Warning Hack V1.5

Version 1.5 Note: You must have v1 installed to upgrade, the upgrade process is small so there was no need to write out a fresh install.

It has come to my attention that a "decent" warning system isn't available here on vbulletin.org, which is quite a shame, and because forums like mine, and probably yours need a simple yet advanced warning system to keep things under wraps

Anyway, i thought i might aswell release what i made, prior to me getting off my ass... lol

Administration Features:
View Warning Logs
- Displays all warnings, warned user, warned by, link to the warned post, date, warning type, and the comment specified when the warning was given, and a remove warning link
(Remove will remove the log and also put the members warning level back down in accordance to how much it was increased by the selected warning removed)
Unban Banned Members
- A simple page that you should visit every few days, it will automatically ban any auto banned users by the warning system where there ban time has expired
Warning Options
- Here you can set the following:
-- Number of warn points before member is auto banned
-- Number of days a member is auto banned for
-- View Warnign Types
-- Add Warning Type
-- Add warning type has the following fields:
---- Name/Description/Warn Points Given

Forum Features:
Every post has "Warn [Name]" and "View [Names] Warnings"
These are only accessiable by a member group which is allowed to "moderate" (Moderating groups are auto detected)
Clicking the Warn link will bring you to a page where you view the user your warning, a link to review the warned post, members current warning level, and below the warning types, has a drop down menu to select the warning type, and a text field to put your comment for why this warning is been issued
Upon completing the warning form, the warned user will be Pm'ed from the person who warned them, with the comment put down and a link to the post

View Warnings link will display logs of only that specified user's warnings, the same features as the admin cp warning logs, only just for this user

Members can access only 1 page of the warning system, which is "View My Warnings", this link is added to the quick links drop down menu
Here they simple view there warnings, just like a moderator would, only without the remove warning link

V1.5 Features:
Protectable Usergroups:
No user's in these defined groups can be warned, or banned.
Root Admin Force Protection:
Userid 1 cannot be warned, canned be banned, this is not optional, this is forced for security.
New Unban Members Set Up:
Now displays all currently banned user's, what time they were banned, what time they are supposed to be unbanned. You may unban the user even if there time has not expired (You will be notificed if they have not served the time issued upon ban, but not stopped). Upon unbanning, you choose the members 'new' warning level and the user's usergroup to move them into
Set banned usergroup:
You can now easily choose from a drop down menu which usergroup user's are sent to if after been warned they are banned.

V1.5 Bug Fixes:
- User locations in 'Users online' shown as unknown if they are warning/viewing warnings (Priority: Medium)
- Unban members system renovated and now fully works (Priotity: Maximum)
- No mysql errors upon sending a pm if the PM table had been altered (Priotity: Maximum)
- New protectable usergroups to stop any group of your choice been banned (Priotity: Maximum)
- Last time visited didn't appear when error page occured (Priotity: Low)
- Un-used global in PM function (Priority: Low)

I hope you enjoy the system, my staff teamare very pleased with it and find it of great use, enjoy the hack

- Zero Tolerance

[sv1cec]

Originally Posted by Charlie O'Leary

sv1cec, I added your mature warnings cron job and it doesn't seem to do anything, even though I have several warnings that are over 1 month old. Any ideas what could be wrong?

What is the maturity period for those warnings? Do you have a maturity period in your warnings?

Rgds
-----------
John

[Cryo]

What is the maturity period for those warnings? Do you have a maturity period in your warnings?

Hrm, don't have anything that allows me to set that. What tables / modifications would need to be added / made in order to get that to work? Didn't see it anywhere else in this thread.

[sv1cec]

Since this thread is getting quite long, and there are several posts with replies I gave to users, based on my modifications of this excellent hack, and after being prompted by a fellow member here, I spend a whole night, putting down some notes to explain what my version of the hack does.

Unfortunatelly, when I was making those changes, I didn't kept a log, so it is not possible to provide step-by-step instructions. Also, it is not possible to implement one feature and leave out another. The whole thing is offered as a ... packaged deal, LoL.

Please be patient, remember that last night I slept only one hour, preparing these things and making the code more "public", until yesterday, it was only for internal consumption.

OK, hopefully when this message is complete, there will be several files uploaded. These are :

1. mymods.txt - a text file describing what my mods do, in addition or in difference to the original hack (even version 1.5, which should be installed before starting to change things). This file contains also the description of the tables that my mods use. IT DOES NOT CONTAIN STEP -BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO MODIFY THE TABLES, IT JUST SHOWS YOU THE TABLES STRUCTURE.
2. Warn.php - my version of Warn.php
3. admin_warn.php - my version of the file, this one should be uploaded into your admincp directory.
4. kill_warns.php - a cron script to automatically delete warnings, whose maturity period has been elapsed. This should be uploaded into your include/cron directory and activated from the "Add New Scheduled Task" in your AdminCP. Make it so it is run once a day. My settings for that are:
Title: delete_old_warnings
Day of the week : *
Day of the month : *
Hour : 3
Minute : 3
Log Entries : Yes
File : ./includes/cron/kill_warns.php
5. templates.txt - a file which contains all my warn-related templates. Some of them may be the same as the ones of the original hack, but since I do not know/remember which ones I've modified, I included them all. It also contains instructions, on how to modify the postbit and the postbit_legacy templates. If you have some of the warn templates already, make sure they contain my code. If some of the templates I list, are not in your system, you have to create them.

One more thing I remembered, as I finished this: Since I am not using the table that the original hack had for the banned users, the "Unban User" option is no longer available. I let vB cron job do the unbanning. Please test it though, because I am not sure how well it works. For example, in my hack, when a user is banned, his original user group id is maintained in the userban record, in order for it to be restored when the member is unbanned. I am not sure if this works though. Let me know.

Added Friday Oct 8th Evening:

If one is to allow multiple warnings for the same post (for various offences obviously), the person issuing the warning, should be able to see what other warnings were issued for this post. So, I edited Warn.php a little, and a couple of templates. The changes are reflected at the files below.

Added Saturday Oct. 9th morning:

I forgot to mention that the Warning Points a user has received, are also shown in his profile. So that brings the total number of templates you have to edit to 20!!!!

I guess this is the best I can do to describe how I customized this beautiful hack, to make it more suitable to my needs. Credits should all be given to Zero Tolerance for the hack, all I did was lots of trials and (a whole lot more) errors.

I'll try to help anyone who has issues, but I cannot guarantee it guys, there are two 2.5 years-old boys in this family, and this can be a really messy situation.

Regards

----------
John

[Cryo]

Absolutely wonderful, sv1cec! Thanks for the hard work, implementing these changes now. One question, is the maturity period a day variable? Meaning, if I wanted a warning to expire in 30 days, the maturity period would be set to 30?

[sv1cec]

Originally Posted by Charlie O'Leary

Absolutely wonderful, sv1cec! Thanks for the hard work, implementing these changes now. One question, is the maturity period a day variable? Meaning, if I wanted a warning to expire in 30 days, the maturity period would be set to 30?

Yes Sir, it is on a day basis, so for 30 days you enter 30.

Rgds
---------

John

[TheMayhem]

My queries for the warning options are just not working. I'm trying to update from the original warning hack to the 1.5. Could anyone write something up real quickly for phpmyadmin that will delete the current warning options and readd the table with the necessary rows inside? I've spent 24 hours and I just can't seem to get it to work properly

[M1th]

Originally Posted by sv1cec

Yes Sir, it is on a day basis, so for 30 days you enter 30.

Rgds
---------

John

Not sure if you got my email, John, but the warn maturity feature doesnt seem to work. I set one to be removed after 2 days. I even waited that long but didnt seem to have removed it.

[sv1cec]

Originally Posted by M1th

Not sure if you got my email, John, but the warn maturity feature doesnt seem to work. I set one to be removed after 2 days. I even waited that long but didnt seem to have removed it.

M1th,

Please check that you have everything as described in the files a couple of posts above.

It seems it's working OK in my forums, so I am not sure what's the problem. Please check everything again.

And no, I haven't got any e-mail from you, sorry.

Rgds
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John

[GamerJunk.net]

Could you make it possible for the next release to add warning permissions by usergroup? That would help so only mods, supermods and admins could warn users.

[SamirDarji]

If I recall correctly, there actually is a hack for this somewhere in this thread.