Miscellaneous Hacks - [CMS] Use original thread for comments

As of 4.1.11 this functionality is included in vbulletin. So you no longer need this mod.

What does this do?
This is a really simple hack that sets the thread for article comments to be the original thread for any thread that is promoted to an article.

What can I use it for?
This mod has two major uses:

1. If you have a wealth of information in your forums and you want to promote it into articles, this mod allows you to retain the rest of the thread as comments in the cms while adding any new comments as replies to the thread; essentially allowing it to function as both a forum thread and a CMS article.

2. If you want to use multiple fourms for CMS comments. This is a fairly none obvious use case, but probably a popular one. If you have three sections in your cms (for example) and want each section to feed into its own forum, the current cms dosn't allow you to do this. With this mod installed, you can. Instead of creating your new article directly in the cms create it in the forum you wish to use for comments. Write your article as the first post of the thread and promote it to a cms article. Fill out the extra information needed (eg publish date) and save. Comments will be saved into the original thread, in the forum you created it in.

Installation Vb 4.0.1 and later
1. Import product

Uninstallation
1. Disable the plugin "set thread id"

Full uninstallation
1. Move threads that have been promoted to articles into the vbcms comments forum.
2. COPY the threads back to their original forums
3. Remove product

Steps 1 and 2 are needed to retain cache functions on the comments threads. Without them new comments will not appear on the article.

Changelog

• 4.0-0.1 a2
  • Fixed bug causing original thread to be delete when the article was deleted
• 4.0-0.1 a1
  • Initial release

Notes

• I believe this is the first mod for the CMS (not including addon widgets/content types)
• Removing this product entirly will cause issues with the cache on any articles using the original thread. Follow the uninstall steps to remove functionallity while retaining the ability to comment on these articles this mod has altered.
• [S] Although its compatible with vbulletin 4.0 Rc 4, a bug in RC 4 and 4.0.0 Gold prevents it from acctually working. I have provided a replacement hooks_vbcms.xml file which corrects the issue in the interim.[/S] (fixed in vb4.0.1)
• [s]Deleting an article will remove the associated original thread This is considered a bug in this product and will hopefully be fixed with the next release. [/s] (fixed)
• The above bug has been fixed, however pending this request: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/proje...?issueid=34188 Thread tags for the original thread will still be removed. There is /nothing/ I can do about that until the issue listed is resolved. (this has been marked as fixed in 4.0.2; will update further when i've tested that its fixed.)
• [S]If you hard delete the original thread without first removing the article you will be affected by this bug: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/proje...?issueid=34187 the fix I posted to that issue needs to be applied BEFORE deleting the original thread. After more research, this only becomes an issue if you promote a thread more than once. If you've done this, you can fix the error by clearing the CMS cache.[/S] (fixed in 4.0.1)

As of 4.1.11 this functionality is included in vbulletin. So you no longer need this mod.

[Phalynx]

Do you have Post Thanks by Abe1 installed? That was causing the double posts on my board.

[argothiusz]

Have anyone upgraded to 4.0.5 and have this working?

[carrlos]

4.0.5 safe?

[carrlos]

All text has disappeared for articles promoted using this hack. The smilies remain.

You can post in the forums and there will be a blank post in the CMS. If you post in the CMS, the text will be blank but will show up fine in the original thread.

Immediate attention needed!

[MrMister]

I had to disable it after upgrading to 4.0.5 as it was double and triple posting all of the time. I love this mod and hope that it is something that can be worked out!!

[sticky]

I finally got this to work as I imagined!

Why it doesn't work this way by default is beyond me. Thank you!

[carrlos]

Originally Posted by carrlos

All text has disappeared for articles promoted using this hack. The smilies remain.

You can post in the forums and there will be a blank post in the CMS. If you post in the CMS, the text will be blank but will show up fine in the original thread.

Immediate attention needed!

Any word on the efforts to fix Carnage-?

[Carnage]

Been busy graduating this week; I did however update to 4.0.4 pl1 and the issue with double posting seemed to disappear. I will be updating to 4.0.5 asap and see if I can figure whats causing the blank articles; I suspect it will be an issue with caching. (Try clearing your CMS cache and see if that fixes it.)

[carrlos]

Originally Posted by Carnage-

Been busy graduating this week; I did however update to 4.0.4 pl1 and the issue with double posting seemed to disappear. I will be updating to 4.0.5 asap and see if I can figure whats causing the blank articles; I suspect it will be an issue with caching. (Try clearing your CMS cache and see if that fixes it.)

I tried that first but it didn't work.

[Alexia]

Originally Posted by Carnage-

Been busy graduating this week; I did however update to 4.0.4 pl1 and the issue with double posting seemed to disappear. I will be updating to 4.0.5 asap and see if I can figure whats causing the blank articles; I suspect it will be an issue with caching. (Try clearing your CMS cache and see if that fixes it.)

The double posting issue still exists in 4.0.5. The fix below is for double posting and also fixes blank or missing comments on our installation.

Change the code in the clear cache plugin to:

PHP Code:

if (THIS_SCRIPT == 'vbcms') {
    $vbulletin->options['vbcmsforumid'] = $foruminfo['forumid'];
}
if (method_exists(vB_Cache::instance(), 'clean')) {
    vB_Cache::instance()->clean(false);
} 


It will only run when dealing with the CMS fixing the bug with the search indexer(array_key_exists issue) being broken and the CMS cache will still get cleared.