thread[notes] field could be made to accept vBBcodes, you could use this to display a banner which is specifically related to a particular thread.

Another thing you could do with this is provide an index of informational links directly related to the thread content. For example, if you have a thread on, say, The Matrix movie, you could display links to corresponding webpages on IMDB.com, review sites, Amazon.com, Google searches, etc. Obviously, you could also do that in a post, but having this information always appear at the top of the thread would give it much more proiminence.

Also, note that If you have a long thread over several pages, this could be displayed at the top of EACH page of the thread.

So, how could the $thread[notes] field be made to accept vBBcodes?