FORM to THREAD/ FORUM/ POLL/ PM/ EMAIL - CUSTOMIZABLE FORMS - Mod Apps, Orders, News.

FORM to THREAD/ FORUM/ POLL/ PM/ EMAIL - Totally CUSTOMIZABLE FORMS
Version 1.6 for vBulletin 3.x.x by Dr Erwin Loh

Features:

Ever wanted an online form that a user can fill out, which when submitted gets:

1. Posted into a new thread in a forum of your choice
2. Create a new poll in the new thread with options of your choice
3. Posted as a reply in an existing thread of your choice
4. PMed to you or someone else
5. Emailed to an email address you specify
6. Choose to redirect to the post, thread or forum, or a custom thank you message
7. Choose to redirect to editpost to upload attachments

Or any combination or all of the above?

Well, this is the hack for you!

You can use this for:

1) Moderator Applications
2) Quiz Submit Form which gets PMed to a moderator
3) Contact Form that goes to PM, email or thread
4) Guests to apply to be members
5) Report a Moderator form that goes as a PM to you
6) Guests can PM you for whatever reason
7) Order form to buy things
8) Donation form
9) News or Articles submissions that can go straight to a thread


Or anything you like - this hack is totally customizable via the PHP file.
Basically, this hack involves modifying 1 PHP file form.php (you add questions, options etc. in the PHP file itself), uploading it, and then adding 2 templates.

The beauty of this hack is that once you have added the 2 templates, to make a new form, all you need to do is copy the form.php and rename it to form2.php, edit the variables in the PHP file, and you have a totally new form!!! You do not need to touch the templates again.

Format of the form:

1. One main input question
2. 2 Radio buttons Choice questions
3. 3 Normal text input questions
4. 1 Long answer question

This is customizable via the PHP file.

Also:
- You can set the usergroups you want access to this form.
- Depending on your forum permissions, if the new thread is in a public forum, members can reply to it. This hack allows a form to submit the new thread or post wherever you want it to go.
- Force the user to answer all questions.


INSTALLATION


Easy - takes only a few minutes:

1. Add the 2 templates.

2. Edit form.php - the instructions are all inside the PHP file itself, in the top half. Follow the instructions carefully!

3. Upload form.php

Just link to form1.php eg. http://www.yourforum.com/forums/form.php

Done!

Use this hack to make as many forms as you like!

Enjoy!


Updates:

Version 1.1 - Option to force user to answer all questions.
Version 1.2 - Thread count and lastposter information now updated if form is sent to existing thread.
Version 1.3 - ADDED CREATE POLL OPTION!
Version 1.4 - Fixed bug with Form-to-thread code
Version 1.5 - Major update:
- fixed bug where thread count not updated when form to forum
- fixed default posting to allow smilies and sigs when reply to thread
- added templates to cache (saves 2 queries)
- added option to change thank you message
- added options to redirect to post, thread or forum when submit
Version 1.6 - Choose to redirect to editpost to upload attachments

Screenshot is an example of a form - the form title and questions are customizable:

[Spinball]

*installed*
Very nice hack - does, with a bit of tweaking, just what I need.
I'm using it to ensure people enter all the required information in classified adverts. I'll be trying to change the target address of the 'New thread' button in certain forums to call this script.
Many thanks Mr Erwin, Sir!

Question/request for you.
How would I implement the $messagearea and $posticons variables so that the user interface for one of the fields is identical to a normal new thread?

[Spinball]

I hope you don't mind but I'd like to share how I got this working to use a form to submit the first post in new threads.
It's for our classifieds forums (3 of them) where people often dive in and break several trading rules.
I wanted to make sure they were given plenty of opportunities to read the rules before submitting their adverts.
See the attached screen grab.
Our 3 forums have forum ids of 51,62 and 99.

Firstly I used a temporary forum invisible to the public to test this out.
I followed Erwin's instructions to edit the form and formanswers templates and form.php.
The only things I needed to change in the form.txt template was to add a variable 'f' to store the forumid rather than hard code it.

   <input type="hidden" value="$userid" name="userid">
   <input type="hidden" value="$f" name="f">
   <input type="hidden" value="submit" name="action">

and the tickbox code looked like this.

      <tr>
         <td class="alt1" valign="top"><b>$ad_agreequestion</b></td>
         <td class="alt1" valign="top" colspan="2"><input name="ad_agree" type="checkbox" value="Confirmed"> <font class="smallfont">$ad_agreeexplain</font></td>
      </tr>

(I used the smallfont class to reduce the size of the explanation text).

Then most of the work goes in the form.php. Aside from changing it to put in my own variables etc., I had to make a few additional tweaks.

At the top I globalised the variables used in the form plus the forum id 'f'

globalize($_POST, array(
'ad_title' => STR,
'ad_description' => STR,
'ad_location' => STR,
'ad_agree' => STR,
'action' => STR,
'f' => STR
));

and set the forumid to the passed variable $f instead of hard coding it.

PHP Code:

//FORUM TO POST NEW THREAD IN
$formforumid = $f; 


and changed the form validation to insist that the checkbox be checked:

PHP Code:

if ($answerall == "1") {
    if ($ad_title == '' OR $ad_description == '' OR $ad_location == '' OR $ad_agree <> 'Confirmed')
    {
    $errormessage = "Please complete all the information on the classified submission form and agree that you have read and abide by the trading rules.<br>Press the Back button to return to the form.";
    eval('print_output("' . fetch_template('STANDARD_ERROR') . '");');
    exit();
    }
} 


The last thing I did was to edit the FORUMDISPLAY template to make the 'New Thread' buttons call the form. In both places (there are 2 buttons):

PHP Code:

<!-- -------------- new thread button logic for classifieds form -----  -->
<if condition="$show['newthreadlink']">
<if condition="$foruminfo[forumid] == 51 OR $foruminfo[forumid] == 62 OR $foruminfo[forumid] == 99">
<a href="form.php?$session[sessionurl]&amp;f=$foruminfo[forumid]">
<else />
<a href="newthread.php?$session[sessionurl]do=newthread&amp;f=$foruminfo[forumid]">
</if>
<!-- ------------ / new thread button logic for classifieds form -----  --> 


Note that it calls the form.php with the f= to the forumid.
And it works perfectly.

The next enhancement might be to install a separate hack which creates an [admin] bb code which hides text within it from all users except admin. And then get people to enter a phone number for security purposes which only admin can see in the posts.

Maybe Erwin will want to add my suggestions into his standard hack.

[blue_chi]

THIS IS GOOD.

Going to install it soon!

[defi]

I was wondering;

1.) Is there a way to change it so the user can enter a name for the thread rather then a pre-defined one being made?

2.) Have attachments been added to the capability of this form?

[neofootball]

Nice hack! Is there a way to pm & email more than one person?

[glenvw]

I am looking for a registration process where a person:

First has to fill out a separate front-end registration process I already have. The applicant fills out name, address, phone, birthdate, etc (common demographic information) . He is presented with opt-in co-reg offers etc.

He is then automatically sent to the VBBS registration page where he/she enters a user name and password. It would be nice if the user name, birthdate, etc could be passed from the first form (not on a VBBS page) and inserted in the VBBS registration. This would make it look uniform. It is not necessary though.

My goal is first to monetize the registration process.

Restrict access to all forums unless they were registered.

However, if a person is not registered now, they are sent directly to the VBBS registration page. This process would require that they be sent to the new front end registration page.

After a member is regsitered, I would like it if they were made to log in only on the front end page where they could just log in if already registered.

I have no idea if this could be done but I am looking for a programmer that knows his stuff and can make this happen. I am posting it here because Erwin's hack was as close as I have seen.

Thank in advance.

[The Markus]

Originally Posted by BarHopper

This sia stupid question, but where are the two templates?

If that was stupid then my question is ridiculous... :nervous:

Where do you upload these to?? I am somewhat PHP inept at the moment, but I am learning.. I can feel my brain swelling :ninja:

[ChrisBaktis]

Need some Mod Help....

I run a site that mambers trade on - I want to use this form to post a thread of what is being traded....This is what I would like to do...

Instead of the username and form title to show up as the 'Thread Title' I would like to use $normalanswer1 / $normalanswer2

For Example..I would like the title show up as 'member#1 / member#2' This way when our mods are going through the posts the title of each post is the two members names that are making the trade with an '/' in between.

Can this be done? if so how?

Also is it possible to use Bold and underline in the output when this is posted to a thread? I know I cannot use HTML because I dont allow HTML in the thread but is there any other way?

Chris

[Erwin]

Originally Posted by ChrisBaktis

Need some Mod Help....

I run a site that mambers trade on - I want to use this form to post a thread of what is being traded....This is what I would like to do...

Instead of the username and form title to show up as the 'Thread Title' I would like to use $normalanswer1 / $normalanswer2

For Example..I would like the title show up as 'member#1 / member#2' This way when our mods are going through the posts the title of each post is the two members names that are making the trade with an '/' in between.

Can this be done? if so how?

Also is it possible to use Bold and underline in the output when this is posted to a thread? I know I cannot use HTML because I dont allow HTML in the thread but is there any other way?

Chris

1. You can change the thread title within the code - look at the code and you can work it out.

2. You can modify the form template with bbcode tags to add bold.

[ChrisBaktis]

problem is i have no idea where to change it in the form.php file....$formtitle shows up all over the place and i dont know which to replace and how I would put 2 variables with an "/" between them.