CommBull (Community Bulletin)

vb3.5 Commbull
vb3.6 Commbull

Note:
The 3.6 version is a commercial product, any queries on it should be submitted to: vb3.6 Support Site

THIS THREAD IS FOR SUPPORT FOR 3.0 VERSIONS ONLY. PLEASE VISIT THE APPROPRIATE FORUMS (links above) FOR THEIR SUPPORT

[valid point]
it's been brought to my attention that not everyone knows what this is ... fair enough: This hack is considered a "weekly newsletter" by the fact that it will email members (only sent by an admin) who have opted to receive it new posts, hot threads, etc ... basically a summary of what has been going on since the last time the newsletter was sent out. However there is a vast number of options, and I won't go into detail of all of them ... you can view the the images that I've attached, but u will only get a full idea by installing it.
I would say that there is 0 risk of this installation doing any damage to your current install as these are the changes that it does (manually and automatically):
- change profile.php and admincp/index.php
- add a couple columns to user table (receivebulletin and receivebulletin_type)
- add some phrases to phrase table (receive_email_from_commbull, type_email_from_commbull, newsletterformat, commbul)
- add a row to datastore table (commbull)
- add some html to nav template for admin side
So, if you are unhappy with the install. you can just ignore that it's there and it'll never cause any problems ... your next upgrade will overwrite any changes to the index and profile pages and the extra columns in the DB won't be an issue

[mods that i've added from vB2 version]
- to change languages, comment/uncomment line 22 and 23 to switch from English to German
- save prefs (option)
- skip to page X in case of mailout freeze
- auto redirect to next page (option)
- adding personalized text to top of newsletter w/out searching through the two text & html fields ... u'll c what i mean :ermm:

[INSTALL]
drop the 3 files into the admincp directory and then go to admincp/commbull.php ... follow the instructions and you are good to go.
If you find that the option isn't showing up on the control panel after the install, then it's because you aren't using the default phrases. Go into phrase manager, search for 'commbull' and update the fields appropriately.

If something goes wrong, don't worry .. it checks for already completed updates to the database to avoid redundancy ... enjoy!!

[Toneboy]

Yeah, the option was there previously. I'll check the links when I get a moment.

A readme.txt file in with the .zip file might be a useful addition to this hack.

[Cheertobi]

Hi,

did someone know how to fix the event & birthday problem?

Also the "last topic" on forum home is not shown, when sending the newsletter into a selected forum...

Regards,

Tobias

[Europeanlee]

I just want to confirm that this hack still currently works with VB 2.3.2?

Regards,

Lee

[Toneboy]

Versions of this hack for vB 2.*.* are here:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=32129 and
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=16290

In regard to the vB3 version I'm going to take a look through the installation instructions tonight and make sure I've changed all the templates appropriately. I missed that before, so apologies for that.

One last request: with the new thread style here this hack is currently shown as mod version 1.0.0. On my script this is shown as "Community Bulletin Email Generator version 2.4" - could the mod version be changed so that we can refer back to here to see if we're using the most up-to-date version of this hack? Thanks.

[Toneboy]

Okay within the installation instructions I see the initial message:

User table altered... Failed (Possibly already updated)
User table altered... Failed (Possibly already updated)
Phrase table updated (profile.php 1 of 3)...Already Update
Phrase table updated (profile.php 2 of 3)...Already Update
Phrase table updated (profile.php 3 of 3)...Already Update
Phrase table updated (admincp/index.php) ...Already Update

I've made the edits as shown below that, and I now have the Community Bulletin option back on the user's options page, but I only have a checkbox and no text where I presume the format of the message is meant to be?

Still nothing under the links within the admincp either - by the looks of things that it is to do with the phrases. What exactly should I be looking to edit there?

By the way, if it helps I went into the properties of my user table and it shows the following.

CREATE TABLE user (
  userid int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
  usergroupid smallint(5) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  username varchar(50) NOT NULL default '',
  password varchar(32) NOT NULL default '',
  email varchar(100) NOT NULL default '',
  styleid smallint(5) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  parentemail varchar(50) NOT NULL default '',
  homepage varchar(100) NOT NULL default '',
  icq varchar(20) NOT NULL default '',
  aim varchar(20) NOT NULL default '',
  yahoo varchar(32) NOT NULL default '',
  usertitle varchar(250) NOT NULL default '',
  customtitle smallint(6) NOT NULL default '0',
  joindate int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  daysprune smallint(6) NOT NULL default '0',
  lastvisit int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  lastactivity int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  lastpost int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  posts int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  timezoneoffset varchar(4) NOT NULL default '',
  pmpopup smallint(6) NOT NULL default '0',
  avatarid smallint(6) NOT NULL default '0',
  options int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  birthday varchar(10) NOT NULL default '0000-00-00',
  maxposts smallint(6) NOT NULL default '-1',
  startofweek smallint(6) NOT NULL default '1',
  ipaddress varchar(15) NOT NULL default '',
  referrerid int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  receivebulletin smallint(5) unsigned NOT NULL default '1',
  pmtotal smallint(5) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  pmunread smallint(5) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  passworddate date NOT NULL default '0000-00-00',
  salt char(3) NOT NULL default '',
  showvbcode smallint(5) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  msn varchar(100) NOT NULL default '',
  avatarrevision int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  membergroupids varchar(250) NOT NULL default '',
  displaygroupid smallint(5) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  reputation int(11) NOT NULL default '10',
  reputationlevelid int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '1',
  languageid smallint(5) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  threadedmode smallint(5) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  emailstamp int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  autosubscribe smallint(6) NOT NULL default '-1',
  birthday_search date NOT NULL default '0000-00-00',
  receivebulletin_type smallint(5) unsigned NOT NULL default '1',
  PRIMARY KEY  (userid),
  KEY usergroupid (usergroupid),
  KEY username (username),
  KEY birthday (birthday),
  KEY birthday_search (birthday_search)
) TYPE=MyISAM;

I take it that's correct?

[memobug]

Originally Posted by Europeanlee

I just want to confirm that this hack still currently works with VB 2.3.2?

Regards,

Lee

No, it doesn't You want to go back and search on COMMBULL and find one of the vb2.x.x versions. the one I was using way back was not a hack (it didnt' change or modify any vb scripts) but a standalone called commbull.php that went in the admin folder. It worked great for what it was. Actually it worked better than this 3.x.x version, which doesn't actually do events, birthdays or let the admin select specific posts to include in the newsletter.

Regards,

Matt

[wirewolf]

Originally Posted by Cheertobi

Hi,
did someone know how to fix the event & birthday problem?.............................
Regards,
Tobias

Ditto. No one seems to have an answer for this. Please someone! :disappointed:
I finally had to add a hard coded link in the html version for my forums' calendar for the users to click.

[memobug]

EVENTS

I have taken a crack at fixing the event problems. They are related to the fact that the database as of 3.0.3 now has the dates stored as an integer timestamp (big number) and this combull script expects them to be stored as a MM-DD-YYYY date format. There is also an issue related to the fact that there are now start and end dates associated with each event, and a separate issue related to the possible existence of private calendars.

If someone wants to PM me with their email address I can send instructions on how to modify the script to print events. This will help debug it. If you can't use an editor to modify the script and test the results, please don't bother PM'ing at this point. This is for debugging purposes only. I will send you a piece of code that replaces the CALENDAR section of commbull.php. It is ugly because it has the existing lines commented out with corrections inserted. We'll test it then clean it up before publishing it.

BIRTHDAYS

Birthdays are more messed up. The storage order MDY changed around and the script also has a bug in it that would prevent it from working properly if the birthday window (30, 60 days) wrapped a year end. I got it printing the current month's birthdays, but with 3500+ users, there is basically no point for me in taking the birthday thing any further. I am not going to acknowledge 300+ birthdays in the monthly newsletter anyway.

I suspect that there is a way to reuse code from the forumhome to do that, I might look at it if I have the chance but I have a lot of important things pressing.

PLEASE CONTACT ME BY PM ONLY, so we don't clutter this thread until we have a solution. Include your EMAIL address if you want code to test.

Regards,

Matt

[grandeur_69]

hi everyone ... i'm going to look into fixing some of these bugs, including all the calendar stuff, but i am currently traveling/working in Europe and won't be back till January. I now have it running on over 30 vB's (all on a couple of our servers) and it works really well ... we send out about 100,000 mailouts between all the forums.

[dethfire]

Originally Posted by grandeur_69

hi everyone ... i'm going to look into fixing some of these bugs, including all the calendar stuff, but i am currently traveling/working in Europe and won't be back till January. I now have it running on over 30 vB's (all on a couple of our servers) and it works really well ... we send out about 100,000 mailouts between all the forums.

grandeur_69 thanks, my 13k member forum still times out before preview