There are several hacks in addition to the many template mods I've applied from vBT. I'll try and give an overview of what's going on as best as I can.
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Header Of The Post
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- First, I separated each post by placing a spacer table at the start of each post
- Next, I moved the "edit" and "quote" buttons to the top of the post so that I would have more room at the bottom for other buttons. In this space, I also moved the title of each thread to the top as well. It just made more sense to have it as a header, instead of buried in the post itself.
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Body Of The Post
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- In the body of the post itself, I applied the [Tweak] Baseline Signature postbit mod [link]
- I installed the [Release] Quote Boxes Template Mod [link]
- In addition, I replaced the link text for "Report this post to a moderator" with an image. You can find the postbit template mod that explains how to do this. It's called [Tweak] Make Report this post a icon [link]
- Lastly, I replace the link text for "IP: logged" with an image. You can find the postbit template mod that explains how to do this. It's called [Tweak] Make IP: A Button postbit mod [link].
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User Information
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After seeing some of the awesome postbits posted here, I thought about making it more 3-D. However, since the rest of the site has been designed to be rather flat, I opted not to do that. Here's what I did instead:
- I create the [Tweak] Make Your Member Profile A Popup Window postbit mod [link] and applied it to both the Avatar and the username.
- Since we keep track of member numbers, I included it under the title
- For the Online/Offline feature, I just edited the "postbit_offline" and "postbit_online" templates. If a user is online, the font is red and bold. If they are offline it is the normal font color and not bold. Pretty simple really.
- Lastly, I installed the Yet another Stats/Level Hack by Knoman [link].
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Footer Of The Post
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With the "edit" and "quote" buttons moved to the top of the page, I had the entire footer left for the buttons that I wanted to add.
- Using SaintDog's wonderful Green-Tan Button Set [link] as a starting point, I created new icons for each of the Instant Messengers. I also removed some of the extra buttons that were included in the default vB install for ICQ and AIM.
- For the MSN button, I had to apply a hack. It's called Msn in post [link]. The only bad thing is that MSN doesn't have any web features to link to. So, I just linked to the Member Profile page.
And that's it!
Well, I know that this is a lot more detail than most people provide in their postbit releases, but I thought it might be helpful for some of the newer users to see my methodology in how these changes were made. I've commented the postbit code as much as possible so that it's easier to decipher as well.
I hope you like it.
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This modification may not be copied, reproduced or published elsewhere without author's permission.
The biggest problem with adding MSN is that there are no web features of the MSN service that you can link to. In other words, once you add the button, where will it point to? I chose to link it to the member profile so that you can see the MSN name.
To add this feature, I had to install a hack [link]
Also, several people requested the Adobe Photoshop file of the instant messenger buttons I used. I can't attach the file since vBT doesn't allow the extension .psd. So, instead, I've posted it on NPUG [link] Please note this is a Photoshop 6 file.
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09-11-2002, 01:54 PM
