Miscellaneous Hacks - Live Topic

. . . . . . . . Brought to you by scriptasy.com

. . . http://www.Scriptasy.com

Live Demo:

Live Topic 1.07b Demo (you must be logged in, and the topic must be "live")

Videos: 1.00b 1.06b

watch the damn videos... ^_^

Description:

This product is different from anything you have seen before, it raises the bar for forums. It will make your forums much more interactive, and also reduce server load.

Technical Details:

If a thread has been posted in X seconds then its now Live, if other users are viewing the Live topic and are on the last page they will experience a clean ajax experience while talking to other members. Once the thread is older than X seconds its no longer Live and it will now act like a normal thread. Also if a user edits one of their posts that's inside of the thread, it will be updated too so there is no longer a reason to ever have to refresh.

There is also logic for the viewer, the viewer of the thread has to be in an active state to see responses. An active user state is determined upon the users actions, if no actions were made in X seconds then the user is marked as inactive.

Also you may wonder why this could save your server bandwidth and CPU. If a user is refreshing to talk to another members the queries on a normal thread load are way more intense than the ajax call that this modification makes. So if you have 5 people talking to each other none of them have to refresh the page, all they are doing is simple page requests and one intense request when there has actual change.

You can test Live Topic with two users, you will see how amaizing this is... And probably spontaneously combust.

Found a bug? Want to request a feature?

Live Topic - Project Manager

Installation:

This is take less than 3 minutes to install, takes longer to notice its amazing feature. (you need multiple people to be active in the same topic)

Upgrade:

[1.01b to 1.XXb] Uninstall the product, then reinstall it. Overwrite all old files with new files and you should be fine.

[1.02b to 1.03b] Overwrite files, upgrade product (dont install product)

[1.03b to 1.04b] Uninstall the product, then reinstall it. Overwrite all old files with new files and you should be fine.

[1.04b to 1.05b, 1.05b to 1.06b,1.06b to 1.07b] Upgrade the product. Overwrite all old files with new files and you should be fine.

Works With (FF2, FF3, IE6, IE7, IE8, SF2, SF3, CHROME):

vBulletin [3.8.X]

get the vBulletin [3.7.X] version here

INCOMPATIBLE HACKS:

• USC
• PassiveVid (1.x)
• gXboxLive
• Topic (incl. Blog) of the Week
• Marquee Text

Versions:

1.01b
1.02b

fixes

safari 2 support
safari 3 support
google chrome support
added live topic icon on new posts page
fixed security issue, strongly suggest upgrading!

changes

added live edit (to avoid a performance hit i had to add two rows to two tables in the database)
added external style sheet

1.03b

fixes

fix double post
phrase notification
fixed an edit bug for people with table prefixes

changes

ability to change interval in ACP

1.04b

fixes

javascript error for guests
fixed live topic activation (first poster to raise a dead topic)

changes

auto quick reply focus after post

1.05b

fixes

css flaw
js error for unsupported browsers (random)
fixed chrome issue

changes

edit notification - thanks to nso
rebuilding some of the original logic to hopefully prevent product conflicts

1.06b

fixes

fixed a little javascript issue that had to do with displaying posts
uses GPC cleaner now

changes

limit the number of ajax posts on the live topic (example 40) and fade them away.
changed the way the hooks are used
tightened up everything a bit

1.07b

fixes

fixed a bug where the live topic notification always making an ajax call

changes

support user ignore list
changed the way the javascript logic worked (hopefully there are less compatibly issues) added support for IE6 and IE8

1.10

hmm

{Mark As Installed}

{Don't forget to vote for Modification of the Month}

[Lynne]

One of the things I noticed is that some items don't show up in the user dropdown in the postbit for these 'live' posts. Also, some data I add into the postbit doesn't show up because I add it though a hook. I'd like to add this back, thus I asked this question above:

- is there a reason you didn't include the $hook_query_fields (and others) from "newreply_post_ajax" in the $posts query in livetopic_hooks.php?

I don't want to add that back into the query if there was a good reason you removed it. Any thoughts on this?

[nul7]

Originally Posted by Coders Shack

this is why its still in beta, every configuration has not been tested. I don't see how a subdomain could make a difference. I'm guessing its your forum configuration. (it could be your server config, but i doubt it. As for alcohol how do you think i came up with this concept... )

lol Well, I'll just jump in head first and do the same edits to the live server. I'll let you know how it goes....

[feldon23]

CS,

Great add-on.

Have you considered turning on CAPTCHA on your forum? Spammers galore!

[nul7]

*sigh* Still a no go for me. I did see that I am running a different version of php on my test server though... I am running 5.2.6 but our host is running 5.2.5. Other than that the two servers are now pretty much identical... same files, same database. Besides the difference in php version, I have mine running on a windows box, while our site is hosted on a linux box. Don't see why that would be a problem, though. I'm stumped.

I'm going to make another complete backup of the site and transfer it to the test server one more time... maybe I forgot a setting or something, but I don't think so. The saga continues...

[HabboForum]

Great idea, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be great in practice for relatively active boards. This plugin keeps causing this error for us:

Database error in vBulletin :

mysql_pconnect() [<a href='function.mysql-pconnect'>function.mysql-pconnect</a>]: User xxxxxxx_forum already has more than 'max_user_connections' active connections
/home/xxxx/public_html/includes/class_core.php on line 311

MySQL Error :
Error Number :
Request Date : Wednesday, January 21st 2009 @ 06:31:27 PM
Error Date : Wednesday, January 21st 2009 @ 06:31:27 PM
Script : http://www.slicedxxxxxx.com/ajax.php...ownewresponses
Referrer : http://www.slicedxxxxx.com/showthrea...68943&posted=1
IP Address : xxx.xx.xx.xx
Username :
Classname : vB_Database
MySQL Version :

[Alfa1]

How many connections per user does this hack need?

[kud0gfx]

Originally Posted by HabboForum

Great idea, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be great in practice for relatively active boards. This plugin keeps causing this error for us:

totally agree with that, i had to deactivate it and im running a quad core that costs 300$/month...

[Cobra-J82]

Originally Posted by SteamyLightning

Very cool mod.

Anything AJAX is cool with me.

lol same here

[nul7]

Ok, I'm now convinced I can't get this to work due to a server issue. I did a fresh back up (completely deleting the old files and db off the test server and downloading all the files and db off the host server). The only thing I changed were the install path in the config.php and the path to the forum in the vBa index.php. It works just fine.

So next step is to compare the phpinfo from each server and go through the settings one by one to see if any of them break LT functionality. Being different platforms, I won't be able to get an exact copy, but hopefully I can narrow it down. Just doing a quick scan, the only things that jump out at me are the php version (Live = 5.2.5, Test = 5.2.6) and Thread Safety (Live = off, Test = on).

[haytham]

Thank you. As I said on youtube, it could be very useful in social group conversations. Now my questions are these:
1- I see you have made bug fixes and say the last version is 1.05b but I couldn't find it for download.
2- The 1.04b for 3.7 and 3.8 have the same size and files inside...a bit confused...