Allow Your Users to Post Anonymously Without Logging Out

When I released my Post As Anonymous Mod Hack (now obsolete), many users wanted the ability to allow ANY user to post anonymously. This hack fulfils that request.

It is a VERY long and difficult hack to install. Therefore, I have written the instruction file radically different than any I have ever written before. This one is written in discrete steps. Rather than having you blindly edit files and hope everything works when it's done, I have you do the hack in steps and TEST each step.

IF YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO CODE, I SUGGEST YOU POST A SERVICE REQUEST AND ASK SOMEBODY TO INSTALL THIS FOR YOU.

Features:
A. Control anonymous posting at the board, forum, usergroup, and user level.

This means that you can use the anonymous posting in any combination that you can use features such as allowing users to reply to posts.

B. Users can post anonymously, but still subscribe to the thread.

C. You can set the anonymous username per usergroup. For example, Admins can post as Anonymous Admin, while regular users post as Anonymous Registered Member.

D. Mods and Admins can see who truly posted.

E. Users can see their name on their own anonymous post.

F. The "edited by" message does not show on anonymous posts.

G. Lastposter works properly.

H. Search will not pull up a user's anonymous posts under their name. But, you can search for all anonymous posts.

I. Anonymous posts are marked so that you don't forget the post is anonymous and "out" yourself.

J. Anonymous posts can be safely quoted.

I will not support this hack for any version of vbulletin other than 3.0.7.

[amykhar]

Originally Posted by adielsh

never mind i found the problem but why i can't writ anonymi when i use administration user?

You have to enable it for the user group that you want to be allowed to use it. You also have to run that query to update the permissions of existing users.

[amykhar]

Originally Posted by Greebo

Great hack so far - I'm on step 7 now - but one omission in your instructions:

Step 6r is missing instructions to upload showthread.php -- took me a while to figure out why I couldn't see who I was posting as when logged in as my admin account.

Thank you. I'll fix that in a few minutes.

[Greebo]

This is an excellent hack! I really needed this for my forums. Can I make a contribution?

I do have one question tho - for some reason my "anon" post still shows my avatar to me - but others see the avatar I specified (I liked the eyes listed above). What am I missing?

[amykhar]

You should be seeing your own user profile - avatar and all. But, others should see the profile for the anon user. So, what you are describing is how it should work.

[Greebo]

Ok your statements:
ALTER TABLE `post` ADD `postanon` TINYINT( 4 ) DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL ;
ALTER TABLE `post` ADD `anonname` VARCHAR( 50 ) NOT NULL ;
ALTER TABLE `forum` ADD `postanon` TINYINT( 4 ) DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL ;
ALTER TABLE `forum` ADD `anonname` VARCHAR( 50 ) NOT NULL ;
ALTER TABLE `thread` ADD `postanon` TINYINT( 4 ) DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL ;
ALTER TABLE `thread` ADD `anonname` VARCHAR( 50 ) NOT NULL ;

Should *NOT* be TINYINT.

My tester account user id is 257 but its being changed to 127 because the column is too small. Change it to standard int

[Greebo]

Should users who have posted anonymously be able to edit their anonymous post?

My test account sees the edit button, but gets a permissions error when attempting to edit. However, if my admin account goes in to edit, it works.

I'm guessing there's a test in editpost thats not taking anonymity into account? Or is this intended?

[Greebo]

Ok, here's what I ended up doing to make this work:

In editpost.php I replaced:

PHP Code:

    if ($bbuserinfo['userid'] != $postinfo['userid'])
   {
    // check user owns this post
    print_no_permission();
   }
   else
   {
    // check for time limits
    if ($postinfo['dateline'] < (TIMENOW - ($vboptions['edittimelimit'] * 60)) AND $vboptions['edittimelimit'] != 0)
    {
     eval(print_standard_error('error_edittimelimit'));
    }
   } 


With

PHP Code:

   if ($postinfo['postanon'])
   {
    if ($bbuserinfo['userid'] != $postinfo['postanon'])
    {
     // check user owns this post
     print_no_permission();
    }
   }
   else
   {
    if ($bbuserinfo['userid'] != $postinfo['userid'])
    {
     // check user owns this post
     print_no_permission();
    }
   }
   // check for time limits
   if ($postinfo['dateline'] < (TIMENOW - ($vboptions['edittimelimit'] * 60)) AND $vboptions['edittimelimit'] != 0)
   {
    eval(print_standard_error('error_edittimelimit'));
   } 


Hope that helps if anyone else is having this issue. I suspect the install instructions just missed a step here...unless I missed them but I checked several times.

[amykhar]

Originally Posted by Greebo

Ok your statements:
ALTER TABLE `post` ADD `postanon` TINYINT( 4 ) DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL ;
ALTER TABLE `post` ADD `anonname` VARCHAR( 50 ) NOT NULL ;
ALTER TABLE `forum` ADD `postanon` TINYINT( 4 ) DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL ;
ALTER TABLE `forum` ADD `anonname` VARCHAR( 50 ) NOT NULL ;
ALTER TABLE `thread` ADD `postanon` TINYINT( 4 ) DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL ;
ALTER TABLE `thread` ADD `anonname` VARCHAR( 50 ) NOT NULL ;

Should *NOT* be TINYINT.

My tester account user id is 257 but its being changed to 127 because the column is too small. Change it to standard int

Doh. Can't believe I did the tinyint thing. I'll change the directions right now.

[amykhar]

Originally Posted by Greebo

Ok, here's what I ended up doing to make this work:

In editpost.php I replaced:

PHP Code:

    if ($bbuserinfo['userid'] != $postinfo['userid'])
   {
    // check user owns this post
    print_no_permission();
   }
   else
   {
    // check for time limits
    if ($postinfo['dateline'] < (TIMENOW - ($vboptions['edittimelimit'] * 60)) AND $vboptions['edittimelimit'] != 0)
    {
     eval(print_standard_error('error_edittimelimit'));
    }
   } 


With

PHP Code:

   if ($postinfo['postanon'])
   {
    if ($bbuserinfo['userid'] != $postinfo['postanon'])
    {
     // check user owns this post
     print_no_permission();
    }
   }
   else
   {
    if ($bbuserinfo['userid'] != $postinfo['userid'])
    {
     // check user owns this post
     print_no_permission();
    }
   }
   // check for time limits
   if ($postinfo['dateline'] < (TIMENOW - ($vboptions['edittimelimit'] * 60)) AND $vboptions['edittimelimit'] != 0)
   {
    eval(print_standard_error('error_edittimelimit'));
   } 


Hope that helps if anyone else is having this issue. I suspect the install instructions just missed a step here...unless I missed them but I checked several times.

Good catch. Editing has been the bane of my existance from day one. I'll test your tweaks and see how it goes on my test board.

[adielsh]

Originally Posted by amykhar

You have to enable it for the user group that you want to be allowed to use it. You also have to run that query to update the permissions of existing users.

I enable the permission of the administarator user group to write anonymous
and i run all query and it dosn't work, all user group can write as anonymous but only administarator user group can't
mybe i don't run right the query which query i need to run for the administarator user group?