vBadvanced Homepage

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vBadvanced.com is now open! There you will find more information regarding vBadvanced Homepage, FAQ's, hacks & modifications, and more.


vBadvanced Homepage v1.1 Released! (01.27.04)

vBadvanced Homepage is an advanced homepage / portal that will allow you to include different options from your vBulletin message board on your site's homepage. It also allows you to easily create and manage new pages which are completely powered by vBulletin and vBadvanced. There are over 40 options where you can enable/disable the features, plus everything is 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.
• Create new pages in which the content will replace the news section of 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.
• 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, 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 3.0 RC.
• 100% validated XHTML 1.0 compliance
  

A nice feature of vBadvanced Homepage is that it is optimized and designed for large web sites. vBadvanced Homepage performs only 5 queries with all the options turned off. Some options will cause the script to perform extra queries, but even with all the options turned on it still performs only 17 queries at max.

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

• News - 1 query
• Latest Threads - 1 query
• Poll - 1 query (2 if the user has voted)
• User's Avatar - 1 query
• Buddy List and/or Online Users - 1 query
• Mini Calendar - 3 queries (none for the simple calendar)
• Stats - 2 queries
• New Posts - 1 query

Screen Shots:
Admin Homepage
Guest Homepage
Admin CP Options

Example Sites:
http://vbadvanced.com
http://plurplanet.com
http://digitalkore.net
http://differentdawn.com

Updates From v1.01 to v1.1

• News Archive where you can display links and info about older news posts.
• Online usere & buddylist now show "Username HTML Markup".
• Shows subscribed threads in news, news archive, and latest threads.
• Preivew on Latest threads and news archive (similar to the preview on forumdisplay).
• Option to display what forum(s) the latest threads were posted in.
• Poll icon in the latest threads section for threads which contain polls.
• New option to change the date/time format for news posts.
• Support for left/right text direction and languages.
• All known bugs from v1.01 have been fixed.

There are 7 new options in your Admin CP which include:

• News Date & Time Format (Allows you to change the date/time format for news posts)
• Show News Subscribed Threads (Shows the "subscribed" icon in the news posts if a user is subscribed to that post)
• Number of Archived News Posts to Display (Allows you to set the number of archived news posts you would like to display)
• Show Preview in Archive? (Similar to the thread preview, shows a preview of the threads in the News Arcive section)
• Show Subscribed Icon? (Shows the "subscribed" icon in the latest threads section for users that are subscribed to that thread)
• Show Preview of New Threads? (Similar to the thread preview option for the forumdisplay page, it shows you a preview of the thread)
• Show Latest Threads Forum? (Shows a link to, and the name of the forum the thread is in)

Most every template has changed as well, so it may be necessary to revert your templates and re-apply any chnages you have made.


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

Copyright:
This script is ? 2003 - 2004 vBadvanced.com and PlurPlanet, LLC.
This hack is NOT to be re-distributed in any way or placed on a website for download without permission.
All copyright notes in the script itself must remain unchanged.


Thanks To:
Faranth & Littlebit for helping test the beta versions and hopefully squashing most of the bugs.

[Dark_Wizard]

Originally Posted by Xanthine

I keep on getting:
Parse error: parse error in /home/blackassassins.org/public_html/adv_index.php on line 15

I dont know why, the installation went smooth but it just wont let me open the web page up.

Thats one of the errors I found...

Attachment removed at Tigga's request.

[Tigga]

I thought about adding the number of queries that each option will generate, but ended up deciding just to list them in the readme & here in the post. I may add that to future versions though.
As far as adding more custom templates, there's really not much of a point... The code from the custom templates can easily be copied and added into the index template. If someone really needed options to turn them on/off, then the settings could be added, and a conditional thrown around the code in the index template. The only reason the 2 custom templates are still there now is for people that have one or two blocks where the content might change often. The info being in seperate templates obviously makes it a little easier to find and modify the content quickly.

Xanthine - The error you are getting is probably caused by entering the path to your forums incorrectly. Can you post the entire chdir line here?

[Xanthine]

Yep working fine now, thanks a million Dark Wizard.

[Dark_Wizard]

Originally Posted by Xanthine

Yep working fine now, thanks a million Dark Wizard.

No problem...enjoy!

[Dark_Wizard]

Originally Posted by Xanthine

One more thing, I know this sounds stupid but I am having a hard time finding where to edit all the different things... anyone? I thought the install script installed it into my admin cp so if it did where exactly is it installed?

You have to add it to your admincp/index.php...check the readme.html file

[Xanthine]

Nevermind I just didnt see they were on the bottom of all the vBulletin options

[Tigga]

Originally Posted by Dark_Wizard

You have to add it to your admincp/index.php...check the readme.html file

Add what? There aren't any modifications to that file... To change the options and such you go to your Admin CP => vBulletin Options => vBadvanced Homepage Settings (should be the last set). The templates are with the rest of the vBulletin templates, listed under Index.

[Dark_Wizard]

Originally Posted by Tigga

Add what? There aren't any modifications to that file... To change the options and such you go to your Admin CP => vBulletin Options => vBadvanced Homepage Settings (should be the last set). The templates are with the rest of the vBulletin templates, listed under Index.

I threw that off the cuff...anyway the fixed version of your adv_index.php file is attached above...the one in the zip has errors

[Tigga]

Like what exactly? I tried taking a look at your file, but the spacing is all screwed up and it's next to impossible to use a compare program to see the differences.
I would also appreciate it if you would remove that attachment from your post as you're not allowed to re-post something like that.

[ForKmaN]

I get this when I try to go to theindex file for it!

Everything installed fine

Warning: chdir(): No such file or directory (errno 2) in /home/gbadmin/public_html/adv_index.php on line 13

Warning: main(./global.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/gbadmin/public_html/adv_index.php on line 74

Fatal error: main(): Failed opening required './global.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/gbadmin/public_html/adv_index.php on line 74