Allow Your Users to Post Anonymously Without Logging Out

When I released my Post As Anonymous Mod Hack (now obsolete), many users wanted the ability to allow ANY user to post anonymously. This hack fulfils that request.

It is a VERY long and difficult hack to install. Therefore, I have written the instruction file radically different than any I have ever written before. This one is written in discrete steps. Rather than having you blindly edit files and hope everything works when it's done, I have you do the hack in steps and TEST each step.

IF YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO CODE, I SUGGEST YOU POST A SERVICE REQUEST AND ASK SOMEBODY TO INSTALL THIS FOR YOU.

Features:
A. Control anonymous posting at the board, forum, usergroup, and user level.

This means that you can use the anonymous posting in any combination that you can use features such as allowing users to reply to posts.

B. Users can post anonymously, but still subscribe to the thread.

C. You can set the anonymous username per usergroup. For example, Admins can post as Anonymous Admin, while regular users post as Anonymous Registered Member.

D. Mods and Admins can see who truly posted.

E. Users can see their name on their own anonymous post.

F. The "edited by" message does not show on anonymous posts.

G. Lastposter works properly.

H. Search will not pull up a user's anonymous posts under their name. But, you can search for all anonymous posts.

I. Anonymous posts are marked so that you don't forget the post is anonymous and "out" yourself.

J. Anonymous posts can be safely quoted.

I will not support this hack for any version of vbulletin other than 3.0.7.

[Lionel]

Did your test. That confirm it is the permissions by displaying the template in showthread

[amykhar]

Originally Posted by Lionel

I appreciate your help. Thank you very much.

In specific forum, allow anonymous posting is on
the usergroup admin has permission to post as anonymous and it is also set as default in that forum permissions

But what about at the board level? In vbulletin options. Also, what about the user level? Did you set that to no for your account when you were testing? The variables all look exactly right as they do when running on my test board, so I don't think I have another install file glitch going.

In vbulletin options, it's off by default. That has to be turned on. Probably something I should change in the setup of those options.

Amy

[Lionel]

at the board level the global option is set to yes.
at the user level also

500 was taken, so I made the settings 480 but I don't think that would cause problem, in instructions it says I could.

[amykhar]

OK. Lionel and I went to PM and figured out that problem. I had a variable name mistyped in step 3. I have fixed the install instructions.

[Lionel]

yup, works great so far... now up to step 7 :-)

[Lionel]

Looks like all bugs were squashed. Thanks for the help.
This hack is great. I got a bunch of "shy" members. That should help. I also like the fact that admin can see the real poster, with a mention that post was made anonymously, and the fact that you still can warn the real user if you are using the warning hack.

[Challenge]

What about some pics of postbit?

[lordnex]

I have a question about a possible request for this...
Is there a chance you could set an entire forum to be "anonymous" only? there's a spot to click if it's allowed but what about being forced?

Fantastic hack though!

[amykhar]

Originally Posted by lordnex

I have a question about a possible request for this...
Is there a chance you could set an entire forum to be "anonymous" only? there's a spot to click if it's allowed but what about being forced?

Fantastic hack though!

Lordnex, let me ensure all the bugs are squashed in the install instructions please before I start thinking about changes.

[amykhar]

OK. If you've already installed, there is a query you need to run to update your existing users to set their permissions to 'yes'.

Make sure to change fieldx to use the custom field number you chose. Use the table prefix as necessary.

UPDATE userfield set fieldx='yes';