Miscellaneous Hacks - Ultimate Side Columns 2.2

Ultimate Side Columns
By Kerry-Anne www.peterska2.co.uk

Welcome to Ultimate Side Columns 2.2 !

USC 2.2 has now been released!!!!

Introduction

Following the success of the left and right side column modifications, and building on their weaknesses, the Ultimate Side Columns system was born.

Ultimate Side Columns (USC) is your one stop shop for all your side columns needs. It is an easy to configure, all in one solution.

USC 2.0 was born through the evolution and bug fixing of USC 1.0 for vBulletin 3.6 and is for vBulletin 3.7.0 RC1 and later only. It is not supported with earlier versions and may not work with them.

Features

USC 2.0 is fully customizable, can use conditions and variables (not available in USC 1.0), has greater flexibility in where it can be omitted from (after requests received), and contains new functionality of both independently collapsible columns and user defined custom links to be displayed on a per user basis in the column location of the administrators choosing.

A maximum of 20 blocks spread over the two columns are available at this time. However, if more are required then an expansion pack will be provided. The blocks can be reordered and moved between the templates with ease through simple template edits.

USC 2.2 Change Log:
Fixed bug with profile.php?do=editattachments
Added All Pages options

USC 2.1 Change Log:
Fixed blank page caused by missing template in the XML
Added compatibility with 3.7.0 Stable/Gold
Manual Template Edit instructions added to package
Enhanced the display page choices to allow exact selection of the pages where USC is to be displayed
Added usergroup permissions in addition to the global options for viewing the left column, viewing the right column, and using the custom contents block.

USC 2.1 has additional files. You need to upload the files first BEFORE importing the product

Upgrading from USC 2.0
Upload the contents of the upload folder, except the admincp directory, then import the XML.

Go to vBOptions > USC Options and set the display pages using the new options
Go to Usergroups > Usergroup Manager and set the permissions for each usergroup as desired. By default no permissions are given to any usergroups.

Upgrading from USC 1.0

USC 2.0 has been rewritten from the ground up and therefore all the blocks have been moved from the settings into the templates. Therefore, a unique upgrade script has been provided which must be run before importing the new product. Importing the new product first will result in the loss of your existing USC contents.

The upgrade script is located in the admincp directory after uploading the USC files and is ran by pointing your browser to admincp/usc_upgrade.php

Full upgrade instructions are included in the upgrade readme file in the zip.

Installation Instructions

Download the zip, unzip it and upload the contents of the upload folder to your forum directory. Import the product, all done.

Full instructions are included in the install readme in the zip.

Support

This modification has limited support only and is therefore flagged as unsupported. Support will be given when possible although it is always preferable when users of USC support each other. This was very successful with USC 1.0 and therefore is continued with USC 2.0

If you have any other combinations of pages that you would like to see available for the column options, please post them in the support thread ensuring that you add the title "USC Page Combination Request" to your post, or use this as the first line of your post ensuring that it is in bold text. This is very specific as due to the limited nature of support and time, the support thread will only be quickly skimmed through and therefore requests may be missed if it is not clear what they are.


The screenshots attached to this post and the next one show a range of pages with a range of column combinations. They are not labeled but they are pretty self explanatory.

Enjoy USC 2.0.

Kerry-Anne


PLEASE NOTE: This modification is unsupported. You may not receive a reply right after posting. Please try and help each other out.



Problems with your side columns not showing?
For your side columns to show, you need to update your usergroup permissions from the usergroup manager for each usergroup

Problems with errors in your vBOptions?
Point your browser to admincp/index.php?do=buildbitfields then try again

[CThiessen]

Hi,
pretty good an helpful Add-on.
Here are some custom changes that I made to collapse the sidebar total (At least with Firefox an IE not working with Safari). At my Site this only available for Users but it belong to you where you like to put in the Code.


My usc_sidecolumn_left:

<td valign="top">
<if condition="$vboptions[usc_collapse_left]">
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="padding-right: 20px">
<tbody id="collapseobj_usc_left" style="$vbcollapse[collapseobj_usc_left]">
<tr>
<td>
</if>
<table border="0" width="200" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="$stylevar[cellspacing]" class="tborder">
<if condition="$vboptions[usc_left_title]">
<tr>
<td class="thead">$vboptions[usc_left_title]</td>
</tr>
</if>
$block1
$block2
$block3
$block4
$block5
$block6
$block7
$block8
$block9
$block10
<if condition="$vboptions[usc_collapse_left]">
</table>

<br>
$tag_cloud

</tr>
</td>
</tbody>
</if>
</table>
<br>

<td width="0" valign="top"><img src="clear.gif" border="0" width="0" />
</td>

In my navbar I put in (Use some extra Graphics)

<a  href="#top" onclick="return toggle_collapse('usc_left')"><img class="inlineimg" id="collapseimg_usc_left" src="$stylevar[imgdir_button]/collapse_sidebar$vbcollapse[collapseimg_usc_left].gif" alt="" border="0" /></a>
<br />

Greetings
Christian

[Subah]

How can i add picture in the column ??

[Hornstar]

http://www.peterska2.co.uk/profile.p...ditattachments Can you see if you get an error on your page? Because I get the following error on my site when going to the similiar link:

Fatal error:  Cannot use assign-op operators with overloaded objects nor string offsets in /homepages/22/d198817824/htdocs/profile.php(3669) : eval()'d code on line 30

If I disable this, I can access that page fine, but if it is enabled, I get the above error.

[CThiessen]

Originally Posted by Subah

How can i add picture in the column ??

Hi,
For put in pictures use Standard HTML in the ?usc_block_X? Templates.

For what you see in the screenshot above your Post (Icon with Link)

<div class="smallfont">
<img  class="inlineimg" border="1" alt="" src="/designs/gl/statusicon/geld.gif"/>
<a href=/brasilien/wechselkurs/>Wechselkurs</a></div>

Greetings
Christian

[mattswanson]

Originally Posted by meolangthang

Hi,

Someone here can explain me why in Ultimate Side Columns Options, the Display pages for right and left columns options show "An error occurred while processing the bitfield files, the following information was returned:" ???

I am having this problem too.

An error occurred while processing the bitfield files, the following information was returned:

[CThiessen]

Hi,
I can´t remember exactly but I had something similar after the update to 3.7. The reason was vBCredits. If you have this Mod running you need to update.

Christian

[peterska2]

Originally Posted by meolangthang

Hi,

Someone here can explain me why in Ultimate Side Columns Options, the Display pages for right and left columns options show "An error occurred while processing the bitfield files, the following information was returned:" ???

Originally Posted by mattswanson

I am having this problem too.

An error occurred while processing the bitfield files, the following information was returned:

You need to make sure that you have uploaded the files BEFORE importing the product. I'm not sure how much clearer this needs to be.

[peterska2]

Originally Posted by hornstar1337

http://www.peterska2.co.uk/profile.p...ditattachments Can you see if you get an error on your page? Because I get the following error on my site when going to the similiar link:

Fatal error:  Cannot use assign-op operators with overloaded objects nor string offsets in /homepages/22/d198817824/htdocs/profile.php(3669) : eval()'d code on line 30

If I disable this, I can access that page fine, but if it is enabled, I get the above error.

I have recreated this on localhost. Looking into it now.

[edit] I've found the problem. It is something to do with the auto edits. I'm still looking into it but a fix is that if the autoedits are disabled and the manual edits used that it will resolve the problem.

[edit 2] I've put a fix in which disables the display of the columns in all profile.php pages. I haven't found the reason for this yet or why it only affects that one particular page.

[mattswanson]

Originally Posted by Kerry-Anne

You need to make sure that you have uploaded the files BEFORE importing the product. I'm not sure how much clearer this needs to be.

Well now that would be a little more difficult as the ZIP file I downloaded didn't include any other files that needed to get moved over. I'll download it again and see what I come up with.

[mattswanson]

Well I see the problem, the Zip file seems to keep generating little error messages about missing files. When I auto extracted the zip file it just pulled out what it could and in this case missed the entire uploads folder. Was this zip compiled on a Mac by any chance?