Forum Home Enhancements - [DBTech] InfoPanels v2 (vB5) [AJAX]

DragonByte Technologies are proud to present InfoPanels v2: The most feature-packed Welcome Panel system for vBulletin, and the first Welcome Panel system for vBulletin 5!

Why InfoPanels?

Info Panels is another product from DragonByte Technologies, creators of vBActivity and vBShout. Info Panels allows you to display useful and interesting information in a much more user friendly way, allowing your members to access important areas of the forum, and important information, without having to go through different menu screens.

The Welcome Panel displays all the information your users may want to see instantly when they log on, without having to go searching for it. A handy Module format means you don't have to fiddle with complex code in order to drop it on ANY page, you simply use the Site Manager natively in vBulletin 5!

The Top X Stats portion of the software allows your users to keep track of whats going on in the forum almost in real time - perfect for boards with many forums which are hard to keep track of!

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Complete Feature List

Welcome Panel

• The user's picture with link to the profile where they can edit their User Picture
• New posts and threads since the user's last visit
• Time and date
• # unread PMs (# total PMs)
• Forum Stats: Total Members / Total Threads / Total Posts
• Top Poster with link to their profile, showing number of posts and threads they have
• Own Posts / Threads
• # Posts Per Day (# Posts Today)
• % of forum's total posts
• What forum the user is most active in (# posts and # threads)
• Latest News ticker with fade between news items (settable in vBulletin Options)
• Link to User Settings page

Top X Stats

• Choose "X"
• Disable each individual block
• Set various options per block
• Create new blocks with different options based on each Block Type
• User Stats
  • Newest Members
  • Top Posters
  • Top Thread Starters
• Forum Statistics
  • Newest Replies
  • Most Viewed Threads

Caching

• Fully integrated with vBulletin 5's new Cache functionality using the "Standard" cache type
• Settable Time-To-Live in vBulletin options to balance stale content with resource savings
• "Global" stats such as the Forum Stats in the above list are cached user-agnostic
• Per-user stats like # Posts Per Day are cached per-user

Easy Setup

• A hassle-free Module setup lets you drop the Welcome Panel on literally any page via vBulletin 5's Site Builder!
• Configurable Module title lets you rename the "Welcome Panel" header should you choose
• Fully integrated with the Site Builder under the "Display" grouping

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This mod displays a copyright notification on all pages which includes:

• 1 Link to DragonByte Technologies homepage
• 1 Link to Product Description page of this modification

[meissenation]

The threads which show up in the Newest Replies seems to be hit or miss on my forum. Some threads show up, but other new replies in the same forum doesn't show up. I also have a subforum which is hidden to the public and only accessible to Administrators -- I can see the forum, but new replies in that subforum doesn't show up in the Newest Replies block. Any tips on troubleshooting?

[shimei]

Originally Posted by meissenation

The threads which show up in the Newest Replies seems to be hit or miss on my forum. Some threads show up, but other new replies in the same forum doesn't show up. I also have a subforum which is hidden to the public and only accessible to Administrators -- I can see the forum, but new replies in that subforum doesn't show up in the Newest Replies block. Any tips on troubleshooting?

I only notice this when someone posts a polls or links thread. They are different than a regular discussion thread, I suppose. So if someone starts a thread that began as a link, it and further replies will not show.

Can I ask you to check something for me too? When I trim the maximum amount of characters in the thread title, forum title, and or user name in the Newest Replies it does not display. Anything other than zero and the entire module does not show.

Shim

[meissenation]

Originally Posted by shimei

I only notice this when someone posts a polls or links thread. They are different than a regular discussion thread, I suppose. So if someone starts a thread that began as a link, it and further replies will not show.

Can I ask you to check something for me too? When I trim the maximum amount of characters in the thread title, forum title, and or user name in the Newest Replies it does not display. Anything other than zero and the entire module does not show.

Shim

Yeah I have the same problem.

I also have random "Visitor Messages" showing up for people and I can't get rid of it.

[meissenation]

See screenshot -- random "Visitor Messages" and no clue where it's coming from or what it is.

[meissenation]

Anyone?

[shimei]

Edited

[daddybird292]

Originally Posted by DragonByte Tech

I could not find the home link at all when I visited your site

Sure, but please also bear in mind that it takes a long time to update my testing environment every time there's an update, vB5 release a lot of Alpha and Beta versions that should never be used in a production environment or on a live site, and also the fact that as a business it's virtually impossible to make money for vB5.

I hope you, in your professional life, do not rely on a single 3rd party company to make good decisions that enables you to make money improving their product. I have done so in the past (when we tried to make mods for vB5), and it was a nightmare.

If you think it's just me, that I'm the only coder that don't want to deal with vB5, then why not look right here on vB.org?
vB3 add-ons: 1,438
vB4 add-ons: 1,959
vB5 add-ons: 73

If vB5 is a platform that supports modification development, then why would there be so few vB5 mods? Purely in terms of numbers, vB5 has 3.72% of the amount of modifications vB4 has. 5.0.0 Gold was officially released four years ago, on 21 February 2013. Four years to make 73 mods, that's quite the slow rate of development, if you were going to say "but vB4 has been out for longer".

On a more personal note, development for vB5 is needlessly complicated, and I don't like working with the platform. Compared to literally every other platform I have worked with (vB3, vB4, XenForo, Zend Framework, Laravel, Symfony), vB5 is easily the worst in terms of whether I am enjoying my time coding.
I hope you can understand and sympathise; coding isn't just "coding", each platform is almost like its own dialect of a language, and there are some dialects you can understand much more easily than others.

All of that being said, I do understand where you're coming from. You paid for a product and it isn't receiving new feature or bugfix updates except for when new vB5 versions necessitate it. It's also true that even if a new non-beta version of vB5 was released, I would not update my testing environment unless someone reported an issue I couldn't fix by asking enough questions.

I hope I have at least helped you understand why I've not been rushing to update whenever vB5 releases a new Alpha or Beta version. I do still intend to keep supporting the vB5 mods in terms of bugfixing whenever someone reports that a new version has broken the existing functionality.


Fillip

Hey DragonByte,
I had bought a lot of plugs for VB4 from you and I LOVED THEM!!!
I was looking at your webpage since I've made the switch to VB5, and the top of the page says "no more major updates due to changes VB has made".
So I was under the impression that they just opened the hooks system up so that Dev's could have an easier time..... no?

Just trying to understand your plight and I'm holding out hope that things improve so that people come back to VB.

[meissenation]

Apparently this mod is no longer supported. This is bar none the most important add-on on my site and while it's good, it's not quite as good as what we had in vb4. The "Visitor Messages" that shows up is really annoying, though.

[DragonByte Tech]

Originally Posted by meissenation

Apparently this mod is no longer supported. This is bar none the most important add-on on my site and while it's good, it's not quite as good as what we had in vb4. The "Visitor Messages" that shows up is really annoying, though.

It is supported, although I rely on users reporting issues rather than installing every new vB5 version to test for bugs.

The message @ our site still stands; it is not currently possible or viable to provide major updates to this mod due to design decisions taken by Internet Brands. The product is provided as-is, with no promise of future feature updates.


Fillip

[meissenation]

I've been reporting the issue for almost a month, bumping this thread asking for help about random "Visitor Messages" being captured in the Top Stats panel including the screenshot.

Edit: Disregard the new issue - apparently vB5 doesn't give a clean "Database connection error" window anymore and just throws error code 500 when it can't connect to the database. God I hate vB5.