Chat Modifications - [DBTech] vBShout v6 (vB5) [AJAX]

DragonByte Technologies are proud to present vBShout v6: The most advanced, Most feature-rich and most professional shoutbox ever.


Uses

vBShout is the ideal way to keep members on your forum while they wait for replies to their posts. It can be used in many ways - as a chat room for members, for staff to discuss issues in realtime, as a live-update feed of new posts and threads, as a way to track member milestones... Best of all, you can have multiple boxes in use for multple purposes!

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Priority support & Product Demos available at: http://www.dragonbyte-tech.com/forum.php

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Professional version available @ www.DragonByte-Tech.com/forum
Priority support for Lite version is handled at the Developers Website.

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Translations available @ our forum
Support for translations handled by the translator in its respective threads only.

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Major Lite Features

Advanced Shout Control: You have the ability to post shouts, edit your shouts, PM shouts to other users, Ignore other users, insert /Me commands, insert smilies, Bbcode, change font, text colour etc.

Advanced Staff Control: Give your staff members customised permissions to allow them to do certain actions, on all or selected instances and chat rooms. Permissions include: Silencing users, banning users, editing user shouts, Creating/Editing "Sticky Notices", Pruning shouts and much more.

Resource Optimisation: vBShout implements an Advanced Optimisation Protocol to save your forum resources. Enabling this will further reduce the amount of resources consumed by the shoutbox. AOP was originally featured in Inferno vBShout, and DBTech vBShout takes it to the next level by ensuring that all your chats are always up-to-date without taking up needless amount of resources.

Shoutbox Tabs: New PM's or User Chat Rooms create Tabs. Tabs will highlight to let you know something new has happened, and you can even set them to make sounds to alert you.

Active Users Shout-bit: Shows the users active in the tab/instance you are, with the option to view everyone who can enter/exit the room at will (and thus see any shouts posted) in a pop-up to save resources. Perfect for seeing what's going on and who's around at a glance.

Context Menus: Many places now make use of context menus ? less having to remember /commands, one click access to the most useful and commonly used functions, and the ability for users to access their shoutbox settings directly from the shoutbox itself.

Custom Chat Rooms: Your users can now set up their own Chat-Tabs, where they get to set who can come and chat. Perfect for clubs, guilds etc. Admins can also create permanent Chat rooms for specific usergroups etc. ? perfect for a staff only chat room for instance, or to reward loyal members!

Custom Shoutbox Instances: Ever wanted a separate shoutbox just for your admin forum? Got a part of your board only for VIP members? Now you can set a shoutbox specific to those areas.

Shoutbox Sounds: You asked for it, we delivered. Customisable sounds now available on receiving shouts, Invites, PM's and more. (Requires QuickTime Plugin)

Logging: Worried about staff members pruning the shoutbox to cover their tracks? Don't worry, with our advanced logging options, you can make sure a hard copy is kept of every action taken.

Downloadable Shoutbox Archives: You and your shoutbox admins can download a complete dump of the Shoutbox' archive for all instances. With 3 supported formats (tab-delimited CSV, XML and TXT), there's something for everyone whether your purpose is review or programming.

Easy Shoutbox Notice Editing: You and usergroups with the "Can Set Sticky" permission can now edit the notice by double-clicking the Sticky in the shoutbox. Quickly fix typos or rapidly update with new turn of events, editing it is never more than two clicks away.


Professional Only benefits:

Ignore List: Allows users to keep track of who they are ignoring, and control this option via a list.

Additional Moderation Commands: The ability to add/edit the sticky notice through the shoutbox.

Extended Instance Options: Allows you to have separate notices per instance, set usergroup settings for individual instances, and even set unique staff permissions for each individual instance.

Expanded Context Menus: Lets your member/staff use the context menu to add/update the sticky note, Ban and Unban users, Ignore/Unignore users and prune individual user shouts.


Complete Feature List
Lite

• Shoutbox
  • Post Shouts
  • Edit / Delete Shouts
  • Shouts played using HTML5 <audio> tags
  • PM other users
    • PM tabs for convo between two users
  • View Active Users
    • Separate context-aware block that shows the people active in your specific tab.
• Update text styles
  • Bold
  • Italic
  • Underline
  • Font
  • Colour
• Slash commands
  • Built-in commands in a drop-down list
  • /banlist for a list of all users banned from the shoutbox
• Context menu for available actions
  • View Profile
  • Send PM
• Create chat room
  • Invite / Manage users that can access this chat room
  • Inviting an user sends them a pop-up asking them to join the room.
• Tabs
  • Highlights when you're not viewing them but they have new messages.
  • Chat Rooms get tabs added as you join them.
• Logging
  • Default logging logs all administrative slash commands.
• AdminCP
  • Chat Room Manager
    • Assign usergroups to chat rooms
  • Edit Settings
    • Which commands to log
    • Log level
    • Shouts to display
    • Shouts to display (Archive)
    • Shoutbox Height
    • Shout display order
    • Shoutbox Refresh Rate
    • Smilies on / off
    • PMs on / off
    • Allowed BBCode controls
    • Enabled Editor Tools
    • Maximum [SIZE]
    • Max characters per shout
    • Max images per shout
    • Archive "Top X Shouters" count
    • Active Users block on/off
    • Auto-Delete Shouts
    • Max chat rooms per user
    • Global sound switch
    • Play sounds while idle
    • Per-Usergroup display of moderator actions (like pruning shouts)
    • Ability to disable the "Chat Access" list
    • Ability to disable Blog notifications
    • Alternating Shout Background Colours
    • Forum Milestones (replacing the simple "Post Markers")
      • Every X Posts
      • Every X Threads
      • Every X Members
  • Show command log
  • Show banned users
  • Show shout log
  • Maintenance
    • Reset all style customisations

Pro

• Context Menu Options
• Moderation actions
  • Add / Update Sticky Note
  • Ban / Unban users
  • Ignore / unignore users
  • Prune user's shouts
• Slash commands
  • /silencelist for a list of all users silenced in the shoutbox
• High-level logging logs everything
• Separate Sticky notices per instance
• Separate usergroup permissions per instance
• Assign chat room to any / all instance(s)
• Shoutbox Refresh Rate
  • While idle
• PMs on / off
• Archive "Top X Shouters" count
• Play sounds while idle
• Maintenance
  • Reset all style customisations
• Adjust time stamp format
• Per-Usergroup "Can PM" permission

Missing Features List

Major Lite Features

Customisable New Post / Thread Notifications: Allows you to make the shoutbox post when a new thread is created, or a new post is made. You can make this happen with all threads (Which will take user permissions into account) or only threads/posts from certain forums.

Revamped Thread / Reply Notices: Do you have a massive board with 100+ forums? With the revamped New Thread / Reply Notices page, you can edit exactly what forums show what notices in what instance all from one page.

Archive: View all the shouts posted since the last pruning, Also shows you the top X shouters, a variety of interesting and useful shoutbox statistics, and allows you to search previous shouts.

Shoutbox Report System: Members can now report offensive shouts by using the shout context menu. When a report has been submitted, those with the "Can Moderate Chat" permission will see how many reports need their attention via a new chat tab in the Shoutbox.

Easy User Infractions: The context menu also adds a quick link to infract users, for those who can access vBulletin's infraction system. This lets you quickly punish members who are overstepping your bounds.

Blog Integration: Give blogs a more prominent place on your forum by having the Shoutbox post notifications when someone posts a new blog or comments on a blog.


Professional Only benefits:

Personal User Shoutbox Options: Integrated with User CP, User gets to decide which things show on their shoutbox, PM's, notifications etc. Even what editor options show up for them. They also get to decide where their text input area goes for TOTAL customisation.

Extra Tab Options: The ability to set separate tabs for system notifications and notices is available in the PRO version, fantastic for keeping your chat tab uncluttered.

Custom Commands: Lets you and your users create their own commands for use. For example, create pre-set warning comments ? Staff member types /firstwarning, Text appears saying "This is your first warning for breaking the shoutbox rules. You can view these rules at [link] If you have a question about this warning, please PM myself. Thanks."

Extra User Chat Room Moderation: Shows a page displaying every use-created chat room, who made it, how many active members/total members it has etc, and options to close it etc.

Advanced Archive Searching: Ability to search by any combination of username, Last X Hours, Start/End date, as well as keyword. Filter searches, sort by criteria etc.

Detach Shoutbox: Lets you and your users have the shoutbox open in a seperate browser window/tab for easier use etc.


Lite

• Archive
  • View list of all Shouts in the system
  • Top X Shouters
  • Shoutbox Statistics
  • Search Archive
    • Search by
      • Phrase
• AdminCP
  • Ban / Silence management in Edit User

Pro

• Separate tab for Notifications
  • Lets you hide them from the main view but still have them accessible.
• Separate tab for System Messages
  • Lets you hide them from main view but still have them accessible.
• Detach shoutbox
  • Shows a dedicated shoutbox browser window.
• Shoutbox Options
  • Integration with UserCP
    • General Shoutbox Settings
      • Enable / Disable PMs
      • Enable / Disable Notifications
      • Enable / Disable System Messages
      • Override shout styles
      • Sounds on/off
        • Shout
        • Invite
        • PM
      • Hide alternating shoutbox background colours
      • Hide user avatars
    • Display Settings
      • Hide/Display individual Editor settings (Font, text colour etc)
      • Control shout area location
    • Tab Reordering
      • Re-order chat tabs
• Custom Commands
  • Add / Edit custom commands
• Ignore List
  • Add / Remove users
• vBActivity & Awards integration (Award, Achievement, Promotion)
• Filter archive shouts by chatroom
• Create threads from archive shouts
• Search Archive
  • Search by
    • Username
    • Last X Hours
    • Start Date
    • End Date
  • Sort order for search results
  • Shouts per page
• Filter archive shouts
• Edit/Delete shouts in archive
• Ban / Silence management in Edit User
• Forum Milestones (replacing the simple "Post Markers")
  • Every X Blogs
  • Every X Shouts
  • Every X [DBTech] Advanced Post Thanks / Like button clicks received
  • Every X [DBTech] Advanced User Tagging thread tags received
  • Every X [DBTech] Advanced User Tagging quotes received
  • Every X [DBTech] Advanced User Tagging mentions received
  • Every X [DBTech] vBQuiz quizzed created
  • Every X [DBTech] vBQuiz quizzed completed

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This mod displays a one-line copyright notification in the footer of all pages which includes:

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

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Moderator Edit:

Due to changes in the Javascript Structure in vBulletin 5.6.4, this addon was not working. Below are steps to resolve this issue:

Shout is looking for a .js file. But it isn't here.

1. go to : https://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jque...ry.tmpl.min.js
2. copy code and paste it in notepad
3. save it as : jquery.tmpl.min.js
4. copy via ftp to ---> board/js/jquery
5. Reload page and shout is working ( VB 5.6.4)

[DragonByte Tech]

Originally Posted by ageurtse

tryed it on my test website, but i can't shout or prune or somthing.
The side pannel says there are no active users.

What could it be, a compatible problem vb 5.1.1 or somthing else ?

This version is compatible with vB 5.1.1, if you have any error messages you should post them


Fillip

[brainafk]

Anybody got idea how can I hide the shotbox for guests?

[DragonByte Tech]

You can do this by editing the Instance Permissions in the AdminCP


Fillip

[brainafk]

Thanks for your answer

Another question: is there any plan to make this shoutbox responsive?
It really doesnt look good in mobile version.

[pjclas]

I've noticed a few issues with the shoutbox that others have also mentioned, but they seem to have had no responses so far.

First, I am also running into the issue where shouts seem to stop sending at some point for no apparent reason. Sometimes a page reload fixes it, sometimes logging out and back in fixes it, and sometimes nothing seems to immediately fix it. My users are getting frustrated with this so any help would be appreciated. Next time I see this I will be sure to look at the ajax response and add more info.

EDIT: I just hit the issue again and had a look at the ajax. The request going through contains the correct shout I'm sending, and the response comes back without error, but fails to include the new shout (it contains the prior 50 shouts only). I should point out that the shoutbox has 50 shouts and that is what I have the max displayable set to, so perhaps it's a limit issue? In this instance I had to logout and log back in to get new shouts to appear.

Second, I have created a few custom chat tabs and after a while when you click on them they just disappear... If I reload the page they come back. I think this has something to do with being set to idle, but I'm not certain. And by the way, I have set it to not flag admins as idle, but that option doesn't seem to work either.

EDIT: So I did some further debugging and found that the tabs are disappearing due to this block of code in core/packages/dbtechvbshout/api/vbshout/shoutbox.php in the callNamed() function:

else
{
   if (!count(array_intersect(vB::getUserContext()->fetchUserGroups(), explode(',', self::$chatroom['membergroupids']))))
   {
      // Usergroup no longer a member
      self::$fetched['error'] = 'disband_' . $args['chatroomid'] ;
   }
}

I added some debug and verified that the userid being queried here is 0, but it should be a valid user id like 1. So it appears the user information is being lost which I assume is due to some session data expiring perhaps. I'm also guessing this is probably the same thing leading to messages not being sent after a while. So I need to figure out what it is that causes the user data cache to seemingly disappear and require the user to logout and back in to get it back. I'm getting closer... lol

EDIT 2: I have confirmed it is definitely the session expiration that is causing BOTH of the problems I listed. So my question now becomes how do I fix this? Even if you click Remember Me when logging in the session expires if you are idle. The vBulletin software will check the userid and password cookies and renew the session and everything is fine, but the chat requires you to log out and back in after every session expiration... The second problem is that interacting with the vbshout window like sending shouts or clicking tabs doesn't update the vbulletin lastactivity, so this causes the session to expire when in reality there is activity... I think the vbshout should be updating the lastactivity to prevent the session from expiring.

I'd also like to vote for a responsive design at some point because vb shrinks and makes the chatbox look terrible.

Let me summarize what I believe needs to be fixed:

1. Any activity in the shoutbox should update the vb session activity by calling doLastVisitUpdate() followed by save().
2. The session data needs to be refreshed for the cases where it should never expire (e.g., user clicks Remember Me).
3. The option to never set a usergroup to idle needs to be fixed, it doesn't work.
4. When a session does expire, the chatbox should be updated to reflect this (e.g., the text entry window should disappear, custom tabs a guest doesn't have access to should disappear, etc.) Otherwise users have no idea why it appears they can shout, but they really can't. You could easily do this by receiving a custom response from an ajax query. You already do something similar by setting a user to idle and removing their name from the chat.

I plan to buy the pro version for some of the additional features, but I won't buy it if I'm going to continue to have all these issues... :-/

EDIT: Well I seem to be talking to myself, but I've made another discovery... If I set the session timeout to something large like 2 hours, then this problem completely goes away... So now I'm utterly confused. If the session timeout is 15 minutes and click remember me, then users are logged out after 15 minutes no matter how much they are chatting. If I set it to 2 hours and log in with remember me checked and walk away for 3 hours, I can come back and chat with no problem... I'm sure I'm just missing something basic here... can anyone fill me in please???

EDIT2: I figured out that every 60 minutes the security token is replaced which updates the lastactivity so as long as the session timeout is greater than one hour it will never time out. However, I don't think we should have to rely on this and keep the session timeout over an hour...

[pjclas]

Originally Posted by mbozio

I found the problem. Indeed it's on vB5 side, the BB code parsong is causing some HTML error to be send back Inside the JSON return... here is a workaround :

In /include/vb5/template/bbcode.php

line 349, replace :

PHP Code:

            case 'socialmessage':
                $dohtml = $this->defaultOptions[$forumid]['dohtml'];
                $dobbcode = $this->defaultOptions[$forumid]['dobbcode'];
                $dobbimagecode = $this->defaultOptions[$forumid]['dobbimagecode'];
                $dosmilies = $this->defaultOptions[$forumid]['dosmilies'];
                break; 


with

PHP Code:

            case 'socialmessage':
                $dohtml = self::$defaultOptions[$forumid]['dohtml'];
                $dobbcode = self::$defaultOptions[$forumid]['dobbcode'];
                $dobbimagecode = self::$defaultOptions[$forumid]['dobbimagecode'];
                $dosmilies = self::$defaultOptions[$forumid]['dosmilies'];
                break; 


line 369, replace :

PHP Code:

            case 'nonforum':
                $dohtml = $this->defaultOptions['nonforum']['dohtml'];
                $dobbcode = $this->defaultOptions['nonforum']['dobbcode'];
                $dobbimagecode = $this->defaultOptions['nonforum']['dobbimagecode'];
                $dosmilies = $this->defaultOptions['nonforum']['dosmilies'];
                break; 


with

PHP Code:

            case 'nonforum':
                $dohtml = self::$defaultOptions['nonforum']['dohtml'];
                $dobbcode = self::$defaultOptions['nonforum']['dobbcode'];
                $dobbimagecode = self::$defaultOptions['nonforum']['dobbimagecode'];
                $dosmilies = self::$defaultOptions['nonforum']['dosmilies'];
                break; 


That's it, 200 parser error will be gone.

This code is fixed in vB5 5.1.1, but I still get that parse error a lot... :-/

[kehindelawal]

is there any reason why my vbshuout pro would suddenly disappear?

[ozzy47]

Originally Posted by kehindelawal

is there any reason why my vbshuout pro would suddenly disappear?

Questions regarding the pro version need to be addressed on the developers site.

[Sierus]

Anyone try this in 5.1.2? I seem to have issues adding the widget.....it shows that it adds but then when I save it, it (the widget) disappears and the shout box doesn't display on the page.

[pjclas]

Originally Posted by Sierus

Anyone try this in 5.1.2? I seem to have issues adding the widget.....it shows that it adds but then when I save it, it (the widget) disappears and the shout box doesn't display on the page.

I have it displaying in 5.1.1, but there are all sorts of problems with the functionality itself. Good luck getting any support though, they don't think vb5 is yet worth fixing becuase it's not popular enough. You can see their thoughts here. I may end up just writing my own chat plugin at this point. I'm certainly not paying for something with zero support.