Miscellaneous Hacks - [CMS] Use original thread for comments

As of 4.1.11 this functionality is included in vbulletin. So you no longer need this mod.

What does this do?
This is a really simple hack that sets the thread for article comments to be the original thread for any thread that is promoted to an article.

What can I use it for?
This mod has two major uses:

1. If you have a wealth of information in your forums and you want to promote it into articles, this mod allows you to retain the rest of the thread as comments in the cms while adding any new comments as replies to the thread; essentially allowing it to function as both a forum thread and a CMS article.

2. If you want to use multiple fourms for CMS comments. This is a fairly none obvious use case, but probably a popular one. If you have three sections in your cms (for example) and want each section to feed into its own forum, the current cms dosn't allow you to do this. With this mod installed, you can. Instead of creating your new article directly in the cms create it in the forum you wish to use for comments. Write your article as the first post of the thread and promote it to a cms article. Fill out the extra information needed (eg publish date) and save. Comments will be saved into the original thread, in the forum you created it in.

Installation Vb 4.0.1 and later
1. Import product

Uninstallation
1. Disable the plugin "set thread id"

Full uninstallation
1. Move threads that have been promoted to articles into the vbcms comments forum.
2. COPY the threads back to their original forums
3. Remove product

Steps 1 and 2 are needed to retain cache functions on the comments threads. Without them new comments will not appear on the article.

Changelog

• 4.0-0.1 a2
  • Fixed bug causing original thread to be delete when the article was deleted
• 4.0-0.1 a1
  • Initial release

Notes

• I believe this is the first mod for the CMS (not including addon widgets/content types)
• Removing this product entirly will cause issues with the cache on any articles using the original thread. Follow the uninstall steps to remove functionallity while retaining the ability to comment on these articles this mod has altered.
• [S] Although its compatible with vbulletin 4.0 Rc 4, a bug in RC 4 and 4.0.0 Gold prevents it from acctually working. I have provided a replacement hooks_vbcms.xml file which corrects the issue in the interim.[/S] (fixed in vb4.0.1)
• [s]Deleting an article will remove the associated original thread This is considered a bug in this product and will hopefully be fixed with the next release. [/s] (fixed)
• The above bug has been fixed, however pending this request: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/proje...?issueid=34188 Thread tags for the original thread will still be removed. There is /nothing/ I can do about that until the issue listed is resolved. (this has been marked as fixed in 4.0.2; will update further when i've tested that its fixed.)
• [S]If you hard delete the original thread without first removing the article you will be affected by this bug: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/proje...?issueid=34187 the fix I posted to that issue needs to be applied BEFORE deleting the original thread. After more research, this only becomes an issue if you promote a thread more than once. If you've done this, you can fix the error by clearing the CMS cache.[/S] (fixed in 4.0.1)

As of 4.1.11 this functionality is included in vbulletin. So you no longer need this mod.

[Carnage]

Originally Posted by Boots

Does this apply to GOLD PL1?

Yes. I will update the first post once vb release a version with the issue fixed.

Originally Posted by buontaiviem

Thanks, i will try find something on VB CMS code

If it dosn't get fixed along with the friendly urls supporting proper utf-8 encoding etc, i'll look into this more myself, However I think the only result of my looking into it will be to submit a bug report to vb.

[GeorgeB85]

Does anyone know if all the issues have been fixed yet?

[buontaiviem]

Originally Posted by Carnage-

Yes. I will update the first post once vb release a version with the issue fixed.



If it dosn't get fixed along with the friendly urls supporting proper utf-8 encoding etc, i'll look into this more myself, However I think the only result of my looking into it will be to submit a bug report to vb.

Yes, if you find a bug, please report to vb fix it.

[Sarcoth]

Awesome mod Carnage. I have to agree with the others, this is a basic functionality that should already be a part of Gold. Thanks for making this mod.

[Carnage]

Originally Posted by GeorgeB85

Does anyone know if all the issues have been fixed yet?

The deleting original thread issues has been /mostly/ fixed (it unfortunaltly still deletes tags attached to the thread, and will do untill vb move one of the hooks i'm using to a slightly more sensible place.

Issues with character encoding remain; but i'm waiting on the next vb release to see if that fixes this along with the friendly urls.

The issue with the hooks file you have to upload still exists, but uploading the file provided here fixes it.

[Verionia]

Will download this once bugs are fixed

[Morrus]

This ia a great idea! I was actually very surprised to find out that promoting things to article status didn't work that way be defult, as it seems very obvious.

For me at least I'd need it to do the same with blogs as it does with forum threads. I'm far more likely to promote a blog post when one of my columnists writes an article, and having all the comments being on one place under the blog entry rather than in two places makes much more sense.

[Carnage]

Its much harder to do with blog posts; as the comments for blog posts are stored separatly from the beggining. It might be something I look at doing when i've got more time; but right now I can almost certainally say that there won't be hooks in the right places to perform the task without code edits.

[meissenation]

Installed and promoted a thread to an article with no problems. Thanks!

Question and pardon me if it's stupid - if I promote a thread that already has a bunch of replies will it break anything?

[Carnage]

You'll get unexpected results if you promote the second post of a thread; (eg the first post won't be shown at all but all the rest of the comments (including the second post) will be) but otherwise it should be fine; better yet, the existing posts in the thread will also be shown as comments as soon as the article is published.