Administrative and Maintenance Tools - vBMQN - Moderation Queue Notifications + Desktop App

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THE VB3 VERSION IS LOCATED HERE !

Introduction
There are many scenarios where this mod would come in handy for administrators. There are too many for me to cover them all, so I will give you the scenario this mod was developed for...

If you have a hand full of moderating staff and a large number of forums, adding each moderator to each forum can be quite a pain, however doing it that way would give you notifications for those moderators when something dose need their attention from within those said forums...

Another option would be to setup staff to be Global Moderators, this removes the need to add them to specific forums but it also removes queue notifications because moderators wouldn?t be assigned to individual forums...

We require new members to be moderated and/or that their first submissions to the forum require moderating, this can become quite a pain because again staff would need to continually check the moderation queue for new items...

The Solution and Requirements
What we need is moderation queue notifications via email and possibly a desktop app for those staff that would rather not use their email/inbox.

Features:
- Email Notifications for multiple users/addresses
- Notifications for every item type (posts, threads, attachments etc.)
- Email sending using the vB mail method/system (plain text emails)
- Email generation should use the vB Phrase system (multi-language support)
- Automated checking of the moderation queue (vB Cron system)
- Should support the Scheduled Task log system (debugging, report actions taken)
- Support for external applications and their development (xml based status)

All of the above are present in the first release of this mod (v1), please see the screen shots.

This mod is setup as a vB Cron task; I could not see/find a better way to make this an automated system working with anything else from within the vB system. By default the Cron task is setup to run every 30 minutes, if you would like to adjust this, simply go in and adjust the Cron job as you wish.

Desktop App
At the moment I am still developing a windows (.net) desktop app to work with this, right now we don?t have a big need for this so it?s not a priority for me to develop this and get it out to you any time soon, when the moderation queue is checked regardless of its current state the included xml file is updated to reflect this. So all your own app would need to do is read in this xml file and take the action you require.

If there is a massive interest in the desktop app for this I could be persuaded to push it to the top of my job list, for now though it is work in progress and with no planned deadline or release date.

Support
We have been using this mod in a production environment for almost 12 months now with no problems at all, it is really quite a simple mod and I?m surprised it hasn?t been done already, given the number of requests I have seen.

I will support this as best I can, I am a busy guy so you will need to understand this if you do run into any problems and request support.

Install/Upgrade
Installing this mod is much like any other, upload the files in the download to the same locations on your server, import the product xml file, go to the Admin > Settings > Options > vBMQN: General Options page and configure as you wish. If you are upgrading from an older version simply follow the same steps as installing for the first time.

Change Log
v1.0 - 11 Feb 2013
- First version

v2.0 - 12 Feb 2013
- Added support for table prefix's ( config.php > $config['Database']['tableprefix'] = ''; )
- Rewrite of the database query code, now uses the vB Database Class ( $vbulletin->db->query_first )
- Changed from the use of the php "number_format" function to the vB function "vb_number_format"
- Added instant email notification rather than sending emails to the vB mail queue ( $notsubscription = true )

Enjoy!
This has helped us allot and I hope those of you who have requested this before find it to be ?just the job? as well.

Regards,
Lee Roberts

[cdoyle]

We've been using this for a few months, but lately it seems we are getting more emails of posts that need moderation but when we go to the forum, there is nothing there.

My mods want me to remove this feature, but I'm hoping there is something that could be tweaked.

[peterherman]

Hi,

i have installed the Add-On, and the i have test it, and it did not work. The problem is: the System send me no E-Mails, for moderated Posts.
Can you give me a hint, what i can do now?

Thanks and regards

EDIT: It works now, i forgot to copy two files, sorry.

[xony]

Hi, had long waiting for a mod to do this, thank you very much, but I have an error when running cron, I get this error:

vBMQN


Warning: SimpleXMLElement::asXML([path]/includes/xml/vbmqn.xml) [simplexmlelement.asxml]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in [path]/includes/cron/vbmqn.php on line 59
Queue Checked

would be possible to fix it? thank you again.

[Lee Roberts]

Originally Posted by cdoyle

We've been using this for a few months, but lately it seems we are getting more emails of posts that need moderation but when we go to the forum, there is nothing there.

My mods want me to remove this feature, but I'm hoping there is something that could be tweaked.

Hi, sorry for the delay in getting back to you!

Could it be that one of your "mods" is getting to the items waiting before the other mods check/get the email and so when they go to the queue its empty?

Originally Posted by xony

Hi, had long waiting for a mod to do this, thank you very much, but I have an error when running cron, I get this error:

would be possible to fix it? thank you again.

Hi, in the error message "Permission denied" would suggest there is a problem with file permissions for the .xml file you uploaded to the server, what permission dose this file have?

My file permission is set to 644 and this works just fine for me/my server setup, let me know and we can hopefully get this working for you.

Thanks,
.Me

[xony]

thanks for your reply, the current permissions are at 644, is like giving the error, I've risen to 777 and stops giving error but so clear I guess I can not leave them for safety reasons, there would be some other solution?, although that mistake, I'll keep using it, I'm doing well, thanks for your help.

[Lee Roberts]

Originally Posted by xony

thanks for your reply, the current permissions are at 644, is like giving the error, I've risen to 777 and stops giving error but so clear I guess I can not leave them for safety reasons, there would be some other solution?, although that mistake, I'll keep using it, I'm doing well, thanks for your help.

Morning,

Humm, with out seeing your server setup its hard to tell...

What permissions for /includes and also /includes/xml folders?

If you have no need for xml support (i.e - Support for external applications and their development (xml based status)), then i can make you a custom version of this mod (vbmqn.php), just simple upload of 1 file. Just let me know.

.Me

[juzz86]

G'day Lee, thankyou for your work mate, this looks like it will be a perfect fit for us!

I've installed and copied the files across and am just awaiting some moderated posts to test. After running the scheduled task manually (vB 4.2.1), I've got the following output. It looks like it can't find the files, although they are both where they should be. Any ideas mate?

vBMQN

Warning: include_once([path]/./includes/cron/vbmqn.php) [function.include-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in [path]/admincp/cronadmin.php on line 116

Warning: include_once() [function.include]: Failed opening '[path]/./includes/cron/vbmqn.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/home/celluieo/php') in [path]/admincp/cronadmin.php on line 116

Done

Cheers!

Justin

[tbworld]

1.) Did you by chance rename your admincp directory in Admin Control Panel?

2.) If your not scared of editing your files, you can go to the error-ed line and dump the current working directory. If the files are where they are suppose to be, then your current working directory has been altered for some reason.

Of course this only works if your testing the mod on a test board, which you should be doing.

$cwd = getcwd();  vardump($cwd); die();  //Will display the current working directory

[juzz86]

Originally Posted by tbworld

1.) Did you by chance rename your admincp directory in Admin Control Panel?

2.) If your not scared of editing your files, you can go to the error-ed line and dump the current working directory. If the files are where they are suppose to be, then your current working directory has been altered for some reason.

Of course this only works if your testing the mod on a test board, which you should be doing.

$cwd = getcwd();  vardump($cwd); die();  //Will display the current working directory

Thanks again for your help bud. Funnily enough, it works just fine in our testbed - e-mails and all.

As such, I went to deploy it and ran into this.

The good news is that a re-upload of the working files, and a re-install of the product now sees it working beautifully. This will be a great addition to our little forum - thanks again to you both!

Justin

[daveaite]

Very cool concept!