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.

[ThePimp]

The only things that don't seem to be working are profile related.

[amykhar]

Originally Posted by ThePimp

I went top to bottom of your instructions, but it may be possible that something got missed, as it was around 4:00AM when I installed it, and I was starting to get tired. Let me ask you this... DOES your hack change the AVATAR for the Anon posters to the one being used in the Anon profile, as well as change the user title? If so, could you point me to which step in your instructions these functions are located?

Thanks

It changes the whole userid. When installed properly, normal users and logged out people see the profile of the Anonymous user that you created. Admins and mods see the profile of the true user.

[Lionel]

I do have a small problem. Although permissions are set, new users are not allowed

[Lionel]

I am able to fix when I go to user in admincp. I see that permissions are there. But he is not allowed. I save, then it's ok. Problem is I can't do that every time :-)

[Lionel]

Perhaps the profilefield is not updating? As admin I can see private field. I noticed all new users had nothing for anonymous permissions until I manually update user in control panel. Just click save without doing anything else, then I can see it in profile.

[Lionel]

It would have been nice to be able to use another set of new status icons for forums and subforums like forum_new.gif, forum_old.gif to indicate that forum accepts anonymous posting (anon_new.gif, anon_old.gif)

[mrsbuzzy]

Hello, I think this looks awesome! I just have one quick question before we start to install. Can we set it up so that only a specified forum allows anonymous posts? I have 2 forums I would like that option.

My other question is (I don't think this was mentioned in this thread, but I may have missed it) will people's signature show up when they're set to anonymous?

I greatly appreciate the work you put into this.
Dawn

[amykhar]

Originally Posted by mrsbuzzy

Hello, I think this looks awesome! I just have one quick question before we start to install. Can we set it up so that only a specified forum allows anonymous posts? I have 2 forums I would like that option.

My other question is (I don't think this was mentioned in this thread, but I may have missed it) will people's signature show up when they're set to anonymous?

I greatly appreciate the work you put into this.
Dawn

1. Yes. It's done so you can control it at forum, usergroup, user and even board level.
2. No. The sig of the Anonymous user account you create shows, not the true user's.

[amykhar]

Originally Posted by Lionel

It would have been nice to be able to use another set of new status icons for forums and subforums like forum_new.gif, forum_old.gif to indicate that forum accepts anonymous posting (anon_new.gif, anon_old.gif)

You can. Because you can check to see if the post is anonymous in the template, you can use conditionals to set it up.

[Lionel]

Originally Posted by Greebo

Ok, the modification to editpost.php has a logic error in it.

You test two conditions in a nested double test:
Was post made anon?
- Yes
-- was it anon before?
---Yes set a bunch of vars incl $threadupdate
---No set a bunch of vars incl $threadupdate
- No
-- was it anon before?
---Yes set a bunch of vars incl $threadupdate
---No set a bunch of vars incl $threadupdate

Then you later have logic twice to update the thread
// if (!empty($threadupdate))

$threadupdate will never be empty in either case.

Net effect: When a thread is posted and someone replies to it and then edits their reply, thread.postusername and thread.postuserid are overwridden inappropriately and the 2nd threadupdate . Thread should only be updated with anon/real user names and IDs if the OP is edited.


[/php]
You will see, I wrapped all updates to $threadupdate in a conditional validating that the post edited is the first post in the thread.

I also removed "postuserid = $edit[userid]" in all spots in that code (it was in every update to $threadupdate).

I seemed to have the same problem. I pinpointed it to editpost.php, where whenever someone edits his post, he will appear as the thread originator. I constantly have to rebuild threads. I am going to try your fix.