Chat Modifications - [DBTech] vBShout v6 (vB4) [AJAX]

DragonByte Technologies are proud to present vBShout v6: The most advanced, Most feature-rich and most professional shoutbox ever.


Uses

vBShout is the ideal way to keep members on your forum while they wait for replies to their posts. It can be used in many ways - as a chat room for members, for staff to discuss issues in realtime, as a live-update feed of new posts and threads, as a way to track member milestones... Best of all, you can have multiple boxes in use for multple purposes!

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If you like this mod please hit the button to the right ---->

Please remember to click the, button to the right if you installed the mod ---->

What does 'Marking As Installed' do ?

* It helps you to stay on top of updates - members who have installed modifications will be notified by us whenever new updates are available.

* For security issues - vbulletin.org will contact all members who have installed a modification whenever a security issue is brought to their attention.

* Marking a modification as installed also helps us know how many people are using our work, giving us extra incentive to provide more features and new modifications.

We appreciate the support!

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Priority support available at: http://www.dragonbyte-tech.com/forum.php

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Priority support is handled at the Developers Website.

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Major Lite Features

Advanced Shout Control: You have the ability to post shouts, edit your shouts, PM shouts to other users, Ignore other users, insert /Me commands, insert smilies, Bbcode, change font, text colour etc.

Advanced Staff Control: Give your staff members customised permissions to allow them to do certain actions, on all or selected instances and chat rooms. Permissions include: Silencing users, banning users, editing user shouts, Creating/Editing "Sticky Notices", Pruning shouts and much more.

Resource Optimisation: vBShout implements an Advanced Optimisation Protocol to save your forum resources. Enabling this will further reduce the amount of resources consumed by the shoutbox. AOP was originally featured in Inferno vBShout, and DBTech vBShout takes it to the next level by ensuring that all your chats are always up-to-date without taking up needless amount of resources.

Customisable New Post / Thread Notifications: Allows you to make the shoutbox post when a new thread is created, or a new post is made. You can make this happen with all threads (Which will take user permissions into account) or only threads/posts from certain forums.

Shoutbox Tabs: New PM's or User Chat Rooms create Tabs. Tabs will highlight to let you know something new has happened, and you can even set them to make sounds to alert you.

Active Users Shout-bit: Shows the users active in the tab/instance you are, with the option to view everyone who can enter/exit the room at will (and thus see any shouts posted) in a pop-up to save resources. Perfect for seeing what's going on and who's around at a glance.

Context Menus: Many places now make use of context menus ? less having to remember /commands, one click access to the most useful and commonly used functions, and the ability for users to access their shoutbox settings directly from the shoutbox itself.

Custom Chat Rooms: Your users can now set up their own Chat-Tabs, where they get to set who can come and chat. Perfect for clubs, guilds etc. Admins can also create permanent Chat rooms for specific usergroups etc. ? perfect for a staff only chat room for instance, or to reward loyal members!

Custom Shoutbox Instances: Ever wanted a separate shoutbox just for your admin forum? Got a part of your board only for VIP members? Now you can set a shoutbox specific to those areas.

Shoutbox Sounds: You asked for it, we delivered. Customisable sounds now available on receiving shouts, Invites, PM's and more. (Requires QuickTime Plugin)

Archive: View all the shouts posted since the last pruning, Also shows you the top X shouters, a variety of interesting and useful shoutbox statistics, and allows you to search previous shouts.

Logging: Worried about staff members pruning the shoutbox to cover their tracks? Don't worry, with our advanced logging options, you can make sure a hard copy is kept of every action taken.

Revamped Thread / Reply Notices: Do you have a massive board with 100+ forums? With the revamped New Thread / Reply Notices page, you can edit exactly what forums show what notices in what instance all from one page.

Downloadable Shoutbox Archives: You and your shoutbox admins can download a complete dump of the Shoutbox' archive for all instances. With 3 supported formats (tab-delimited CSV, XML and TXT), there's something for everyone whether your purpose is review or programming.

Easy Shoutbox Notice Editing: You and usergroups with the "Can Set Sticky" permission can now edit the notice by double-clicking the Sticky in the shoutbox. Quickly fix typos or rapidly update with new turn of events, editing it is never more than two clicks away.

Shoutbox Report System: Members can now report offensive shouts by using the shout context menu. When a report has been submitted, those with the "Can Moderate Chat" permission will see how many reports need their attention via a new chat tab in the Shoutbox.

Easy User Infractions: The context menu also adds a quick link to infract users, for those who can access vBulletin's infraction system. This lets you quickly punish members who are overstepping your bounds.

Blog Integration: Give blogs a more prominent place on your forum by having the Shoutbox post notifications when someone posts a new blog or comments on a blog.


Professional Only benefits:

Personal User Shoutbox Options: Integrated with User CP, User gets to decide which things show on their shoutbox, PM's, notifications etc. Even what editor options show up for them. They also get to decide where their text input area goes for TOTAL customisation.

Ignore List: Allows users to keep track of who they are ignoring, and control this option via a list.

Custom Commands: Lets you and your users create their own commands for use. For example, create pre-set warning comments ? Staff member types /firstwarning, Text appears saying "This is your first warning for breaking the shoutbox rules. You can view these rules at [link] If you have a question about this warning, please PM myself. Thanks.

Extra Tab Options: The ability to set separate tabs for system notifications and notices is available in the PRO version, fantastic for keeping your chat tab uncluttered.

Detach Shoutbox: Lets you and your users have the shoutbox open in a seperate browser window/tab for easier use etc.

Additional Moderation Commands: The ability to add/edit the sticky notice through the shoutbox.

Advanced Archive Searching: Ability to search by any combination of username, Last X Hours, Start/End date, as well as keyword. Filter searches, sort by criteria etc.

Extended Instance Options: Allows you to have separate notices per instance, set usergroup settings for individual instances, and even set unique staff permissions for each individual instance.

Expanded Context Menus: Lets your member/staff use the context menu to add/update the sticky note, Ban and Unban users, Ignore/Unignore users and prune individual user shouts.

Extra User Chat Room Moderation: Shows a page displaying every use-created chat room, who made it, how many active members/total members it has etc, and options to close it etc.


Complete Feature List
Lite

• Shoutbox
  • Post Shouts
  • Edit / Delete Shouts
  • Shouts played using HTML5 <audio> tags
  • PM other users
    • PM tabs for convo between two users
  • View Active Users
    • Separate context-aware block that shows the people active in your specific tab.
• Smilies
  • Integrates with vBulletin smilie popup for easy overview of all available smilies.
• Update text styles
  • Bold
  • Italic
  • Underline
  • Font
  • Colour
• Slash commands
  • Built-in commands in a drop-down list
  • /banlist for a list of all users banned from the shoutbox
• Context menu for available actions
  • View Profile
  • Send PM
• Create chat room
  • Invite / Manage users that can access this chat room
  • Inviting an user sends them a pop-up asking them to join the room.
• Tabs
  • Highlights when you're not viewing them but they have new messages.
  • Chat Rooms get tabs added as you join them.
• Logging
  • Default logging logs all administrative slash commands.
• Archive
  • View list of all Shouts in the system
  • Top X Shouters
  • Shoutbox Statistics
  • Search Archive
    • Search by
      • Phrase
• AdminCP
  • Instance Manager
    • Different instances on different pages
  • Chat Room Manager
    • Assign usergroups to chat rooms
  • Edit Settings
    • Which commands to log
    • Log level
    • Shouts to display
    • Shouts to display (Archive)
    • Shoutbox Height
    • Shout display order
    • Shoutbox Refresh Rate
    • Smilies on / off
    • PMs on / off
    • Allowed BBCode controls
    • Enabled Editor Tools
    • Maximum [SIZE]
    • Max characters per shout
    • Max images per shout
    • Archive "Top X Shouters" count
    • Active Users block on/off
    • Auto-Delete Shouts
    • Max chat rooms per user
    • Global sound switch
    • Play sounds while idle
    • Per-Usergroup display of moderator actions (like pruning shouts)
    • Ability to disable the "Chat Access" list
    • Project Tools integration
    • Ability to disable Blog notifications
    • Alternating Shout Background Colours
    • Forum Milestones (replacing the simple "Post Markers")
      • Every X Posts
      • Every X Threads
      • Every X Members
  • Show command log
  • Show banned users
  • Show shout log
  • Maintenance
    • Reset all style customisations
  • Ban / Silence management in Edit User

Shoutbox Sessions

• Shoutbox activity is tracked separate from users' shouts
• Only shows people who perform an action as active
• "Active Indicator" on the toolbar shows whether the user is active in the SB or not
• Doesn't flag users generating automatic notices as active

Anonym.To Integration

• Ability to anonymise any URL entered in the Shoutbox per-instance with Anonym.to
• Works with BBCode URLs
• Displays regular URL while editing shouts

Disallow "ALL CAPS"

• Ability to disallow all caps per-instance
• Uses vBulletin's "Prevent SHOUTING" setting to de-caps the shout

New Slash Command: /resetshouts

• Resets all users' "Lifetime Shouts" counter to how many shouts they currently have in the system
• (Pro) /resetshouts user to reset an individual user's "Lifetime Shouts" counter
• Great way to put spammers in their place

Context Menu Improvements

• Dedicated context menu item for editing shouts (if user has permission to edit that shout)
• Dedicated context menu item for deleting shouts (if user has permission to delete that shout)
• JavaScript performance for menu closure operations has been improved

"Invisibility" Toggle

• Click the activity status icon to toggle invisibility
• Uses the status icon from your vBulletin skin
• Hides the user from all activity displays in the entire instance
• Great for surprising friends with shouts out of the blue!

Pro

• Context Menu Options
• Moderation actions
  • Add / Update Sticky Note
  • Ban / Unban users
  • Ignore / unignore users
  • Prune user's shouts
• Slash commands
  • /silencelist for a list of all users silenced in the shoutbox
• Separate tab for Notifications
  • Lets you hide them from the main view but still have them accessible.
• Separate tab for System Messages
  • Lets you hide them from main view but still have them accessible.
• Detach shoutbox
  • Shows a dedicated shoutbox browser window.
• Shoutbox Options
  • Integration with UserCP
    • General Shoutbox Settings
      • Enable / Disable PMs
      • Enable / Disable Notifications
      • Enable / Disable System Messages
      • Override shout styles
      • Sounds on/off
        • Shout
        • Invite
        • PM
      • Hide alternating shoutbox background colours
      • Hide user avatars
    • Display Settings
      • Hide/Display individual Editor settings (Font, text colour etc)
      • Control shout area location
    • Tab Reordering
      • Re-order chat tabs
• Custom Commands
  • Add / Edit custom commands
• Ignore List
  • Add / Remove users
• High-level logging logs everything
• vBActivity & Awards integration (Award, Achievement, Promotion)
• Filter archive shouts by chatroom
• Create threads from archive shouts
• Search Archive
  • Search by
    • Username
    • Last X Hours
    • Start Date
    • End Date
  • Sort order for search results
  • Shouts per page
• Filter archive shouts
• Edit/Delete shouts in archive
• Separate Sticky notices per instance
• Separate usergroup permissions per instance
• Assign chat room to any / all instance(s)
• Shoutbox Refresh Rate
  • While idle
• PMs on / off
• Archive "Top X Shouters" count
• Play sounds while idle
• Maintenance
  • Reset all style customisations
• Ban / Silence management in Edit User
• Forum Milestones (replacing the simple "Post Markers")
  • Every X Blogs
  • Every X Shouts
  • Every X [DBTech] Advanced Post Thanks / Like button clicks received
  • Every X [DBTech] Advanced User Tagging thread tags received
  • Every X [DBTech] Advanced User Tagging quotes received
  • Every X [DBTech] Advanced User Tagging mentions received
  • Every X [DBTech] vBQuiz quizzed created
  • Every X [DBTech] vBQuiz quizzed completed
• Adjust time stamp format
• Per-Usergroup "Can PM" permission

(Pro) Global Custom Commands

• Create custom commands that anyone can use via the AdminCP
• Prevents users from creating commands with the same shortcut
• Great for "canned responses"

(Pro) Per-User Shoutbox Toggle

• New UserCP option to turn off the entire shoutbox
• Hides it completely from all pages

(Pro) Per-Instance Activity Triggers

• Choose what actions trigger new activity
  • Create Chat
  • Delete Shout
  • Fetch Sticky
  • Join Chat
  • Leave Chat
  • User Lookup
  • Save Sound Settings
  • Save Shout Styles
  • User Management
  • Chat Tab Switching
  • Un-idling
  • Toggle "Invisible Mode"

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This mod displays a copyright notification in the footer of pages generated by this mod which includes:

• 1 Link to DragonByte Technologies homepage
• 1 Link to Product Description page of this modification

[DragonByte Tech]

Instance Management in the AdminCP -> Edit.

If the DBTech - vBShout group isn't visible, add yourself to Super Administrators in config.php


Fillip

[Palmcone]

Originally Posted by DragonByte Tech

Instance Management in the AdminCP -> Edit.

Fillip

Perfect, thank you.

[midnightpariah]

A very nice chatbox with solid features, thank you! Here are some additions and changes I?d love to see:

1. Chat Field Orientation: The option to change where the input box is placed relative to the chat output. Right now, the input is in a rather unconventional left-side orientation, when almost every other chatroom and IM program places the input box below the chat output. Having an option for a Left, Bottom, Top, or Right input box would be spectacular!
   
   
2. Selective Archiving: I adore the ?new thread/reply? notifications, but I hate how they end up cluttering your archive! The option to determine what is saved in the archive would be great. I for one would uncheck everything except the actual chat messages.
   
   
3. Selective History: When you first come to the forum, you can see ~20 past messages in the shoutbox, depending on the shoutbox?s settings. This includes shouts and notifications. If the shoutbox hasn?t been particularly active, this history may be nothing more than a list of new threads/replies and ?User has reached X posts!? I only see notifications as useful to those who are currently using the shoutbox when the notification event happens, not for people who arrive a day or two later. That?s what ?What?s New?? is for. This option would work in tandem with Selective Archiving, and might even be the same thing. Despite loving the notification feature, I had to completely turn it off because it was overwhelming the shoutbox, burying people?s shouts into obscurity and isolating possible conversations.
   
   
4. Hook into any/all pages: I know I can manually edit the template pages that I?d like the shoutbox to appear on, but with every vB update comes a template thrashing, so I?d like to keep my template modifications to an absolute minimum. It?d be extremely helpful if vbShout came with a list of pages you could select for it to automatically appear on. Alternatively, a collapsible, hovering frame, as seen in the Ideal Chat mod and Facebook?s chat system, would be just as good, if not better in some cases. I think a chatbox is most effective when users have easy, immediate access to it. As it stands right now, users can either use the shoutbox and ignore the forum, or browse the forum and miss out on the shoutbox. You cannot effectively do both at the same time.
   
   
5. Buttons above the input box: This is simply a matter of consistency with vBulletin itself. Having the buttons below the input box when everywhere else on the forum, from posting to sending PMs, BB code and other buttons are always above the text field, is confusing and uncomfortable. When I was first checking out vbShout?s screenshots, I thought the picture was cut off at the bottom, because I didn?t recognize the big empty square on the lefthand side to be the input field! In my own install of vbShout, I?ve actually completely disabled all the BB code buttons just because I hated how it looked.
   
   
6. Oldest First in Archive: In the shoutbox, you have a sorting choice between Newest or Oldest First. The archive is always Newest First. It?d be nice to have the option, or at least for the archive to follow the same sorting preference as the shoutbox.
   
   
7. Edit/Delete in Archive: As an admin, I can ?Report Shout?? But not delete or otherwise edit like I can in the shoutbox itself?

[DragonByte Tech]

Originally Posted by midnightpariah

Chat Field Orientation: The option to change where the input box is placed relative to the chat output. Right now, the input is in a rather unconventional left-side orientation, when almost every other chatroom and IM program places the input box below the chat output. Having an option for a Left, Bottom, Top, or Right input box would be spectacular!

This is a Pro-only option

Originally Posted by midnightpariah

Selective Archiving: I adore the “new thread/reply” notifications, but I hate how they end up cluttering your archive! The option to determine what is saved in the archive would be great. I for one would uncheck everything except the actual chat messages.

Selective History: When you first come to the forum, you can see ~20 past messages in the shoutbox, depending on the shoutbox’s settings. This includes shouts and notifications. If the shoutbox hasn’t been particularly active, this history may be nothing more than a list of new threads/replies and “User has reached X posts!” I only see notifications as useful to those who are currently using the shoutbox when the notification event happens, not for people who arrive a day or two later. That’s what “What’s New?” is for. This option would work in tandem with Selective Archiving, and might even be the same thing. Despite loving the notification feature, I had to completely turn it off because it was overwhelming the shoutbox, burying people’s shouts into obscurity and isolating possible conversations.

Interesting features, you should re-post them over at our forum (www.dragonbyte-tech.com) to ensure they are entered into our issue tracking forum and properly taken into consideration

Originally Posted by midnightpariah

Hook into any/all pages: I know I can manually edit the template pages that I’d like the shoutbox to appear on, but with every vB update comes a template thrashing, so I’d like to keep my template modifications to an absolute minimum. It’d be extremely helpful if vbShout came with a list of pages you could select for it to automatically appear on. Alternatively, a collapsible, hovering frame, as seen in the Ideal Chat mod and Facebook’s chat system, would be just as good, if not better in some cases. I think a chatbox is most effective when users have easy, immediate access to it. As it stands right now, users can either use the shoutbox and ignore the forum, or browse the forum and miss out on the shoutbox. You cannot effectively do both at the same time.

Adding 10 characters is hardly a huge modification

We used to allow people to determine what pages it should be automatically inserted on, as opposed to auto on index and everywhere else manual, but the volume of support request for detailed instructions as to how to achieve their perfect setup made it way too un-user friendly

Originally Posted by midnightpariah

Buttons above the input box: This is simply a matter of consistency with vBulletin itself. Having the buttons below the input box when everywhere else on the forum, from posting to sending PMs, BB code and other buttons are always above the text field, is confusing and uncomfortable. When I was first checking out vbShout’s screenshots, I thought the picture was cut off at the bottom, because I didn’t recognize the big empty square on the lefthand side to be the input field! In my own install of vbShout, I’ve actually completely disabled all the BB code buttons just because I hated how it looked.

I'm not entirely sure whether we can reliably make this optional as well, without making the actual display code too complex. We'll see

Originally Posted by midnightpariah

Oldest First in Archive: In the shoutbox, you have a sorting choice between Newest or Oldest First. The archive is always Newest First. It’d be nice to have the option, or at least for the archive to follow the same sorting preference as the shoutbox.

That would cause huge problems with pagination code, so unfortunately I don't think this will be added

Originally Posted by midnightpariah

Edit/Delete in Archive: As an admin, I can “Report Shout”? But not delete or otherwise edit like I can in the shoutbox itself?

This is a Pro-only feature

[fanhockeycoach]

How do I put an instance on a different page?

My site is fantasyhockeycoach.com and I want an instance in the forum which I have but I also want another instance on the FHC Pools tab for trash talking in hockey pools. How can I place an instance there?

[Chadi]

I don't know why, but this is how mine is appearing. I installed it and made no edits to templates. I did use the repair cache feature twice too.

[DragonByte Tech]

Originally Posted by fanhockeycoach

How do I put an instance on a different page?

My site is fantasyhockeycoach.com and I want an instance in the forum which I have but I also want another instance on the FHC Pools tab for trash talking in hockey pools. How can I place an instance there?

To put vBShout in a custom location, do the following:


Step 1: AdminCP -> DBTech - vBShout-> Instance Management -> [Edit].

Step 2: Change the Auto-Display Shoutbox setting to Disabled.

Step 3: Write down the the Varname setting. For the default shoutbox, it's instance1. The rest of this guide will assume you replace instance1 with the actual Varname if it is different.

Step 4: Enter the Style Manager and add either {vb:raw show.vbshout_instance1} (vB4) or {$show[vbshout_instance1]} (vB3) to the templates you wish the shoutbox to appear in.


Follow these steps as described and you will have total control over the position of the Shoutbox.
Please note that some locations may not work as intended on vBulletin 3.8, and also note that it is not designed to go in the Forum Blocks side-bar (vBulletin 4).

Hope that helps

Originally Posted by Chadi

I don't know why, but this is how mine is appearing. I installed it and made no edits to templates. I did use the repair cache feature twice too.

Please turn off IE7 compatibility mode


Fillip

[Chadi]

Thanks, but I was viewing using Firefox 12, not IE7.

[fanhockeycoach]

But where on style manager do I go to add it to a specific page?

[Alan_SP]

Originally Posted by midnightpariah

I know I can manually edit the template pages that I?d like the shoutbox to appear on, but with every vB update comes a template thrashing, so I?d like to keep my template modifications to an absolute minimum.

This is a big problem with vB. But, there's also a solution for it.

TMS (template modifications system) works and solves this problem. :up: