How to redo your vBulletin 3.5.0 Navbar in Four Easy Steps!

NavBar Redux
By )O( Cloudrunner )O( of The Noble Pagan

This extension was inspired by the concept provided by Megatekno and his Welcome Panel Script. Unfortunately that script was killing servers, so I took his concept and did a Redux of it using vBresident code as the inspiration for the plug side of the house.

What you need to do

Upload images: 2
(I have provided the blinking PM notification image, you provide the no avatar image, must be named noavatar.gif and both are placed in the ./images/misc/ directory. If you want to not display an avatar without breaking the navbar with a big red "X" then follow the instructions below)

Queries to run: 3
(to add indexes to the user, post, and thread tables to speed up page loads and cut overhead, this is optional, but is reccomended)

File Edits: 0
Template Edits: 2
Plugin XML Import: 1

All done!

Features

• Avatar Display
• Fully Breadcrumb compatible
• Blinking PM notification on new PM (Concept inspiration and HTML code provided by vBulletin.org)
• Collapsible Navbar to hide all that stuff
• Guest message is now in the Navbar, instead of on top of your forums
• Display of new threads since last visit, new posts since last visit, new users registered today, and total registered users visited today.

I think that's it. My users like it, and I hope yours do too.

Page Load and Queries are as follows on a heavy traveled forum:

Originally Posted by The Noble Pagan Forums w/o NavBar

Page generated in 0.11882 seconds with 9 queries

Originally Posted by The Noble Pagan Forums w/ NavBar

Page generated in 0.12219 seconds with 14 queries

If you want to check this and provide me with your results, I would appreciate it!

Love and Light to you all!

)O( Cloudrunner )O(

To disable display of NoAvatar Image

In the plugin NavBar Redux, simply find this code

PHP Code:

$av_url = $stylevar['imgdir_misc'] . '/noavatar.gif'; 


and change it to read

PHP Code:

        $av_url = ''; 


All done, no broken avatar on noavatar users.

To get this to work with vB Advanced CMPS for 3.5.0

In your VBACMPS default settings add the following to your Portal Output Global Variables:

nav_av_image
nav_new_users_today
nav_users_today
nav_new_threads
nav_new_posts
pm_show
pm_tdwidth

All done.

[Cloudrunner]

Originally Posted by Zachery

I think it might be able to be added to a hook, no, its not in the config, its one of those fun hidden features that I poked out of the devs ages ago

But in realitity that is a very small modification, and seeing as the config is a safe file to edit.. you might get away wiuth this as a plugin.

Nope, I just spent three hours walking through the initialization code from initial page call from the browser to the display, and unfortunately class_core.php is called WAY before any hooks, so I'm stuck with editing the config.php file...

What do you think, since the call is part of the resident vB coding, placing it in your config.php file (like the debug statement) would not invalidate the support? If so then I'll keep the mod here in the extensions forum...

Anyway, I'll start working on the data stuffies tomorrow after work...

Oh, BTW

Originally Posted by TNP Site w/o navbar redux

Page generated in 0.12269 seconds with 9 queries

Originally Posted by TNP Site w/ navbar redux (avatar query removed)

Page generated in 0.18365 seconds with 13 queries

So looks like those four queries are kickin the juice up...will work on that tomorrow as I said...

And thanks again for the help!

)O( Cloudrunner )O(

[Zachery]

It shouldn't invlidate support, its just an undocumented feature

[taffy056]

Hi,

Encountered a problem with the panel, I posted 2 posts into my test site, and then deleted one of them, but the panel is still showing two posts posted today, as you can see on the image attached. Is there a fix for this?

taffy

[Zachery]

For your new post and new thread querys, you should use WHERE visable = 1 which should help clear that problem up.. abit...

[Cloudrunner]

Hey folks, had to do an update to the system to cut down on the overhead abit...

So, download the new zip, and delete the old plugin, then import the new xml file.

After you do that follow step 4 again in the install.txt file and you should notice a decent drop in overhead.

I am still working on cutting down the overhead to as close to nothing as possible, but I thought I'd update with what I had so far.

A LOT of this update is due to the help that I have received on it from Zachery, Thank you boss!

)O( Cloudrunner )O(

[Cloudrunner]

Originally Posted by taffy056

Hi,

Encountered a problem with the panel, I posted 2 posts into my test site, and then deleted one of them, but the panel is still showing two posts posted today, as you can see on the image attached. Is there a fix for this?

taffy

Did you "soft" delete it? if so it will still show due to how the threads and posts are called from the DB...

[jesus likes pie]

by looking at the pic, its a welcome panel then?

[taffy056]

Originally Posted by Cloudrunner

Did you "soft" delete it? if so it will still show due to how the threads and posts are called from the DB...

No it was hard deleted, but I will try the same on your new panel to see if it makes any difference.

Thanks for sharing,

taffy

[Rover416]

Originally Posted by cloudrunner

If you want to check this and provide me with your results, I would appreciate it!

These are mine

Page generated in 0.10616 seconds with 14 queries

And then when i clicked on a forum post it went to

Page generated in 0.21673 seconds with 15 queries

[Cloudrunner]

Just an update on the avatars for this hack...if you are running vbadvanced CMPS then the navbar redux will break.

To fix this you'll need to DL this version and then do the following:

1. Remove the AVATAR_ON_NAVBAR line in your config file.
2. Remove the old plugin and then re-upload it and activate it.
3. Then in your VBACMPS default settings add the following to your Portal Output Global Variables:

nav_av_image
nav_new_users_today
nav_users_today
nav_new_threads
nav_new_posts
pm_show
pm_tdwidth

Your navbar should be fixed now on all of your VBACMPS pages.