Miscellaneous Hacks - IFRAMEr (Free) by BOP5 - Easily create IFRAMEs in your forums to external pages

Brought to you by BirdOPrey5
www.Qapla.com

Version 1.3.1

Fully compatible with VB 3.8 & 4.x versions.

This is a free version of this mod. The Gold Version is available at:
IFRAMEr Gold by BOP5 at Qapla.com

The FREE version is just like the GOLD version except limited to 3 Admin Created IFRAMEs. The GOLD version allows for unlimited IFRAME pages.
Also The GOLD version also allows for the admin to set a custom filename and URL attributes.

Live Demos:
VB4 Demos-
Photo Editor - Qapla.com Forum by BOP5 - Photo Editor
Radar Map - Qapla.com Forum by BOP5 - Radar Map

VB3 Demos-
321 Cheese - JUOT - Joe's Ultimate Off Topic - 321Cheese.com (Take your own photo)
Photo Editor - JUOT - Joe's Ultimate Off Topic - Photo Editor

About:

The IFRAME tag is a powerful tag that lets you embed any webpage in any other webpage. It is used all over in places you'd never expect like "Like Buttons" and even in vBulletin's Human Verify templates.

This mod is designed to provide the admin with one large IFRAME on a vBulletin powered page that the admin can easily assign and setup via the Admin CP.

This will allow admins to provide a familiar and local interface for external content.

PLEASE BE AWARE NOT ALL WEBSITES "ALLOW" YOU TO FRAME THEM. Please read the site's "Terms of Service" before you place their content into an IFRAME on your page. Some sites specifically forbid this, though it is mostly through the "honor system." Very few use JavaScript code that can detect them being framed and "break out" of them automatically. Still, please do your due diligence before framing anyone else's content. There a number of sites you are allowed to frame such as the photo editor in the demo links (a popular choice), usually any scientific/government sites like weather maps, forecasts, or NASA sites. Wikimedia/Wikipedia allow for framing as well.

This mod also allows you to choose if you want to link to each or any of the IFRAME pages via the "Quick Links" drop-down forum menu. However, this mod is intended to create the FRAME pages- linking to them in a better way is up to you. May I suggest a (Free) Qapla.com ExQlusive mod : Navbar Buttons Builder by BOP5 - For easy inclusion of IFRAME links in the navbar or drop-down lists.

You must give each IFRAMEr page a title, a navbits title, and an optional extended description. Each of these options may be entered directly into the IFRAMEr manager OR can instead be created as phrases to allow translation to multiple languages for multi-language sites. In the latter case you specify the "use phrases" and enter the phrase name in the settings box instead. A convenient link is included to the Phrase Manager pre-loaded to show your custom IFRAMEr phrases (if any.)

Finally the mod also allows you to choose which usergroups can see each IFRAME link and page. By default all usergroups can see each IFRAME page, but you can restrict it to specific groups or member's only (preventing guest access.)

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Please "Mark as Installed" if you use this.
Donations always appreciated. :up:
Nominate MOTM if you LOVE it!

[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by Hostboard

Would it be possible to have the iframe/links appear in only select forums? This way a forum about product X could show links for only that item, while the forum for product Y would only see their links?

Well anything pretty much is possible but I don't intend to add that feature- the quick links were an afterthought - just something so people could have some links out of the box. My intent was for users to manage links themselves using either a proper link manager or their own template edits- in either of those cases control over specific forums would/should be easy.

Originally Posted by CaneInsider

How safe is this mod? Typically iFrames are very dangerous to use correct?

The mod is as safe as the IFRAMEs you link to. Do not link to untrusted sources and there shouldn't be a problem.

The mod does have an option to view the IFRAMEs in security mode but that is something only Internet Explorer supports so it is of little practical value.

[BirdOPrey5]

Updated to Version 1.1

Added option to use "Absolute" URLs for Links in Quick Links. These are only necessary if your blogs or CMS (or 3rd party CMS) is in a different directory than your main forums. Using Absolute URLs will prevent file-not-found errors when clicking on the links from outside the forum directory.

[BadgerDog]

Originally Posted by BirdOPrey5

BadgerDog,

I'm afraid there is nothing to do for those sites- they were never designed to be in FRAMEs and you can't do anything to force it.

Thank you Joe ...

Can you send me via PM your PayPal address for the PRO mod?

I thought I had it from sending you a PayPal for a different mod, but I can't seem to find it now ...

Regards,
Doug

[Hostboard]

Would you be willing to add the ability to add a new drop down menu next to "Quick Links" say "External Links" where these would appear?

[Brandon Sheley]

iFrames

thanks for the share

[CaneInsider]

How do the advertisements work with iFrames? If I use this on my site and display another sites page, do their advertisements display and do they receive a "Page View" or do I, or do we both get a page view?

[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by Hostboard

Would you be willing to add the ability to add a new drop down menu next to "Quick Links" say "External Links" where these would appear?

I will try. Not sure how difficult that might be right now.

Originally Posted by Brandon Sheley

iFrames

thanks for the share

Why so sad?

Originally Posted by CaneInsider

How do the advertisements work with iFrames? If I use this on my site and display another sites page, do their advertisements display and do they receive a "Page View" or do I, or do we both get a page view?

If there are ads on the framed page then when someone views it from the iframe they count as page-views to the site the from originates from. You get no credit or anything from what is in the iframe- it is exactly like if the user happens to have another tab open with the iframe content.

You should be weary about linking to sites with their own ads, if you show 2 google adsense ads, and the site you linked to shows 2 google ads, you would be in violation of adsense terms for example that limit it to 3 ads per page. I've never seen anyone punished by google for occasional use like with this mod but people who purposely use frames to get around the ad limit have been punished.

[dmm2020]

Also in addition to what BirdofPrey5 says, Iframes also violate Google Adsense TOS, so you do want to be careful there. It's difficult to track true views in iframes, plus iframes tend to inflate views so many venues are outlawing them via their TOS. I got a warning on one of my websites where I had Adense in Iframe based rotator scripts. It was actually inflating the views, so I removed all ads out of iframe rotators and used a different mod. You might get a warning if Google detects ads in iframes, but typically they give you time to fix it.

My recommendation if you include webpages from another website using this mod is it be a vanilla page free of ads and just a single column template.

Originally Posted by CaneInsider

How do the advertisements work with iFrames? If I use this on my site and display another sites page, do their advertisements display and do they receive a "Page View" or do I, or do we both get a page view?

[CaneInsider]

Originally Posted by dmm2020

Also in addition to what BirdofPrey5 says, Iframes also violate Google Adsense TOS, so you do want to be careful there. It's difficult to track true views in iframes, plus iframes tend to inflate views so many venues are outlawing them via their TOS. I got a warning on one of my websites where I had Adense in Iframe based rotator scripts. It was actually inflating the views, so I removed all ads out of iframe rotators and used a different mod. You might get a warning if Google detects ads in iframes, but typically they give you time to fix it.

My recommendation if you include webpages from another website using this mod is it be a vanilla page free of ads and just a single column template.

Ok, thanks. But this would be perfect for an online store or something along those lines...

[CaneInsider]

Ok, I tried to install the product and half of it did install. I see the options in the CP>Options to turn the iFrames plugin on. But there is no IFRAMES CP anywhere else to add the iframe data?