Maybe my approach is just all wrong?

[Rich_Z]

I have posted a request in this forum for the first of several mods I would like to have done on my site. I have offered to pay for this service, and am NOT a freeloader. I do not think my original request was going to be THAT tough to do. But maybe I am wrong. It was generally ignored, so I don't know for sure.

So I found what looked like a commercial vBulletin programming group (Pixeljunction), and contacted them via their site with a request for paid assistance to implement various mods for me. This was, too, ignored. So I tried again and specifically asked to the single mod mentioned in this forum. This also was ignored. I guess they have so much work that they can afford to do that. I'm very glad for them.

So what am I doing wrong? Halitosis of the keyboard fingers? Is there something inherrently wrong with trying to find assistance for work that I don't have the time to do myself?

When I was considering buying vBulletin (I now have two paid licenses) part of the draw was because there seemed to be a very large user base and in vBulletin.org there appeared to be a large amount of talent on tap to draw from for help. But are looks that misleading? From the mods I have seen in here, there are a lot of real good programmers available, but is this nothing more than just an ego board? Are genuine requests for help just shunned in favor of working instead on the latest and greatest bell and whistle just for accolades from the masses?

I'm really baffled by this. This probably isn't the proper place either to spout off like this, but heck, what do I know? I can't even figure out how to get the attention of interested and qualified programming help around here. So certainly I would fail at this attempt as well.

Later.....

[WetWired]

Maybe people can't understand exactly what it is that you want? Maybe the people that do understand what you want that view your post don't know how to do it? (not many hacks arround here that I've seen that write out truely static HTML pages to the server)
Personally, I don't know how to do it, and havn't enough time to write the major hacks that I need for my own site, much less for others. I view this forum because I am often able to help people with small things that require only one or two file edits.

[Rich_Z]

Well I can accept that this might certainly be the case. But darn, NO ONE is willing to even give it a shot to ask about clarification? PHP can't direct output to an ASCII text file? Well a standalone program in Perl would still do the job for me.

Certainly I can't be the first person to have a very complex vBulletin site that such a thing as a Table of Contents wouldn't be beneficial for?

To be honest, I thought for sure that this would be simple to do, so I guess it goes to show you how much I know about this! The code already exists in vBulletin, so all it needs is some rather minor modification and then just pump the output out to a file.

Darn, where's my PHP manuals......

[Logician]

Originally posted by Rich_Z
Certainly I can't be the first person to have a very complex vBulletin site that such a thing as a Table of Contents wouldn't be beneficial for?

So is what you after a table of forums listed in a style similiar to Admin CP/Forums/modify page?

[Rich_Z]

Yes! I want to have a single page as a Table of Contents, much like what you see in a book, so a user can scan it easily and not only know at a glance ALL of the forums on the site, but be able to directly jump to any one of interest.

The Admin CP/Forums/modify page is exactly what will work (minus the admin function links, of course).

Thanks!

[Logician]

ok I will do.. Can be helpful to others with too many categories or forum depth too..

[Rich_Z]

Wow! Really?? I had given up.

I REALLY appreciate your taking the time for this.

Thanks!

[Logician]

it's ok.. One reminder though: This page will have a high query load depending on the number of forums you have because the script has to go through the entire categories and get sub categories for each etc. It's structure will be same with Admin CP forum listing as you referred, so their query load will also be same. I guess it will not visited so often like a regular forum page, so I don't think it will be a big deal, but I just wanted to mention anyway..

[Rich_Z]

Well there are two ways I conceive of this working:

(1) A static HTML or PHP page that is nothing more than a Table of Contents that was generated manually via a selection in the Admin area. All this does is give a list of all currently active and visible forums on the site with the associated links directly to the forums.

(2) A dynamic page that will recognize a valid registered member of the forums, displaying the same info as above in number (1) but also displaying an indicator of any forums that have had new messages added since their last visit.

If speed will be an issue, I would likely prefer option #1, otherwise people won't wait around for the page to load and I will lose the reason for having it in the first place. My server is fairly quick (and the new one I am moving to is even faster), but speed is always an issue.

Perhaps an internal switch to turn on/off option #2?? I suppose #2 would be more interesting to program.....

Thanks again.

[Rich_Z]

Thank you, Logician!!

The mod you did for me not only is what I wanted, it is actually more and better than what I had asked for!