vBadvanced Homepage

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vBadvanced Homepage v1.1 Released! (01.27.04)

vBadvanced Homepage is an advanced homepage / portal that will allow you to include different options from your vBulletin message board on your site's homepage. It also allows you to easily create and manage new pages which are completely powered by vBulletin and vBadvanced. There are over 40 options where you can enable/disable the features, plus everything is template based so it is very easy to customize and change everything through your Admin CP.



Features:

• Login box for members to log in to your site on the homepage.
• Post News in a forum you specify and have it appear on your homepage.
• Create new pages in which the content will replace the news section of your homepage.
• Show the latest threads started in your forum on your homepage.
• Show a poll and allow users to vote and see the results on your homepage.
• Shows users avatar, new private messages, and buddy list for members who are logged in.
• Shows a list of active users.
• Shows statistics such as total members, threads, posts, top poster, newest member, and today's birthday's.
• Shows a mini calendar with links to days with scheduled events, and a box with today's scheduled events.
• Search box to allow users to quickly search your forums.
• Set and change all options via the Admin CP.
• Ability to easily switch on/off the polls, users avatar, buddy list, online users, search box, calendar, custom templates, news icons, news comments, smilies, set the maximum number of news posts, and many other options via the Admin CP.
• Everything is completely template based so it is very easy to customize.
• Install file that will make all database queries and templates for you in seconds.
• Uninstalls in seconds.
• Tested and stable with vBulletin 3.0 RC.
• 100% validated XHTML 1.0 compliance
  

A nice feature of vBadvanced Homepage is that it is optimized and designed for large web sites. vBadvanced Homepage performs only 5 queries with all the options turned off. Some options will cause the script to perform extra queries, but even with all the options turned on it still performs only 17 queries at max.

Here is a list of each extra function that will cause extra queries:

• News - 1 query
• Latest Threads - 1 query
• Poll - 1 query (2 if the user has voted)
• User's Avatar - 1 query
• Buddy List and/or Online Users - 1 query
• Mini Calendar - 3 queries (none for the simple calendar)
• Stats - 2 queries
• New Posts - 1 query

Screen Shots:
Admin Homepage
Guest Homepage
Admin CP Options

Example Sites:
http://vbadvanced.com
http://plurplanet.com
http://digitalkore.net
http://differentdawn.com

Updates From v1.01 to v1.1

• News Archive where you can display links and info about older news posts.
• Online usere & buddylist now show "Username HTML Markup".
• Shows subscribed threads in news, news archive, and latest threads.
• Preivew on Latest threads and news archive (similar to the preview on forumdisplay).
• Option to display what forum(s) the latest threads were posted in.
• Poll icon in the latest threads section for threads which contain polls.
• New option to change the date/time format for news posts.
• Support for left/right text direction and languages.
• All known bugs from v1.01 have been fixed.

There are 7 new options in your Admin CP which include:

• News Date & Time Format (Allows you to change the date/time format for news posts)
• Show News Subscribed Threads (Shows the "subscribed" icon in the news posts if a user is subscribed to that post)
• Number of Archived News Posts to Display (Allows you to set the number of archived news posts you would like to display)
• Show Preview in Archive? (Similar to the thread preview, shows a preview of the threads in the News Arcive section)
• Show Subscribed Icon? (Shows the "subscribed" icon in the latest threads section for users that are subscribed to that thread)
• Show Preview of New Threads? (Similar to the thread preview option for the forumdisplay page, it shows you a preview of the thread)
• Show Latest Threads Forum? (Shows a link to, and the name of the forum the thread is in)

Most every template has changed as well, so it may be necessary to revert your templates and re-apply any chnages you have made.


Help & Support:
Before asking for support, Please read the F.A.Q in the readme file! If you have any problems or questions that are not covered in the F.A.Q. please here, or please check out vBadvanced.com for priority support. I will be more than happy to help in any way I can if the request for help is made there. Anyone trying to contact me via email, private message, or any other means will be ignored.

Copyright:
This script is ? 2003 - 2004 vBadvanced.com and PlurPlanet, LLC.
This hack is NOT to be re-distributed in any way or placed on a website for download without permission.
All copyright notes in the script itself must remain unchanged.


Thanks To:
Faranth & Littlebit for helping test the beta versions and hopefully squashing most of the bugs.

[Blue Storm]

Everytime I try to log in on the page, using the nav bar log in it tell me Im logged in and then returns me to the main page still not logged in. If I use the block's log in bit I just get taken back to the main page not logged in.

Any ideas why I can't log in?

[Tigga]

Snowbot - What version of vBulletin are you running? The names of the days are not showing on your regular calendar either, so my guess would be that you're missing some calendar phrases...

Forkman - Yes, that was the correct place to modify the functions_calendar.php file. Apparently they added some new global variables to that function... Thanks for pointing that out - I just updated the zip.

Blue Storm - Try changing your cookie domain under the main vBulletin options section to ".yoursite.com" (without the quotes). The default setting seems to work for most people, but that seems to be necessary for some (which is why it's covered in the FAQ section in the readme ).

[Blue Storm]

Ah, good-o it worked. I take it you wont be wanting your account there?

Just another thing, any chance of adding some stuff to a later version such as the ability to have all blocks to one side, a forum link somewhere on the main page, explanation on how to make and use the new template stuff it keeps refering too?

[Tigga]

Glad that worked. And no, I probably won't be needed the account there.
As far as moving the blocks to one side, that should be fairly easy to do by modifying the index template. Everything in that template is commented, so it shouldn't be too hard to move things around. Adding a forum link somewhere can be done by modifying the templates as well... I'm not sure if that will ever be something standard since everyone has a different style and would most likely want the link in a different place.

explanation on how to make and use the new template stuff it keeps refering too?

Are you talking about the feature that allows you to replace the news posts with other content? If so, there's a small section in the readme file (under the "Setting the Options" section) that covers that. If it doesn't make sense or you're having problems figuring that out let me know... Or if I'm just missing your point completely and you're talking about something else let me know as well.

[paratek]

Hey Tigga, just a couple of things. I didn't see it in the instructions, but you need to modify the links in index_footer for admincp and modcp or they won't work.

Second, I think the latest threads are displaying posts for an admin group that regular users are able to see and respond to. I only noticed, because i received a few responses to a post i sent to other admins. I have disables the group from displaying, but i did like the fact you are only supposed to see what your permissions allow.

Any one else have this problem?

[Blue Storm]

I've been dedicated to doing C++ and thus know little to no HTML or PHP so muddling though fairly complex code is a bit daunting. Ill get there though. Cheers.

[Tigga]

paratek - Thanks for pointing out the incorrect links in the footer. I'll be sure to fix that in the next version.
I'm not sure I follow you about the permissions thing... You said that regular users are able to see and respond to the posts, so what would be the problem with them being displayed on the homepage?

[tgmorris]

Originally Posted by ForKmaN

that dont make much sence

where exactly?

In the ACP open up the vbadvanced index template. Do a search for mini calendar. A bit further down is a table declaration with a cellpadding=4. Change the 4 to a 2.

[SnowBot]

Originally Posted by Tigga

Snowbot - What version of vBulletin are you running? The names of the days are not showing on your regular calendar either, so my guess would be that you're missing some calendar phrases...
.

Im using RC2

[The Quibbler]

Installed it; everything's working wonderfully, although I did have a question: how would I make more than one custom side block? It's probably really obvious, but I didn't see it in the Read Me file.

Originally Posted by ForKmaN

Also, I was just thinking, when I was reading the instructions, it sais in there:


But I cant actuly find that exact wording. I did find:

function construct_calendar_output($today, $usertoday, $calendarinfo, $fullcalendar = 0, $weekrange = '')
{
	global $birthdaycache, $eventcache, $bbuserinfo, $vbphrase, $stylevar, $show, $offset, $colspan, $days, $months, $show;

Is it the same thing? Just maybe instruction from an older version or somthing? It kinda confused me

I saw the same thing with mine, so what what I did is look closely at the changes between the two and add whatever's new. So I'd add $dontshowweek = '0' on the first line and $vboptions on the second, making sure it's in the same style as the rest of the stuff. Worked for me.