Miscellaneous Hacks - Digital Point Spy

About
This is a Digg-style spy for seeing what's going on in your forum in realtime.

This is something I originally made about 4 years ago. Now that I rewrote it for vBulletin 4 (it also now uses the bundled YUI for animation), I decided to also wrap it up as a product package and release it for the world to use.

Installation

• Put the spy.php file in your forum folder.
• Put the digitalpoint_spy.js file in your clientscript folder.
• Install the product-digitalpoint_spy.xml product under AdminCP -> Plugins & Products -> Manage Products -> Add/Import Product

You can see a live version in action here:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/spy.php


1.1.0 Update

• Moved JavaScript to external file (works around template parsing bug with early versions of vBulletin 4.0.x).
• XML generation is done with vBulletin's XML Builder class (let it deal with weird characters).
• Switched JavaScript library to from YUI to jQuery (for an end user, it means better animations).
• Changed do=xml to do=feed (works around servers that are overly protective and think they are trying to be hacked and blocking the request).

[digitalpoint]

Yep, works fine with 4.1.x

[MonsterDK]

Digital Point.... my host fixed the problem. They had to change a setting on their security that was blocking something.
Works great now.

So for those of you that can't get this to work. You have the templates, you have the database table.. still does not work? Contact your host and ask them to look at it. Refer to the advice that digital point gave me on the previous page.

Thanks for your help digital point!!

[MonsterDK]

QUESTION:
Is there a way to remove the link on the community drop down menu?
I'd rather just use the link to access it.

[digitalpoint]

You can disable the "Add Spy Link To Navigation" plug-in for the spy.

[res6cue]

Nice mod!

One issue found and fixed, figured I'd pass it along so you can update the php file. After trying out the 'Only Include Subscribed Forums' function, I received a database error email advising me that 'subscribeforum' was not a valid table. Naturally this is true, because I use the vb_ prefix in my database. So I changed line 80 in the php file to include the table_prefix, and it works fine now.

In spy.php change line 80 from:

FROM subscribeforum

To:

FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "subscribeforum

[OziloZ]

i have problems with turkish characters

It says "unknown" at thread/post section when somebody creates a new thread or post a message.

Is this compatible with vb 4.1.0 PL2?

[OldSchoolDSL]

Originally Posted by res6cue

Nice mod!

One issue found and fixed, figured I'd pass it along so you can update the php file. After trying out the 'Only Include Subscribed Forums' function, I received a database error email advising me that 'subscribeforum' was not a valid table. Naturally this is true, because I use the vb_ prefix in my database. So I changed line 80 in the php file to include the table_prefix, and it works fine now.

In spy.php change line 80 from:

FROM subscribeforum

To:

FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "subscribeforum

This surely does help. Thank you.

Installed and working

4.1 PL2

[res6cue]

Ok I found a rather odd issue that hopefully can be resolved:

From time to time, nothing populates on the page for logged in users. However if you log out and check the page as a guest, it populates! I've tried a ton of things to get it to work, including disabling all other mods, to no avail. The digitalpoint_spy table has all the entries in it (as evidenced by the page populating for guests), but it just refuses to populate for logged in users from time to time. The 'Only Include Subscribed Forums' option makes no difference, either it works or it doesn't regardless.

Is there anything that could be causing this behavior? It's driving me nuts, because I really want to keep this mod around, it's extremely handy and our users love it...when it works!

[beatyourtruck]

Originally Posted by digitalpoint

You can disable the "Add Spy Link To Navigation" plug-in for the spy.

Can you explain this a little more? what file to edit? Thanks! GREAT mod....my moderators love it to watch over the herd LOL

[res6cue]

Originally Posted by beatyourtruck

Can you explain this a little more? what file to edit? Thanks! GREAT mod....my moderators love it to watch over the herd LOL

The easiest way to disable the link from showing on the navbar is to go to the Plugin Manager in the AdminCP, find Product : Digital Point Spy, uncheck the Active box for Add Spy Link To Navigation, then save active status. No need to edit any files.