mYvBindex v3.1

mYvBindex 3.2.2 released! (5/22/03)

mYvBindex 3.2 will allow you to include different options from your vBulletin message board on your website's index page. Everything is completely template based so it is very easy to customize and change everything through your Admin CP.

Features:

• Login box for members to log in to your site on the homepage.
• Post News in a forum you specify and have it appear on your homepage.
• Show the latest threads started in your forum on your homepage.
• Show a poll and allow users to vote and see the results on your homepage.
• Shows users avatar, new private messages, and buddy list for members who are logged in.
• Shows a list of active users.
• Shows statistics such as total members, threads, posts, top poster, newest member, and today's birthday's.
• Shows a mini calendar with links to days with scheduled events, and a box with today's scheduled events.
• Search box to allow users to quickly search your forums.
• Current weather and updates on your homepage.
• Set and change all options via the Admin CP.
• Ability to easily switch on/off the polls, users avatar, buddy list, online users, search box, calendar, weather, custom templates, news icons, news comments, smilies, set the maximum number of news posts, and many other options via the Admin CP.
• Everything is completely template based so it is very easy to customize.
• Install file that will make all database queries and templates for you in seconds.
• Uninstalls in seconds.
• Tested and stable with vBulletin v2.6+

Screen Shots:
Guest Homepage
Admin Homepage
User Homepage
Admin CP


Queries:
A nice feature of mYvBindex is that it performs only 11 queries with all the options turned off, no matter how many news articles or latest threads you choose to display. Some options will cause the script to perform extra queries, but even with all the options turned on it still performs only 29 queries at max.

Here is a list of each extra function that will cause extra queries:

• Poll - 2 queries
• User's Avatar - 1 query
• Private Messages - 1 query
• Buddy List - 1 query
• Online Users - 3 queries
• Mini Calendar - 1 query
• Weather - 2 queries
• Poll and/or News Smilies - 1 query
• Stats - 5 queries

*Mini Hacks:*
Adding More Custom Templates
To add more custom templates to your mYvBindex, please see this post.

Stylin' Buddy List - by MartynJ
This will add your the users avatar and usertitle to the buddy list (Similar to and inspired by velocd's Stylin' Buddy List hack), and adds no extra queries to your homepage.
Download (Screen shot included in zip)

Shoutbox Integration - by MartynJ
This hack integrates the ever popular Shoutbox hack with your mYvBindex.
Download (Screen shot included in zip)

TWCommish's vB Shoutbox Integration - by Brahm
This is a slightly different shout box made by TWCommish. His hack is required and can be found here. After downloading his hack, use Brahm's instructions here to integrate it with mYvBindex.

Attachments in News Posts - by Tigga
This hack allows attachments posted in news posts to be viewed in the news section on your homepage.
Download

Allow users to set homepage options - by Tigga
This mini-hack will allow your users to set which options they would like displayed on the homepage. They will be able to turn on/off avatars, weather, custom templates, and etc on a per user basis.
Download *Note* It may be necessary to open this file in a text editor (other than notepad) to get it to display properly.

Multiple News forums from different links - by Tigga
This hack allows allows you to have a link to a "different index file" which will pull news posts from a different forum.
Instructions can be found here


Credits:
mYvBindex uses modified versions of the following hacks:
Mini Calendar from vbPortal - by wajones
vB Weather Mk. 2- by JJR512


Copyright:
This hack is NOT to be re-distributed or placed on website for download without permission. All copyright notes in the script itself must remain unchanged.

Please don't forget to hit the Install Button


Updates from version 3.2.1
After the release of v3.2.1 a couple of small bugs were found. They affected the ability to edit a news post from the link on the homepage, pulling the wrong post from a thread for the news section, and updating your most users ever online if a new record is set. The changes from v3.2 to 3.2.1 were minimal, so those should be the only bugs found. Upgrading once again is very easy. Just download the new files, change the path in the myvbindex.php file, and upload it over your existing one.

Updates from version 3.2
v3.2.1 is again just a small maintenance release. The main change in this version is the way the forum permissions are done. Before, the forum permissions would cause the latest threads query to take much longer than it should (mostly on larger forums). Now with the new permissions system in place, the query to pull the latest threads should take less than 0.01 seconds. Other than the permissions section, the only other changes were a few optimizations to the code syntax. Upgrading from v3.2 is simple - Just upload the new myvbindex.php file over your existing one and you're done.

Updates from version 3.1
v3.2 is mostly another maintenance release, and will hopefully be the last release for vBulletin 2.X (unless any bugs are found). Here are a list of all the changes.
Fixed a bug where setting the "Show Latest Threads Icon?" option to "No" could disable the latest threads section.
Fixed a bug where signatures with vBcode were not displayed properly in the news section.
Fixed a bug where the icons in the news and latest thread parts weren't displaying the right icon for some users.
Added an option to completely disable signatures in news posts.
Added an option to select a random poll from any forum for the poll part of the hack.
Further optimized parts of the code and slightly changed part of the structure.
Now shows "No Buddies Online" in the buddy list if no buddies are online.
Changed so it will no longer show a default icon for the news and latest threads unless your options are also set to show a default icon on the forumdisplay page.
Now shows the last poster and last post time when you hold your mouse over the title of a thread in the Latest Threads part.
The install script has been re-written so you can install, upgrade, uninstall, update your news posts (useful for first time installations where a news forum already exists), or install just the templates (useful after upgrading vBulletin to a new version) all from one file.
Significantly reduced the size of the weather_install.php file (from 3.0 MB to 1.25 MB) so it will not take so long to upload to your server.
Fixed a couple of small spacing issues in the poll templates.
Fixed a problem with JJR512's weather hack not pulling the weather forcast.
Added a FAQ section to the readme file to help common problems.

Upgrading should take no longer than 2 minutes and instructions can be found at the bottom of the readme file.


Updates from version 3.0
v3.1 is mostly a maintenance release to help cut down on first time installation problems. Other than that, the biggest difference you will notice is the template "style" has changed to mesh better with vBulletin (see screenshots above). You do not have to install the new templates as you will have the option to install the new templates or to skip that step in the install file. Other than the templates, here is a list of the other changes:
A few more "error checking" features have been added to ensure you won't get a nasty sql error if you leave your News or Poll Forum ID, or any of the other fields blank.
The problem some users were experiencing with the temperature for the weather part of the hack should be fixed for good.
The "Show Poll" option in the Admin CP is removed as this can now be disabled simply by leaving the "Poll Fourm ID" filed blank.
Fixed a small typo and optimized parts of the code a little further.
Slightly changed the position of the days and numbers in the calendar part.
Fixes a bug where the Today's Birthday part wouldn't point to the correct url.

Upgrading should take no longer than 2 minutes and instructions can be found at the bottom of the readme file.


Updates from version 2.0
Removed the option from the Admin CP to allow smilies in News posts as this can now be set per post just as you would when making a regular post.
Added a stats section with info such as total members, threads, posts, newest member, top poster, and today's birthdays.
Added a "Today's Events" section under the calendar that will display any events that are scheduled for the current day, and will only be visible if there are events listed for the current day.
Added an option to show the poster's avatar with the news post.
You can now have your signature displayed with the news post. This is controlled when posting the message just as you would with a regular post.
Added an option to display the news post's rating with the news.
Added options to show small icons to allow users to show a printable version of the news post and an option to allow users to email their friends a link to the news post.
Added an option to allow/disable HTML in news posts.
Added an option to allow/disable the [img] tag in news posts.
Shows the number of times a news post has been viewed.
Shows the number of new posts since the users last visit.
Shows the number of replies to the poll if poll discussions are allowed.
Fixed a bug where the search box would take you to the search page rather than displaying the results.
Fixed a bug where setting the News Posts Maximum to 0 would disable the news rather than giving it no limit.
Optimized the code a little more to increase performance.


Help & Support
Before asking for support Please read the F.A.Q in the readme.html file! Most common problems are answered there! If you have any problems or questions that are not covered in the F.A.Q. please please post them here. I will be more than happy to help in any way I can if the request for help is made here. Anyone trying to contact me via email, private message, my website, or any other means will be ignored.

[mbowers]

Okay, so now that I've got everything working on my test server, I made a fresh install of vb on my live server. First hack I installed was myvbindex, which worked fine, except that weather_install.php is not running. Keep getting a "page cannot be displayed" error...

Any ideas? The rest of the board and the myvbindex page are working. The weather_install.php file is in /forums/admin/, and is untouched - straight from the zip file...

With an earlier file I experimented with putting in different urls for the 'require global.php' statement, and at one point I got a blank screen instead of the 'page cannot be displayed error'. But that's the extent of my progress so far.

Thanks
mbowers

PS Forgot to mention - the page is definately there. I changed the extension to .txt at one point and was able to bring it up in the browser (i just wanted to make sure I wasn't making some stupid URL typo). Since then I've uploaded a fresh copy...

[Tigga]

mbowers - A couple of people have had this same problem before... The only thing I can guess is that your server can't handle a file that big (it's about 1mb). The best thing I can suggest would be to download JJR512's original hack here. In there he has 7 or so files with the queries you can run through phpMyAdmin to add all the cities and such. Then you can upload the file attached to this post and run it to install the templates and add the option to turn the weather on/off.

[mbowers]

Great, thanks for the quick reply Tigga. I'll try that.

I've got to get a new hosting provider... :disappointed:

[Lacrosse Boy]

I recently installed this on a fresh 2.3.0 board, and i have a problem. I can log into the Admin CP, but after I change a setting, it makes me log back in again. I noticed thta prat of the URL was wrong form before I installed this hack. It showed up as: vb/admin/? (I removed the first part of the path)

What do I do to correct this so that I don't have to log in so much?

One other question: How do I change the default city to Minneapolis or Saint Paul on the weather box? The instructions on the help file don't make sense.

Thanks

[Zachery]

your going to need to clear your cookies, if you changed the domain to .yoursite.com

[Lacrosse Boy]

Ahh, I see. Was the address always so funny looking for the adminCP? I never remember it looking like that.

But with the cookies cleared, it works like it should.

But, I still don't understand how to change the default city to Minneapolis or Saint Paul. The readme instructions don't make any sense. :ermm:

[Zachery]

change your home city to that, refresh the mian page and make sure its there, then veiw source i think. you should be able to see your city id some where. then you take it and change the default city id

You will then want to change the setting for userid #0 to your cities "accid" using phpMyAdmin.

i think

[Intex]

Tigga - another quickie (hopefully ).

I have a poll forum, but I have a particular poll that I'd always like to appear on the forum homepage, or at least until I specify. You could do this with news by making it a sticky thread, but there were alterations to the code (provided by yourself) that made this work.

Can I do the same thing with a poll, i.e. make them sticky and it will always be the one that shows on the homepage? If so, could you give me the snippet of code .

Thx.

[Heffe2000]

Anybody have a mod for this that allows you to put a picture of the day thumbnail in one of the custom boxes?

[RS25com]

Just an FYI...

I recently installed this on a Windows 2000 Server with IIS 5.0 and it works great. Install worked great, worked the first time (after I re-read the directions... :laugh: ) and I love it.

However, I noticed one problem. I had some test posts in the forum I chose, and I deleted the threads, and it appears that the threads were deleted, but the posts remained. So, they appeared on my home page, even though the didn't really exist.

SOLUTION: Using PhpMyAdmin, I searched the Posts table using the following:

SELECT * From POSTS WHERE isnews = 'Y'

Then, I simply deleted the offending posts manually.

So, overall, it works great!