vBdHome 2 RC 2

vBdHome 2 Release Candidate 2

[HIGH]Here is a demo of our portal : http://www.gamercrossfire.net/vbdindex.php?styleid=13
http://www.vbulletindev.net/
Note that all modules/blocs aren't activated[/HIGH]


A group of buddies, a common passion at your service. vBulletinDev is proud to introduce its new baby: the portal vBdHome.

With a number from 7 to 23 queries according to differents blocs and modules activated, vBdHome is a rather complete portal and its youth lets hope very good things for the future.

The installation is really easy and mostly automatic (templates, queries and language are added via an install script).

Small historic

• August 2003:
  
  All began during the summer's vacation. Since the release of VB3, only one thing lacked to the french forum we belonged (vBressources) : a portal.
  
  Like this, the project called vBrHome began. Bases were created by freestyler who made a first version (non released).
  This first version was only constituted of some features : announcements, menu for navigation, welcome bloc, Top poster ...
  
  Then, MtoR decides to continue the project.

• September 2003:
  After a big job for add new blocs (Last attachments, Ads, Texto Admin, etc...), first modules were created and a lot of Beta version of vBrHome went out.
  
  At the end of the month of september, the first public version was released. The major evolution was that all functions (blocs creation, blocs manager ...) used for our portal were grouped in a unique file.
  
  It's at this same period that Grog joined the vBrHome's team by creating a guestbook.

• October - January 2004: This period is the most important for our portal because all the architecture of our portal was changed to be improve.
  
  As the first version of vBrHome was really basic and with little possibilities of customization, MtoR worked hard to create a complete system to manage each bloc (position, name ...).
  
  During this period, Grog created a new admin file to use at best vBulletin's function and made a clean code, as in the rest of vBulletin's file.
  
  Freestyler made some visual modifications to improve the design of the portal.
  
  It's also during this period that our portal changed of name to become vBdHome, because vBressource's team decided to quit vBressources and create its own development site: http://www.vbulletindev.net.

• Januar 8,2004:
  The new version of vBdHome is released : Beta 1 with a lot of improvments, especially concerning the architecture which was totally modified. A new module to add HTML pages was created too.

• January - February:
  Well decided to continue the adventure and to create a really useful and complete version, Grog and MtoR made a lot of work to create a Beta2 totally new.
  
  MtoR worked on the creation of a newsletter and Grog on a glossary module, the links database was modified too to integrate new functionalities and a lot of blocs were created. Existing blocs were modified too to be improve. MtoR created a new installation file to use vBulletin's functions and templates and languages were put in XML files.
  
  As this Beta 2 was stable, we decided to improve it a little and to make the first Release Candidate Version to release it, especially for vbulletin.org.
  
  A new developper has joined us in January: Akex. He has focused is work on the news module's enhancing and the bug fixing.
  
  He has also worked with Nerilka (the administrator of vBulletinDev's team) on vBdHome's langage file translation.

This is only a small historic of our portal so that you could understand how and why it was created.

Differents blocs

• Texto [0 query]: With this bloc the administrator can add a message on the index of the portal (you can use bbcodes and smilies).

• Announcements [1 query]: last announcements of the forum are displayed in this bloc. The number of announcement to show is set in the admincp. Of course, forum's permissions are respected.

• Top 5 last attachments [2 queries]: Last forum's attachments are displayed in this bloc, you can open them by clicking on the name of the file. Permissions are respected too.

• Google [0 query]: Small bloc which you can search what you want on the famous search engine GOOGLE. Results are displayed in a new window.

• Calendar [0 query]: Basic calendar

• Statistics [1 query]: In this bloc, some informations are displayed such as the total amount of threads, posts, members, online users ... Note that an option is useable in the admincp to choose the number of online users to display. If you set it to 0, no usernames will be display.

• Top 10 last threads(links) [1 query]: Bloc which is displayed the Top X of lasts posts of the forum. Permissions are respected. You can choose the number of last posts to display.

• Top 10 poster [1 query]: Top X of best poster. You can configure the number of members to display.

• Birthday [0 query]: Usernames with their age are displayed in this bloc the day of their birthday.

• Navigation Bloc [1 query]: This bloc displayed a scrolling menu to go quickly to the choosen forum. You only have to change it to be redirected.

• Forums links [0 query]: In this bloc, forums links are displayed if you added some to your board.

• Ads [1 query]: This bloc displays ads you add in the admincp. Pictures opens website in a new window. You can set the number of ads to display in the admincp. If the numbers of in the database is superior to the number of ads to display, adds will be chosen randomly.

• Poll [1 query]: A poll is displayed randomly in this bloc. If the user already voted to this poll, he will see results, else he'll be able to vote. Permissions are respected too and unregistered users can't vote.

• Links (Module) [1 query]: Display in a bloc the last X links of the links database.

• Newsletter (Module) [0 query]: Bloc where users can register to receive newsletter you'll send via the admincp. Users can choose TXT or HTML format fot the newsletter.

• HTML Pages (Module) [1 query]: Display in a bloc a link to HTML pages you added to the portal.

• News (Module) [2-3 queries]: Bloc in which are displayed the last news of the portal/forum (you choose it).

• Main menu [0 query]: Links to differents modules are displayed in this bloc.

Modules

We decided to integrate some useful modules to our portal so that it was a useful portal. Here is a description of differents modules:

• Links database:
  • Categories and sub-categories
  • You can set a picture for each category
  • You can vote for links
  • Meter of visited links
  • Return of broken links
  • Send link to a friend
  • You can set in the admincp to moderate links or not
• Guestbook:
  
  • Each user/unregistered can post in the guestbook.
  • If the user is logged in, his avatar will be displayed, else there will be a default avatar.
  • informations to complete: City, note, website.
• Glossary:
  
  • Virtual dictionnary for your site.
  • You choose if you want users be able to add definitions and if you want to moderate them.
• HTML Pages:
  
  • You can add personal pages to the portal.
  • Powerfull WYSIWYG Interface.
  • Pages links are displayed in a special bloc in the portal.
• Newsletter:
  
  • Bloc where users can register to receive newsletter you'll send via the admincp. Users can choose TXT or HTML format fot the newsletter.
  • The administrator sends newsletter via the admincp.
  • Newsletter database viewable in the portal.
  • You can remove members from the newsletter list.
• News:
  
  • Choice between 2 systems:
    • Via the portal: With it, you add news in the portal (WYSIWYG interface), they are recorded in a table of vBdHome.
      You can set userid of users who can add news in the portal.
    • Via the forum: You set the forumid of forums where you want news to come from.
  • Last 5 news are displayed in the portal. You can choose the number of characters to display for news.
  • Powerful news database system where you can see all news, select which one you want to see, the number of news per page ...

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New version vBdHome 2 RC 2

Changes:

• Bugs correction
• Big changes in the links modules, now you can add as much subcat of subcat as you want
• New option in the admincp to set the forumsid of the polls' forum
• New option to set the forumsid that should be taken for the lastthread links block
• New version of the websearch block

Instructions for upgrade in the zip

To do (soon):

• Poseidon chatbox (coming soon) will be integrated in vBdHome
• Galery Module
• Download Module
• And more ...

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We think this is a good summary of our portal's functionalities.

Screenshots

Here are some vBdHome's screenshot.

The different blocks of the homepage:

http://www.vbulletindev.net/vbdhome/en/bloc1.gif

http://www.vbulletindev.net/vbdhome/en/blocs2.gif

http://www.vbulletindev.net/vbdhome/en/news_portal.gif

A preview of vBdHome's admin page:

http://www.vbulletindev.net/vbdhome/en/admin.jpg

We have limited the number of screenshots due to a problem of filesize. Sorry if you can't see all the functionnalities of vBdHome on those screenshots.
As soon as we will have enough money to buy a new licence we will open an online forum support for vBdHome where you'll be able to see it working

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No documentation is available for this version of vBdHome, we are waiting for release the Gold version because we prefer in a first time spend time to correct bugs.

No support site is available for now, it's in project but we need money to buy a licence.

We know everybody can't pay a licence for a portal, that's why vBdHome is totally free.

You can support us by donating with paypal:

http://www.vbulletindev.net/donate/index.html

so that we can continue the adventure and that we could buy a licence for a support forum.

You may not redistribute this hack !!!
If you want to translate it and then release the translation or if you want to provide modifications of this hack you must contact us first!
This hack is under vBulletindev.net Copyrigth 2004

The vBdHome developpement's team

NB: Many thanks to Pitchoune for his help during the final test stage and the spellchecking of the release's message.

The hack is provided in english and in french, the install of the differents languages and templates pack is fully automatic

vBdHome RC 1 : (249.2 KB, 304 views)

[13th_Disciple]

excellent.. good to see another choice in vB front ends.. i do have a couple of questions though..

can both selections of news be used and at the same time for the same front site?

will this work for multiple sites under a single forums install? for instance, i host several small sites, each of them would like to have a news page/ front-end.. i am using vBindex, and love it, but one draw back is that it only supports a single instance of the actual vbindex.php file itself.. NTLDR has talked about adding this, and i believe it would be a very good addition..

what i am looking for is something that would be like a true gateway to many subhosted sites.. each of those sites having their own news pulled from the forums or added as you discussed above.. have the ability to have their own polls.. latest threads only showing for their sets of forums or not at all..

it is really good to see this kind of development as the last week has seen vb.org have it's share of folks going elsewhere and some taking their hacks as well.. it is becoming clearer to me by the day that sometimes the community is the cause of its own demise.. at the same time, it is good to see heavy independent development on projects such as this.. choice is always good.. and keep everyone on their toes..

/me backs away from the philosophy soap box now..

btw.. nice detail with the history of the application.. makes folks appreciate how hard and how long something has to be worked on sometimes.. even for a "hack".. nice job..

[gmarik]

I'll install it later if it will have a shputbox or even a chat - only than, because vBindex, which I use, has one and yours would be really better, if you could do this one more thing. Great, guys!

[VBDev]

Originally Posted by 13th_Disciple

can both selections of news be used and at the same time for the same front site?

No it can't be used at the same time
When you select to activate both it's the news from the portal that are shown

Originally Posted by 13th_Disciple

will this work for multiple sites under a single forums install? for instance, i host several small sites, each of them would like to have a news page/ front-end.. i am using vBindex, and love it, but one draw back is that it only supports a single instance of the actual vbindex.php file itself.. NTLDR has talked about adding this, and i believe it would be a very good addition..

what i am looking for is something that would be like a true gateway to many subhosted sites.. each of those sites having their own news pulled from the forums or added as you discussed above.. have the ability to have their own polls.. latest threads only showing for their sets of forums or not at all..

I can't seem to understand if you have msn messenger or aim please send me your adress by mp please so we could discuss of it

Originally Posted by gmarik

I'll install it later if it will have a shputbox or even a chat - only than, because vBindex, which I use, has one and yours would be really better, if you could do this one more thing. Great, guys!

The shoutbox is under developpement, we'll port the chatbox of po3id0n who is a member of our team (it was a shoutbox for vb2)

And there we'll be more features in the future but we would like to open a support forum where people could ask for new features (but no money for the moment to do so

[13th_Disciple]

no msn or aim.. but i have yahoo messanger.. i am also in IRC in the evenings.. so if you have an IRC channel or ever use irc, i can talk to you there.. or on yahoo if you have that..

[gmarik]

Maybe you should cooperate with vbpanel and ask to make a section on they're board, I know some guys from there, I think they would be interested. And I liked poseydons shoutbox, it would be nice to have it like a chat, which is

- quicker as a shoutbox
- needs less resourses
- does not depends on MySQL shutdowns

Anyway, I'm waiting for the chatbox, when it's out - I'll write my own ad-ons for this. Another idea:

- make a .js scrolling new block like vBindex add-on has, the vertical marque I mean

Respect, Martin

[VBDev]

Just tell me a channel and I'll come

[gmarik]

Here http://www.vbpanel.com/forums/shoutbox.php?do=archive

[MrNase]

hm would be easier if all those variables would be in english

although i had french at school for 2 years it's hard to understand what the variable stands for.
$vbdhome_cinqderniersposts means last 5 posts?

[VBDev]

No sorry gmarik I was speaking to 13th_disciple !

For your suggestion with vbpanel I don't think it could be possible while we are french and we would like to provide a multi langage forum

[VBDev]

Originally Posted by MrNase

hm would be easier if all those variables would be in english

although i had french at school for 2 years it's hard to understand what the variable stands for.
$vbdhome_cinqderniersposts means last 5 posts?

Sorry if the var are in french but that's much easier for us you know

Yes that mean last 5 posts but that's the old name so it corresponds now to the number of lasts post set in the admincp.

Mr nase check your mp please