Miscellaneous Hacks - Live Topic

. . . . . . . . Brought to you by scriptasy.com

. . . http://www.Scriptasy.com

Live Demo:

Live Topic 1.07b Demo (you must be logged in, and the topic must be "live")

Videos: 1.00b 1.06b

watch the damn videos... ^_^

Description:

This product is different from anything you have seen before, it raises the bar for forums. It will make your forums much more interactive, and also reduce server load.

Technical Details:

If a thread has been posted in X seconds then its now Live, if other users are viewing the Live topic and are on the last page they will experience a clean ajax experience while talking to other members. Once the thread is older than X seconds its no longer Live and it will now act like a normal thread. Also if a user edits one of their posts that's inside of the thread, it will be updated too so there is no longer a reason to ever have to refresh.

There is also logic for the viewer, the viewer of the thread has to be in an active state to see responses. An active user state is determined upon the users actions, if no actions were made in X seconds then the user is marked as inactive.

Also you may wonder why this could save your server bandwidth and CPU. If a user is refreshing to talk to another members the queries on a normal thread load are way more intense than the ajax call that this modification makes. So if you have 5 people talking to each other none of them have to refresh the page, all they are doing is simple page requests and one intense request when there has actual change.

You can test Live Topic with two users, you will see how amaizing this is... And probably spontaneously combust.

Found a bug? Want to request a feature?

Live Topic - Project Manager

Installation:

This is take less than 3 minutes to install, takes longer to notice its amazing feature. (you need multiple people to be active in the same topic)

Upgrade:

[1.01b to 1.XXb] Uninstall the product, then reinstall it. Overwrite all old files with new files and you should be fine.

[1.02b to 1.03b] Overwrite files, upgrade product (dont install product)

[1.03b to 1.04b] Uninstall the product, then reinstall it. Overwrite all old files with new files and you should be fine.

[1.04b to 1.05b, 1.05b to 1.06b,1.06b to 1.07b] Upgrade the product. Overwrite all old files with new files and you should be fine.

Works With (FF2, FF3, IE6, IE7, IE8, SF2, SF3, CHROME):

vBulletin [3.8.X]

get the vBulletin [3.7.X] version here

INCOMPATIBLE HACKS:

• USC
• PassiveVid (1.x)
• gXboxLive
• Topic (incl. Blog) of the Week
• Marquee Text

Versions:

1.01b
1.02b

fixes

safari 2 support
safari 3 support
google chrome support
added live topic icon on new posts page
fixed security issue, strongly suggest upgrading!

changes

added live edit (to avoid a performance hit i had to add two rows to two tables in the database)
added external style sheet

1.03b

fixes

fix double post
phrase notification
fixed an edit bug for people with table prefixes

changes

ability to change interval in ACP

1.04b

fixes

javascript error for guests
fixed live topic activation (first poster to raise a dead topic)

changes

auto quick reply focus after post

1.05b

fixes

css flaw
js error for unsupported browsers (random)
fixed chrome issue

changes

edit notification - thanks to nso
rebuilding some of the original logic to hopefully prevent product conflicts

1.06b

fixes

fixed a little javascript issue that had to do with displaying posts
uses GPC cleaner now

changes

limit the number of ajax posts on the live topic (example 40) and fade them away.
changed the way the hooks are used
tightened up everything a bit

1.07b

fixes

fixed a bug where the live topic notification always making an ajax call

changes

support user ignore list
changed the way the javascript logic worked (hopefully there are less compatibly issues) added support for IE6 and IE8

1.10

hmm

{Mark As Installed}

{Don't forget to vote for Modification of the Month}

[TonyMF]

Originally Posted by Lynne

- one of my users who's a computer guy, says "Im looking at my resource meter - and that melting posting is making IE run at 60% CPU load on the workstation.

It peaks the meter as it fades in.. FYI" So, I'm not sure if there is a way to either turn that off
or do something so it doesn't eat up the resources.

Is that with IE7 or IE8?

[Lynne]

Originally Posted by TonyMF

Is that with IE7 or IE8?

IE7

[Andyrew]

I'm getting loads of errors listed in my error log in cpanel.

File does not exist: /xxx/xxx/xxx/forums/clientscript/vbulletin_css/images,
referer: /forums/clientscript/vbulletin_css/livetopic.css

File does not exist: /xxx/xxx/xxx/forums/clientscript/vbulletin_css/images,
referer: xxx/forums/showthread.php?t=75600

[Coders Shack]

Originally Posted by Andyrew

I'm getting loads of errors listed in my error log in cpanel.

File does not exist: /xxx/xxx/xxx/forums/clientscript/vbulletin_css/images,
referer: /forums/clientscript/vbulletin_css/livetopic.css

File does not exist: /xxx/xxx/xxx/forums/clientscript/vbulletin_css/images,
referer: xxx/forums/showthread.php?t=75600

haha, sorry about that. (your forum must be in a sub directory)

go into the 'forums/vbulletin_css/livetopic.css' file and update the image paths so they are prefixed with '../../' that should fix those issues.

[PamelaE]

This is really cool. We run some celebrity live chat interviews but are now thinking of trialing one on the forum using Live topic.

[andybond]

Loving this mod. Thanks very much !

[wipedout]

how about some more info on the config variables? especialy Thread Idle Time, i run a RP forum and a feature that if someone using quick post for a new I'd want ajax update even if its been a while since the last post in said thread, aslong as the member has been viewing the thread for like less than 15 minutes.

[Andyrew]

Originally Posted by Coders Shack

haha, sorry about that. (your forum must be in a sub directory)

go into the 'forums/vbulletin_css/livetopic.css' file and update the image paths so they are prefixed with '../../' that should fix those issues.

Thanks, that stopped the errors. :up:

[nul7]

Ok... I've been doing everything I can think of to see what the problem may be with this and I may have found something. I didn't want to keep messing with the live board, so I setup a web server in my house and made an exact copy (almost) of the board to run my tests. I was able to get this to work without any modification to template structure or addons. Now, I find it could be 2 things:

Server configuration

OR

Would there be a possible issue if the forum is run off a subdomain? The server on my home server is an exact copy of the live server (as far as software goes... not sure how the host set everything up) except I didn't set up the subdomain, "forum.crookedh.com". I changed the hard coded links and settings that applied the subdomain to "www.crookedh.com/forum" and it works.

If there is indeed an issue with the subdomain, would it be possible to fix this mod via an edit? Since any links anyone has posted back to us would include the subdomain, I'd like to keep the current structure. I guess everything would still work as far as the rest of the forum is concerned, but if they visited us via an outside link, Live Topic would not work. Just want to keep everything consistent.

EDIT: And just to clarify, I saw the same 404 errors and had already done the edit you suggested above to Andyrew.

EDIT2: Now that I reread this I see that it really doesn't make much sense. I blame the beer. lol I hope you can figure out what I'm tring to say.

[Coders Shack]

this is why its still in beta, every configuration has not been tested. I don't see how a subdomain could make a difference. I'm guessing its your forum configuration. (it could be your server config, but i doubt it. As for alcohol how do you think i came up with this concept... )