Forum Display Enhancements - e-steki Featured threads 1.0.1

What does this do?
This hack lets mods/admins to choose some threads as featured, enter a description (if no description entered the first post will be used) and they will be displayed at forumdisplay, in the position that the admin selected. Refer to the Features section below for more information.

Features

Admin Features

1. Absolutely NO template modifications and you even get to control where the table will be placed in Forumdisplay with a simple setting!
2. Fully phrased.
3. Ability to set a cutoff limit, so that if the featured threads are more than X, the rest will not show.
4. Ability to specify whether the featured threads will be ordered by the date they were featured, their last post date or their creation date.
5. Ability to specify whether html, bbcode, [img] tags or smilies will be shown in the description (or the first post if no description has been entered).
6. When featuring/un-featuring a thread, the action is logged in the moderator log.
7. A nice, usable and extensive manual instead of an ugly readme.txt ;-)

End user / moderator Features

1. Moderators can enter a fully formatted description with bbcodes and everything (if allowed by the admin)
2. The table is collapsible, and if it has nothing to display it doesn't show.
3. Thread elements that are displayed: Thread icon, Title, Link to the thread, creation date and time, number of replies (clickable), thread poster.

Don't forget to Mark as Installed!
Support will be provided only for a few days after each release.
Installation instructions and a FAQ are in the manual.

[haytham]

One question before I install. Does this show on the main forum home or inside the forums? I need one that shows outside on the main forum home not that if your mod doesn't would that mean it's not a good mod. It's just what I need at the moment. Thanks.

[Spinball]

Couple of questions.
How do you mark a thread as being featured? If it's a change to the thread table then might it not be better to add an additional table? Not a good idea to alter main tables IMO.
Also how difficult would it be to make it so that members can make a paypal payment to feature their thread for a certain period of time or when the thread is moved to a different forum?

[Akademiks]

update for 3.8 please

[gedsta]

I too have suffered from this issue, however, if you disable it it goes away. But if you uninstall it, you get database errors.

Any ideas on how to solve the database errors?

Invalid SQL:

SELECT 
forum.title as forumtitle,
forum.forumid,
thread.threadid,
thread.title as threadtitle,
thread.postuserid as posterid,
thread.postusername as poster,
thread.dateline,
thread.replycount,
thread.isfeatured,
thread.fdesc,
thread.iconid,
post.pagetext
FROM vb_thread as thread
LEFT JOIN vb_forum as forum ON(forum.forumid = thread.forumid)
LEFT JOIN vb_post as post ON(post.postid = thread.firstpostid)
WHERE 
thread.isfeatured = 1
ORDER BY  DESC;

MySQL Error   : You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'DESC' at line 19

[Fergal C]

For VB 3.8.2 - I added "Featured Threads" to my forum using the Notices Feature (Admin CP - Notices).

You can change the title from "Notices" to "Featured Threads" in the Phrase Manager (Admin CP - Language & Phrases - Phrase Manager - Phrase Type - Global - Notices).

Simply Add New Notice when you want to feature a thread.

Works for me on my business forum !

[StrangeMusicInc]

4.0 or 4.1?

[brandon515]

Same here. Anything like this for VB 4 ?

[bilal.ahmed]

any hack for vb 3.8.4 or 4 ?

[angeljs]

Would love to see this for vB4!

[dutchbb]

Not working in 3.8, already found a major bug.

It changes the URLs of "New Thread" buttons in main forums to one of the subforums.