Miscellaneous Hacks - SocialForums 1.4

SocialForums for vBulletin 3.7
Created by Marius Czyz aka Phalynx.

This mod will work *ONLY* with vBulletin 3.7 or higher. It will not run on vBulletin 3.6.x due to non existent feature of "social groups".

Support will be only given for people who clicked Mark as INSTALLED.

Description
Not satisfied with vBulletin social groups messaging function? With SocialForums your social group leaders can create a standard forum for their group.
A group leader can only create a forum if the group has at least 5 members - this can be changed via settings. Optionally the group leader can be a moderator of such a social forum.

Permissions
Since 1.3 there are advanced permissions active (Forum and Archive). This includes read/write public and private (moderated/invite only) socialforums and creation of forum. As this needs two additional queries on every page you can disable this.

Demo
None, see screenshots

Installation
This product is fully phrased and uses template hooks. No file changes or manual template edits needed.
1. Upload bitfield_socialforums.xml to existing folder /includes/xml/
2. Upload functions_socialforums.php to existing folder /includes/
3. Fresh Installation: Just import the product. Upgrade: Import the product, allow overwrite. No forums get lost!
4. Check settings, especially for parent forum. Don't forget to set permissions via usergroups!

Troubleshooting
Q: I don't see a link to create a forum. Why?
A: Check permissions for the usergroup, espacially if the user is allowed to create forum.
A: Check if the usergroup meet min users requirement, see AdminCP/Settings/SocialForums.

Q: My users see the forums, but they shouldn't!
A: Check permissions for the usergroup, if the users usergroup is set to "can see".
A: Did you disabled the restriction mode? Enable it.

Todo
- By deleting a group the forum should also be deleted/archived. Currently this has to be done manually.

Known Issues
- On big boards with hundreds of social groups this mod can really impact the performance because of the mass of new created forums. If you still want to use this mod use the "Minimum Members" feature with a higher value. Using the permission check there are additional two queries on every page.

History
1.4.6, 6th October 2008
- Permissions are now also active in Archive

1.4.2, 27th May 2008
- Added: If a group has a linked forum the grouplisting has the last post date and count of postings (with permission check).
- Added: Recent threads in linked forum on group home
- Added: Private groups: Link to forum only shown to members of group
- Changed: Enabled permissions for unregistered usergroup. Unregistered Users are not more explicit denied without a check of it's usergroup

1.3.1, 23th May 2008
- Fixed: Not existing array

1.3.0, 23th May 2008
- Added: Permissions are now active. This includes read/write public and private (moderated/invite only) socialforums and creation of forum. Please check permissions for every usergroup! As this needs two additional queries on every page you can disable this.
- Added: Checks for permission before the creation link will be displayed
- Changed: Default View Age set to "Show all Threads"

1.2.1 8th April 2008:
- Added: Group messaging can be disabled via options (previously: always disabled)

1.2.0 4th April 2008:
- Added: Groupleader can now be moderator of group forum
- Added: Minimum Members that are required for own forum
- Added: Group messaging will be automatically hide for group that has own forum
- Added: Forums are created with more allowances
- Added: By deleting a forum the linked socialgroup get's updated
- Added: Forum's description contains link back to social group
- Added: By changing group's name it synchronize it with the forum's name

1.0/1.1 1st April 2008:
- Initial releases

[Reeve of shinra]

Does this service work on nagging ex girlfriends? lol

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by Morrus

Eeek. I can't be sure, but I upgraded to 3.8.0 and social groups are now completely broken - no discussion capability at all.

There is no 3.8-ready version of SocialForums yet. I'm waiting for a more stable version.

Originally Posted by ReCom

The display options (Sorted by, Sort order, From the, Show Threads) at the top of the thread listings doesn't work. Clicking the "Show Threads" button will return error page "Invalid Action Specified" in IE6 and "You did not select any valid threads" in Firefox 3

Uhm, cannot confirm that. Are you using vB3.8?

Originally Posted by ReCom

It would be nice if the thread list appear in the social group page as well ...

That has already been requested, but it needs much work. I'm not sure if it worth it.

Originally Posted by Mark.B

I have to say I shan't be upgrading to 3.8 because of Social Forums not working. vB's new system, whilst an improvement on what went before, still leaves Social Group discussions isolated just like the blogs...if like me you have a site where everyone uses Today's Posts/New Posts, then nobody EVER sees these things. My site's last blog post was in August, for example.

To be honest I'm starting to regret using all the blogs and social networking stuff, it's ill thought out and cobbled together very badly, and now they are having to change it all round again which breaks all the custom fixes people put in to make it work properly - such as this excellent mod!

The *only* way forward for Jelsoft is to have social group discussion posts and blog entries/comments mixed into getdaily and getnew searches, with an additional column to show what each result is..."Forum Post", "Blog Post", "Social Group Post" etc. That's the ONLY way it will ever work properly. But that's not really for this thread.

That's true, but with 3.8 they are already trying to bundle it alltogether.

Originally Posted by Mark.B

And with that, I successfully killed yet another thread.

It's a new service I offer.

Have YOU got a thread that's bubbling along nicely that you would like stopped in its tracks? Then drop me a line....I'll post to it, and I guarantee it won't get any more replies, ever!

Haha I'll be breaking your service

[YabbaDabba]

Thank you for a truly great mod!!

Originally Posted by Phalynx

There is no 3.8-ready version of SocialForums yet. I'm waiting for a more stable version.

So you will be porting this to 3.8???
(There was an earlier post that implied (to me at least ) you would not.)

Originally Posted by Phalynx

That has already been requested, but it needs much work. I'm not sure if it worth it.

Couldn't this be done trivially with an rss feed?

Originally Posted by Phalynx

That's true, but with 3.8 they are already trying to bundle it altogether.

Haven't seen anything from Jelsoft regarding bundled post/blog search results. Have you seen something official from them? Maybe their search engine rewrite will address this.

Again, thanks for your great effort.

[Mum]

Originally Posted by Reeve of shinra

Does this service work on nagging ex girlfriends? lol

ROFL Well you made me smile today

[thenewuser]

Amazing, thank you.

[wmlvb]

Newbie here! I was planning on upgrading to 3.8 when past beta mainly because of new blogging a social group features. I really want features like this on 3.8 for social groups! Should I just stick with 3.7 and use upload this social groups or wait until 3.8 comes out and it will be close to what this has to offer? I like the idea of groups having their own forums!!

[caldangel]

I installed it, and got most everything working — except: users who want to create the forum can't see the option. I made it so all usergroups could do that in any social group they are in, and the option still isn't showing up on the bottom bar like it does for me, the admin. Help please!

[caldangel]

Never mind about the previous post. I figured it out. The only person who can create the forum is the person who created the user group. And a user group needs to be created before a forum can be created.

Its all good and we're loving the mod!!!

[wmlvb]

Originally Posted by wmlvb

Newbie here! I was planning on upgrading to 3.8 when past beta mainly because of new blogging a social group features. I really want features like this on 3.8 for social groups! Should I just stick with 3.7 and use upload this social groups or wait until 3.8 comes out and it will be close to what his has to offer? I like the idea of groups having their own forums!!

I still would like to know if this mod is necessary if updating to 3.8?

Is there a lot of difference between the update Groups on 3.8 and this mod?
if so please list! Thanks for the help

[Bilderback]

I finally have this working with vb3.8
Everything worked fine except the links in group footer.
I've found that the Hook Location (group_view_message_start) no longer exists in vb3.8
When I changed the plugin hook location to (group_view_discussion_start), everything is fine.
I am assuming that the group_view_discussion_start Hook Location has replaced the group_view_message_start maybe?