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

[masons_mum]

i have installed this and it is working great, but...i dont want it to show on all pages, just on the forum home, which i have done...and also on the custom pages i have added using the article in the articles section. If i add the manual template edits to the custom pages, below nav bar and above footer, it does not show. Any ideas how i can manually add it to show on these custom pages (they are supposedly part of vbulletin according to the article).

[molieman]

Will Flash work within a side column (such as movie.swf)?

[2dub]

I'm having an issue I hope I can describe adequately:

Content from usc_block_1 shows between the header of usc_block_2 and the content of that block. I've attached an image if that helps.

[peopleofcork]

i was wondering if you could help

I installed ultimate side columns on my forums and they show up on every page except the page were people view before they register

http://www.peopleofcork.com/forums

do you know wat settings i need to change

hope you can get back to me

thanks

[vB Crew]

Originally Posted by 4ntz

Check the usergroup permissions:
ADMINCP > Usergroups > Usergroup manager > Ultimate Side Columns Permissions

Thank you!

Originally Posted by kako_paidi

that was my problem
3 days now im searching all admincp, trying to edit manualy the templates and lots of other things but i missed this......

thanks 4ntz

I had the same issue.

[myandy99]

Does it work for 3.7.2 for anyone? I installed it on my 3.6.8 and it works perfectly but on my 3.7.2 it doesn't work at all - I don't see the side columns after the installation. Did I missing something?

[PGAmerica]

Originally Posted by myandy99

Does it work for 3.7.2 for anyone? I installed it on my 3.6.8 and it works perfectly but on my 3.7.2 it doesn't work at all - I don't see the side columns after the installation. Did I missing something?

I am having the exact same problem in my 3.7.3.

Ideas anybody?

[Tigratrus]

I think we had the same problem, and as I recall I had to modify the execution order of the things I wanted to display in the USC blocks.

James and Susan

[trigatch4]

I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE some "code snippets" of popular things you could put in the sidebar. Latest poll, random user, popular users, etc...

I'm sure others are looking for this type of thing. It would be awesome if we could organize it all in one place... PHP code to put in your sidebar for various cool features.

Any thoughts/ideas?

I know vBadvanced does this but with this plugin and pooling together our resources I think we can create a pretty darn powerful alternative.

[Tigratrus]

Well THE #1 thing I'd love to see (and I'm sure anyone else running vBlog) is the ability to display latest Blogs/Comments. I totally don't understand the apparent lack of understanding that visibility of new blog entries is *crucial* to the success of blogs on a site, but the way it is nobody ever sees the new entries unless they go *looking* for them, and that's a recipe for a dead blog system.

If anyone has any ideas on a block to show new Blog Entries/comments we'd be glad to subsidize development of it in any way possible. We've got the search integration working, but that only works for members (we restrict searching to registered accounts). We need something that's visible *all* the time the way we could when we used CMPS and vBlogetin, that worked great.

James and Susan