vB Assistant

Name: vB Assistant
Version: 1.1
templates to edit: 1 - 2

Description: vB Assistant is like a mini cpanel for your members, it small yet contains lots of information.

It will help you get to things much faster in a organized fashion. It will tell you all you need to know about your private messages, How many you have, how many in total, and show you the newest one in detail. It will show you the name of the person that sent it, the link directly to the PM (no hassle with going to inBox first), When you get a new PM within 24 hours It'll let you know with a flashing image and a "Received Today!" caption.

After the message ages (24 hours has past) it'll show the date instead. vB Assistant uses all your current forum settings, from date format, to forum title name.

vB Assistant will also let you know when a thread you started has a new reply which you haven't read. You will see a "View Replies" when someone posts in your thread. It will also tell you who the poster is, without even visiting the thread! It checks when was your last visit and determines if you read it or not. It wasn't easy since there isn't a "message unread" column in the database, so i managed to use the last login time.

vB Assistant has a mini quick search box, just type and hit enter.

When a user is not registered and he/she views vB Assistant, it will let them know what feature they have access to, and also tell them to register to get access to those features. (PM, cpanel links, etc...).

The buddie list is also available, clicking the username takes you to the PM window, clicking the red X will remove the buddie.

Each section in vB Assistant has a expandable/collapsible switch, If you do not want to see a part of it just click and it folds away with cool javascript affect

By having expandable/collapsible sections vB Assistant becomes even more compact and organized.

vB Assistant will also refresh every two minutes by default, it can be changed if wanted.

I see vB Assistant as a mini messenger that you can keep open (since it's small) while you browse the 'net

There is also a mini statistics section that will show you some information about how many registered members, users online, total post, etc...

Plus it will keep track of how many posts were made in the last 24 hrs.

Anyway, you get the idea.


Installation:

Very easy: Instructions are attached.
couple variables to edit, couple templates and your done.

Other information:

I wasn't going to release this yet, because i wanted to add more features, and remove anything that i later find unnecessary, But I am releasing in hope that i can get some ideas from you people on improving it.

If you find any bugs let me know and i will fix them. I have tested it many times. And have been using it for a couple days.

It should work with vbulletin version 2.x.x. I've tested it on 2.2.9 and 2.3.0

Please lick install if you find this useful

Updates:
March 30th: New version 1.1 Released.
Changes:

- Added: a PM Meter, shows percentage of how full inBox is
- Added: a preview of the private message, will show 75 characters of the message.,
- Added: 5 new images, for Meter.
- Fixed: PM Meter disappears when you have 1 new message to make space for the PM preview, Meter returns once the PM is read.

April 1st:

- Fixed bug: PM would show 1% full inBox when you had no PM's, now shows 0% when you have no messages in inBox

----------------------------------------------------------------

To upgrade simply re-upload assistant.php and overwrite. Edit new configuration settings.

Clear browser cache first to download the update.

[Zach]

One way around adding cookies is to hard code variables in at least for yourself personally dictating what sections are open and which ones are closed

[Zach]

My question is what is it going through that takes twenty seconds to load for me

I mean I got 3.0 megabits down and a dedicated server, so its going through something like crazy in the database. I have a few thousand pms, but no reason it should be going through all of them?

[Zach]

ok still have not even delved into tracking down what is hitting the db so bad, but I really liked this idea so I am running with it

http://sportsforum.ws/assistant.php

Is what I got so far

I have all sections closed to start

Fixed the arrows so they are pointing the right direction (they point down when its open, should be up - if you are going to follow the existing model this is taken from, that being windows)

Made it so it can have only one open section at a time.

Before I saw this I was working on a taskbar thingy and this just fit in perfect, so I will post that in a bit, its not in the task bar, like the others mentioned (to do that like they described you just create a side task bar, then create a new task bar in that and use the url to your script, ie http://sportsforum.ws/assistant.php and then set on auto hide, on top, etc however you want it)

Also took out the javascript links, got to go back and read the reason on why that was done again before I fix it or just leave it.

Nice job and nice idea.

[Talisman]

Hey guys.... I love the "right-click" activation for this, but we use that too much for copying and pasting stuff in the forums.

How could I change the command sequence to something else that isn't being used already? Maybe... shift key-right mouse click? Or Ctrl-A for "assistant" .... or some other combination??

Otherwise, could we add the vB Assistant to the Windows submenu that appears when one right-clicks the mouse? Instead of that working to launch the little window in it's place.

Thanks a bunch! :banana:

[Sebastian]

Yesterday at 12:37 AM Zach said this in Post #82
My question is what is it going through that takes twenty seconds to load for me

I mean I got 3.0 megabits down and a dedicated server, so its going through something like crazy in the database. I have a few thousand pms, but no reason it should be going through all of them?

it shouldn't take that long to load. Mines load as fast as a regular page.

it does about the same amount of queries that forum home does when fetching PM count, unread, etc.... shouldn't be no more than 7 - 8 queries, i didn't count them all though so i am guessing.

[Koopa]

Very nice

[AnaFreak]

can't understand the directions.......of course I am not that great at this stuff, my problem is on step3.

"Notes: Make sure you edit the "forums" name to the name of your directory!

Some where at the top of your template head insert above $headnewpm"

Where is this???

[Classy]

03-30-03 at 06:11 PM Yo. said this in Post #28
I have modified this hack to work as a docked frame instead of a popup, you can see it in action by clicking here (click Enable TK Assistant at the top left once you're there). If people like this for some reason, I can post the modifications here at vB.org.

I would like this very much. Have looked at your's and its just
what i'm lookin for. Thank you very much.

[Shimmy]

I would also like to see this as a dockable frame, as well as having the choice for popup.

[Classy]

--- bump