Miscellaneous Hacks - Live Topic

. . . . . . . . Brought to you by scriptasy.com

. . . http://www.Scriptasy.com

Live Demo:

Live Topic 1.07b Demo (you must be logged in, and the topic must be "live")

Videos: 1.00b 1.06b

watch the damn videos... ^_^

Description:

This product is different from anything you have seen before, it raises the bar for forums. It will make your forums much more interactive, and also reduce server load.

Technical Details:

If a thread has been posted in X seconds then its now Live, if other users are viewing the Live topic and are on the last page they will experience a clean ajax experience while talking to other members. Once the thread is older than X seconds its no longer Live and it will now act like a normal thread. Also if a user edits one of their posts that's inside of the thread, it will be updated too so there is no longer a reason to ever have to refresh.

There is also logic for the viewer, the viewer of the thread has to be in an active state to see responses. An active user state is determined upon the users actions, if no actions were made in X seconds then the user is marked as inactive.

Also you may wonder why this could save your server bandwidth and CPU. If a user is refreshing to talk to another members the queries on a normal thread load are way more intense than the ajax call that this modification makes. So if you have 5 people talking to each other none of them have to refresh the page, all they are doing is simple page requests and one intense request when there has actual change.

You can test Live Topic with two users, you will see how amaizing this is... And probably spontaneously combust.

Found a bug? Want to request a feature?

Live Topic - Project Manager

Installation:

This is take less than 3 minutes to install, takes longer to notice its amazing feature. (you need multiple people to be active in the same topic)

Upgrade:

[1.01b to 1.XXb] Uninstall the product, then reinstall it. Overwrite all old files with new files and you should be fine.

[1.02b to 1.03b] Overwrite files, upgrade product (dont install product)

[1.03b to 1.04b] Uninstall the product, then reinstall it. Overwrite all old files with new files and you should be fine.

[1.04b to 1.05b, 1.05b to 1.06b,1.06b to 1.07b] Upgrade the product. Overwrite all old files with new files and you should be fine.

Works With (FF2, FF3, IE6, IE7, IE8, SF2, SF3, CHROME):

vBulletin [3.8.X]

get the vBulletin [3.7.X] version here

INCOMPATIBLE HACKS:

• USC
• PassiveVid (1.x)
• gXboxLive
• Topic (incl. Blog) of the Week
• Marquee Text

Versions:

1.01b
1.02b

fixes

safari 2 support
safari 3 support
google chrome support
added live topic icon on new posts page
fixed security issue, strongly suggest upgrading!

changes

added live edit (to avoid a performance hit i had to add two rows to two tables in the database)
added external style sheet

1.03b

fixes

fix double post
phrase notification
fixed an edit bug for people with table prefixes

changes

ability to change interval in ACP

1.04b

fixes

javascript error for guests
fixed live topic activation (first poster to raise a dead topic)

changes

auto quick reply focus after post

1.05b

fixes

css flaw
js error for unsupported browsers (random)
fixed chrome issue

changes

edit notification - thanks to nso
rebuilding some of the original logic to hopefully prevent product conflicts

1.06b

fixes

fixed a little javascript issue that had to do with displaying posts
uses GPC cleaner now

changes

limit the number of ajax posts on the live topic (example 40) and fade them away.
changed the way the hooks are used
tightened up everything a bit

1.07b

fixes

fixed a bug where the live topic notification always making an ajax call

changes

support user ignore list
changed the way the javascript logic worked (hopefully there are less compatibly issues) added support for IE6 and IE8

1.10

hmm

{Mark As Installed}

{Don't forget to vote for Modification of the Month}

[ptwiggens]

Originally Posted by Coders Shack

whats your forum path look like?

/home/xxxxxxxxx/public_html/forum/

url is forum.xxxxx.com

I should note that I was using this on 3.7 and it worked fine.

[Coders Shack]

right click on the image thats not showing up and tell me the path. Its probably because you need to place the image somewhere else now or change the line in the css folder:

clientscript/vbulletin_css/livetopic.css

[Coders Shack]

Originally Posted by alpayton

Wow - with a forum that's currently just growing (just a little over 500 members) and at the time the host had its fit about the spiking usage, there were only 30ish members online. I'd absolutely hate to see what size (must be tiny) forum this can run on without the issues of usage spiking. And, just to note...I had already accessed the ACP and played with the settings - extending the time for queries - obviously that didn't do much.

I do agree that this is a great concept, think it needs some tweaking.

... this is already optimized, it has the logic. If your server cant handle it its not the products fault, you need a better server.

There are over 420 sites using this product right now, and about 20% of them don't have the hardware to serve all the calls.

Play with the settings...

lower the idle time for the user (default is 5 mins)
lower the time for the topic to be active (default is 5 mins)
make the query interval higher (default is 2 seconds)

... Dont just install this knowing that you have a site with high traffic and hardware that doesn't have wiggle room and expect that it will be fine on your server out of the box.

Lynne what are your settings? Maybe he can use them.

I developed this in mind of highload sites.

[Coders Shack]

also i got the "conveyor belt" working, so in 1.06b it will totally be an option to limit the numbers of live posts.

[krustyx]

Processor #1 Vendor: GenuineIntel
Processor #1 Name: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E4600 @ 2.40GHz
Processor #1 speed: 2394.128 MHz
Processor #1 cache size: 2048 KB

Processor #2 Vendor: GenuineIntel
Processor #2 Name: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E4600 @ 2.40GHz
Processor #2 speed: 2394.128 MHz
Processor #2 cache size: 2048 KB

Memory: 4135004k/5242880k available

This is my server and your mod eats way too much power.

Theres only 1 website on the server.

This is a REALLY NICE mod.

Hope there's a setting or something to reduce the amount ressources this mod is asking.

[jambo_1969]

Originally Posted by Coders Shack

... this is already optimized, it has the logic. If your server cant handle it its not the products fault, you need a better server.

There are over 420 sites using this product right now, and about 20% of them don't have the hardware to serve all the calls.

Play with the settings...

lower the idle time for the user (default is 5 mins)
lower the time for the topic to be active (default is 5 mins)
make the query interval higher (default is 2 seconds)

... Dont just install this knowing that you have a site with high traffic and hardware that doesn't have wiggle room and expect that it will be fine on your server out of the box.

Lynne what are your settings? Maybe he can use them.

I developed this in mind of highload sites.

Are you saying then, that you are confident your mod is okay on a dual core, dedicated server with 4gig ram ?

Because when I installed it, lowered the settings, and put it live, I had around 550+ users on the one thread - my server spiked badly almost bringing everything to a standstill.

Your mod has huge potential, but I really do question it's useability on high use boards.

[Bounce]

Originally Posted by Coders Shack

and decent dedicated server could run this mod with very few issues (with the default settings)

I'm on a dedicated server,dual core,with 4GB RAM

[Bounce]

Originally Posted by jambo_1969

Your mod has huge potential, but I really do question it's useability on high use boards.

Agreed :up:

[jambo_1969]

Originally Posted by hIBEES

Agreed :up:

Ouch - a Hibee agreeing with a Jambo.

What's the world coming to

[Lynne]

Originally Posted by Coders Shack

Lynne what are your settings? Maybe he can use them.

I run my site on two servers - both Dual Core 2.4 GHz/4 MB Cache/1066 MHz FSB with 4 GB RAM each. Webserver is running RAID0 (2 - 74 GB 10 K SATA drives), mysql server just has a 250 GB SATA drive. I have had my servers optimized over at vb.com in the Server Configuration forum. After playing with the Request Interval setting to see if it makes a difference because of that mod_security error I was getting (it didn't - I'm still not sure what that is all about), I have left it at 3000 which is default. My server loads average about .30-.40. I really think every site is going to have to play with the settings themselves. Maybe put something in the first post about how if you have high server loads, then it is best to decrease the Thread Idle Time and User Idle Time and increase the Request Interval. Sometimes it is best to spell that out instead of just tell them they may play with the settings cuz not everyone can figure out if you should increase or decrease them.