Dorm Manager System

History:
Well, about 3 years ago I was on a forum, which had a dorm system. What that meant was that a bunch of people would be granted a forum created by the admin, and they could post whatever they wanted in there. When I began my own forums 2 years ago, I liked the idea and did the same thing. It gets tons of activity, but it had several major flaws: I as admin had too much involvement with this, constantly adding forums for the hack, and adding users to descriptions. Also couldn't keep up with growing demand and the system which supposedly kept only the members of the dorm from posting was actually completely nonexistant. It was all the honor system. So it all breaks down, and for a year I haven't had a dorm system. Until now, when I've created a dorm management system which allows exactly what we had before, except with more control and far more automations.

What this hack DOES:
Creates forums based on your default settings (in dorm configuration) based on eligibility for it (post count). The creator of the dorm (leader) is granted several powers, which only exist in the dorm manager system (there is no extra usergroup). They are: regulating members who apply for membership to their created dorm, creating threads in their dorm (which is set to closed to the public in the default options), and regulating the existing threads of their dorm, including setting one of them as 'Public' (postable in by everyone, a guestroom). Leaders also can delete their dorm. Members can only exist in one dorm at a time, and everything is completely automated.

Settings:
Dorm Name-- Dorm, Clan, Room, Floor etc
Guestroom Name-- Lobby, Guestroom, Closet etc
The Master Dorm Forum-- forum which all the dorm forums appear in
Postcount requirements to lead or join a dorm
Maximum members per dorm, maximum total dorms, maximum threads allowed per dorm, and maximum dorm number (just to keep the numbers from getting outlandish)
Standard forum settings--resembles the forum creation page in the admin cp, which all created forums recieve

Future:
This hack was just meant for me to hammer out the idea and concepts before I get into the technicalities of vb3. This hack completely works for vb2, I spent a week testing it. But in a few days I should hopefully have it ported to vb3, and then I'll have a place where you can see it in action. (the vb2 test forum is on a laptop which is not accessible online)

I'm here for help to get this working on vb2, and also for questions or comments, and if anyone uses this, do click install :-p

Long Live RPGU, and g-force2k2 :-p thats where we all fell in love with dorms from (or at least we at ffgon did)

INPORTANT INSTALLATION INSTRUCTION MISSING:
RUN THIS QUERY
ALTER TABLE user ADD dorm_forumid INT(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0'

[Darkwaltz4]

well, this isnt like vbhosting because this is extremely limited

it limits total created forums to exist at any one time
it limits forum settings
it limits threads that exist in the forum
only members who are joined to forum get to post in it, which is limited (and so can your forum staff)
there is no automatic staff positions (if you wanted a dorm leader to be a mod, youd do that completely on your own)

so, this isnt a 'free use by whoever wants to' but more like an automated version of what you would (and i did) manually be doing, if you were trying to have a dorm concept.


and vb3 version is complete except for...phrasing the files, and coming up with install instructions :-p ill finish by tonight and spend tomarrow testing it, and you can expect it to be here on monday, and installed on ffgon by then too :-p

Oh, and i integrated the string-dormname concept so now dorms can be Dorm #X or NAME Dorm :-p hope the vb3 version with the string thing pleases everyone ^_^

[aloha]

Hey, when you do the VB3 one...

Can you make it so that there is maybe another link in the navbar for "Other Forums" or something like that, and it pops open a totally new page, and then it lists them by forum according to the owner of that and then when they click on that it takes them to their subforums.

I mean to save clutter? Do you know what I mean? Cuz if you were to do that so that people can have forums in your forum, or in this case 'dorms'... it would get mixed up in all of your forums. I don't think I'm the only one that doesn't like to scroll down for endless days...

Maybe for those people that have forums, based upon contributions, or points system, they can have a small ad on the left side of the main forums to theirs... Just a few suggestions... hehe

[Darkwaltz4]

um no, i dont think ill be doing any of those

im not trying to make this into vbhosting >.> i could have done that easily if i wanted to. but i dont, i wanted a dorm hack, and i know several sites have used the same kind of thing after seeing us with it, so this is what its for, sorry.

and ill be uploading the vb3 version sometime tomarrow, its done, and i have no time to do it right now (i want to install it onto ffgon first)

[Darkwaltz4]

to all those interested (again sorry for these doubleposts -_-, noone would pay attention if i didnt)

the vb3 version of this hack has just been put up, available

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=66161

[Destroyed Soul]

ummm, I installed the hack and ran the queries and things, but the forum still shows up a normal fum.... what is wrong with it?

[Darkwaltz4]

to everyone, i apologize for the absence, i am not online as much anymore

ismba: unless the forums/site is giving you am error (if it is, please tell me here) then there must be a glitch somewhere, and if i recall (this hack is old) the way to reset the admin is to go to the users table, and find the admin row in question, and set the dorm_forumid to 0 (or something like that) i apologize also for being vague, im trying to help quickly, and ill try and be more specific if that isnt sufficient

Destroyed Soul: im not sure i understand what you mean, but the dorm forum will not appear signifigantly different once you install the hack, but as soon as you designate a forum as a parent, it takes on new functionality, which you have to alert to everyone in some way, especially with the link to dorms.php