vBadvanced Homepage

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vBadvanced.com is now open! There you will find more information regarding vBadvanced Homepage, FAQ's, hacks & modifications, and more.


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.

[digitalSite]

I am having some issues with the mini calendar. It doesn't show the links to events. I have checked the calendar permissions, usergroup calendar permissions, and vbAdv's settings, etc. I have calendar #1 (public) set up, but not seeing the links. Any ideas on how to make it show or is that the way vbAdv works?

[GameMania]

Originally Posted by Tigga

GameMania - Remove the quote from your news post, or change your "News Maximum Characters" setting to a higher number so the ending quote tag will be included in the post.

thanks for your answer... but if i set the maximum characters to 1000 and the quote-text has more than 1000 characters i've the same problem...

so, is there no better solution?

[Tigga]

digitalSite - vBulletin apparently changed the way some of the calendar functions work in one of their receint versions. If you'll open your adv_index.php file and look for this line:

PHP Code:

define('NO_REGISTER_GLOBALS', 1); 


Right below that add:

PHP Code:

define('THIS_SCRIPT', 'adv_index'); 


Then open your includes/functions.php file and look for:

PHP Code:

if (THIS_SCRIPT == 'online' OR THIS_SCRIPT == 'calendar' OR (THIS_SCRIPT == 'index' AND $vboptions['showevents'])) 


Replace that with:

PHP Code:

if (THIS_SCRIPT == 'online' OR THIS_SCRIPT == 'calendar' OR THIS_SCRIPT == 'adv_index' OR (THIS_SCRIPT == 'index' AND $vboptions['showevents'])) 


GameMania - At the moment, no. That section is coded the way it is to help prevent broken vbcode tags for when a tag isn't ended before the cut off. I've tried finding a good solution and a way to end the quote if there is one that isn't ended, but I'm not sure if that's going to be possible. I will try to look into that some more before I release the next version though.

[Aceman]

Installed and working great on my site. I've even started hacking in a few new features of my own

Aceman

[digitalSite]

Thanks Tigga! That fixed my mini calendar!

How can I center my top banner/logo? In index_header and also in Common Templates: header, I see: $stylevar[left]

I changed it to: $stylevar[center] but that doesn't work. Any ideas how to center it?
Thanks!

[Tigga]

There would be no need for a $stylevar[center] tag since the center would be the same in every language. Try align="center" instead.

[Mont]

running RC2, can some please post the fix to make the event links work right in the calendar. The path is wrong and mine isn't seeing the folder I have the forums in. Thanks in advance.

[stlracing]

I really like vBadvanced. My site is currently on vBulletin 2.3.4 with vbPortal.

I would like to switch to vBadvanced when I move to vBulletin 3, but it doesn't seem to have one key feature that I use and that is TOPICS. I like to put my news articles into topics so someone can easily find all the news related to that topic.

I also use the WebLinks in vbPortal extensively, but I don't like the way they are making the WebLinks look like a FORUM in vbPortal for vBulletin 3. They seem very difficult to navigate. Whether I use vbPortal or vBadvance for vBulletin 3, I will likely have to switch to In-Link or some other link management software.

Also, does anyone have a script to wrap the vBadvanced side blocks and header around a static html file sort of like the "display.php" file with vbPortal?

Just trying to figure out what I want to use for portal software when I convert to vBulletin 3.

Thanks....

[digitalSite]

I use In-link for my links... http://www.dstcentral.com/
Then click on Web Links on left menu.

I have tried all the portals, and vbAdvanced is the only one that had everything I wanted.

[digitalSite]

Originally Posted by Tigga

There would be no need for a $stylevar[center] tag since the center would be the same in every language. Try align="center" instead.

Perfect! Is there a way I can make a small box called "Today's Events" and have today's events listed in there, like in a "Latest Threads" format? Not sure if it's supposed to do that automatically or not. Thank you!