Major Additions - Living Avatars

Introducing Living Avatars!

Today is a great day and I have something really cool that some of you are going to love! It's called Living Avatars, a new vBulletin addon that I've been working on for almost one year.

This program will allow your users to customize their avatars by using the mouse to drag and move items around (items such as clothing pieces, etc). In order to collect items, you need to spend points, the more you post on a forum the more points you get! Thus, Grow your Forum with Living Avatars!

Tour

Click here for the tour movie.



Here is how it works in detail:

1) Download and install Living Avatars to vBulletin (install instructions below).
2) Once installed, go to the Living Avatars admin panel and click 'forum integration'.
3) The user profiles of your members will now have an extra link:



4) Now, the more a user posts on your forum, the more points he or she will earn. If a user has posted 500 times, and then you install Living Avatars, then that user will start with 500 points.

5) Once users have a few points, they can then start spending their points to collect items:



6) Now that they have collected a few items, they can create their ultra cool avatar! Check it out:



I highlighted the canvas in red, in that box (the canvas) you can use your mouse to drag items around. It seriously works beautifully.

7) Now, press the 'Save Avatar' button and your avatar on vBulletin will be updated:



And that's it! Cool yeah?!

Ok, so on with the install instructions:

Installation Instructions
Installation is very simple, just follow these steps and you shouldn't have any problems (if so, then I'm sorry and I'll try and help you out asap!).

1) Download & Extract living_avatars.zip
2) FTP the living_avatars folder to your forum
Example: http://www.yoursite.com/forums/living_avatars/
3) Run Setup: forum/living_avatars/setup/
4) CHMOD the Living Avatars 'avatars' folder to 777 (this folder: /living_avatars/avatars/)
5) Delete the setup folder (/living_avatars/setup/)

Now that Living Avatars is installed, go to the admin panel of Living Avatars and click the 'Forum Integration' link, from there you can press one link which will update the vBulletin modifyavatar template to insert the Living Avatars link.

Upgrade Instructions

1) Download & Extract living_avatars.zip
2) FTP the living_avatars folder to your forum (overwriting previous Living Avatar files)
Example: http://www.yoursite.com/forums/living_avatars/
3) Run Setup: living_avatars/setup/
4) Delete the setup folder (/living_avatars/setup/)

Uninstall Instructions
1) If you enabled the forum integration link from the LA Admin Panel, then login to the LA Admin Panel and disable it.

2) Drop these tables:
la_admins
la_avatars
la_groups
la_items
la_items_purchased
la_packs
la_points_spent
la_positions
la_settings

3) Delete the living_avatars/ folder.

Why should I use Living Avatars?
"Grow your forum with Living Avatars" - Simply that! Not only is Living Avatars a lot of fun to use but it's also addicting. Users will want to post on your site in order to gain enough 'points' to purchase a certain item (ex: Sword of Doom!). Imagine having certain items that are rare & expensive, such as "Dracula's Cape" which can only be purchased 3 times and costs 50 points (aka posts)...get it?

Where can I download more Avatar Packs?
You can download free user created avatar packs here:
Avatar Packs

How can I create Avatar Packs?
Please read this tutorial if you are interested in creating avatar packs:
http://www.livingavatars.com/help/p2_articleid/2

LA 120 Released
+ New Frontend & Backend
+ New theme editor

LA 115 Released
+ Better vBulletin integration

LA 114 Released
+ Online/Offline feature now works correctly.
+ LA admins can be deleted from the admin panel.
+ Fixed a positioning bug in the canvas.
+ Fixed IPB and SMF userid/avatarid conflict.
+ Fixed PHPBB3 download.php file change.

LA 113 Released
+ SMF Support (1.1 -> 1.3)
+ Better Forum Link Integration.
+ Less Warning Messages.
+ 'Bring to Top' is now used.

LA 112 Released
+ Added IPB 2.3 Integration.

LA 111 Released
+ Added phpBB3 Integration.
+ Fixed Crop Tool.
+ Better LA link integration for phpBB2.
+ Fixed a bug that caused avatars not to show up in the forum.

LA 110 Released
Updates & Fixed Bugs
+ Database changes, redid a lot of the LA Grouping logic.
+ You can only reinstall LA if logged in as admin.
+ Fixed 'Items Misplacement Issue'.
+ Fixed mysql error when adding admin with high userid value.
+ Items & groups an be moved around & deleted.
+ Removed admin/forumlinks.php file.
+ Add/Remove Forum link added to settings page.
+ New layout for admin panel.
+ New groups can be added.

LA 102 Released
+ Avatar Packs can be upgraded.
+ Avatar Packs can be uninstalled.
+ Minor changes to the design layout of certain pages.
+ Fixed a points remaining calculation bug.
+ Fixed a mysql_connect() database warning for vB users.
+ Other small misc fixes.

LA 101 Released
+ Better error checking when saving avatars.
+ Update to work with the vBulletin File System.
+ Fixed some vBulletin & phpBB integration issues

Always Backup your Database before Upgrading
Living Avatars might have database changes during the upgrade. Please, take the extra time and backup the living avatars tables (the tables that are prefixed with 'la_' in your forum database) before upgrading to new versions. I always do as much as testing as possible before releasing updates but it's still better to be cautious.

[Queball_Beast]

Has there been a way for this to run without doing the 777 permissions?

Having folders with 777 permissions on a shared server is a problem since folders with 777 permissions gets hit with phishing files.

If there is a way to do it i`m so looking forward to it.

Thanks

[towermatt]

This was answered on the last page I think.

The avatars folder is protected by a index.html page. All anyone navigating to that page will get is a blank page. And I'm willing to bet it will be real hard for anyone to edit their avatar if the folder it's in isn't 777ed. >.<

[Sunray2]

I need some help on this. I still do not have the LA cp on my admin cp in vB.

Is there anyone out here who knows of the possible reason for this?

Also, with regard to the 777, I've run into this issue twice already with no solution. A litter for this would be greatly appreciated.:erm:

Thanks,

C.

[neopet001]

This mod and the livingavatars.com site is so great!
Super great work!

[thepub]

Originally Posted by thepub

for some reason it's not charging the right amount. It is only chargin one point per item when I have it set to charge 100 points per item.

just wanted to bump this again because I'm still having the issue.

[neopet001]

I'm meeting the serious problem :
- I logged in with my account on the forum.
- Then move to Edit avatar -> Living avatar.
- Then I logged in the Living Avatar zone.
- But, from now on : it always force me to log in again and again at every click I did on the living avatars pages!!!
- Then I back to my forum, but now I can't login my account any more, I tried many times but it always returned as not logged in!
I must clear all cookies then login again.

Please help me fix this problem, if not I must remove Living Avatars althought it's a very nice hack!
Thank you!

[Sunray2]

Ziad,

I could use a little help. Please see my previous posts above.

I like the mod, however I cannot use it. I've installed twice with no success.

If anyone has had this problem and have successfully fixed the problem, please post what you did in detail. It would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

C.

[gettingbetter]

I haven't installed this mod, and I don't know if I will, but I just had to comment - wow! Nice job! Lots of creativity and dedication went into this! Bravissimo!

[onehost]

Will this be updated for the future VB 3.7 ??

Thanks

[DPtheGod]

Hi, one of my forum's administrators installed this mod today and when I got home from work he told me that he is getting this error when trying to install the avatar frames:

Living Avatars Database Error

Invalid SQL: INSERT INTO la_groups (groupid, parentgroupid, packid, title, foldername, folderpath, online, displayorder)
                    VALUES (NULL, 228, 40, 'Dj's Frameborders', 'DJ's Frameborders', 'Avatar_Frames/DJ's Frameborders', 1, 1) 
Error: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 's Frameborders', 'DJ's Frameborders', 'Avatar_Frames/DJ's Frameborders', 1, 1)' at line 2 
Error number: 1064 
Date: Sunday 02nd of December 2007 12:56:17 AM
File: http://www.rpanime.com/forums/living_avatars/admin/installpack.php

Do you have any ideas on how to fix this? I have no idea what happened or what steps were taken to install this, so I don't know the nature of the problem.