Forum Display Enhancements - Alphabetical Forum Filtering (ABC Threads Menu)

This mod add an "ABC Menu" on top of forumdisplay.php, to filter threads by theirs initial letter. It's fully customisable, as you may see in the screenshots attached.

I take a lot of caution coding 3 different locations to place it and a variable that you can use to manual placement.

There's also styling options:

- active "filtered letter" link color;
- active "filtered letter" cell background color;
- letters cells classes (only alt2 or alternating alt1/alt2);
- configurable optional message above the ABC Menu - phrased (multi language);

When the user clicks a letter in the ABC Menu, the thread results will be filtered in the default order (configured in ACP or overriden by user options in UserCP). Then, a popup menu will be displayed aside the letter to reorder the filtering (there's all options: per title, starting date, last post date, replys number, number of views, thread started username and thread rating - all in both descending+ascending orders).

The # link lists not only the threads started by numbers, but all threads not started by a letter (what includes number 0-9 and all symbols).

Stop loosing your time. Download, install and see it yourself!

Installation instructions
- Import attached product

Upgrade instructions (any version to 1.1)
1- Import attached product (set Allow overwrite = Yes)
2- Check your configs (will need to adjust colspan and positioning again)

Note about colspan

Take some time checking the colspan value. The lower you set it, better. I'm saying this because if you set 5 for a skin that need only 4, newer browsers will renderize it ignoring the excess, but older will render 1 (or more) blank columns (and you will end up with an HTML structural error, regardless what the browser renderize).

It's now adjusted as 5 by default (new installs*). If you upgraded your version, you will need to manually adjust it. This occurs because the old version automatically add + 3 to configured value. But I saw some skins this week with very different layouts for forumdisplay (they have only 2-3 columns), so I decided to remove this "+3" adjustment in code. So, if you set it 3, you will have colspan="3", and so on.

The mod auto adjusts the colspan based in your forum configurations (the colspan is increased by 1 when the forum have threadicons and/or the inlinemod column is show). When you use manual placement, a key text should be used as colspan value in your template (--abcfilter-colspan--), to benefits of this function that identify the inlinemod/threadicons columns + the colspan setting.


Version History

01/11/2009 - 1.0
- Initial release.

01/11/2009 - 1.0b
- Fixed Plugin code (see post #1908976).
- Small edit in popup menu <if> statements.

05/11/2009 - 1.1
- Fixed pagination.
- New template positions.
- 1 more fix in the <if> statements.
- Removed unnecessary template caching.
- Added session hash in URL, when present.
- Configurable No Follow parameter in links.
- Optional line break (<br>) below ABC Menu.
- Configurable # symbol (set 0-9, @, or whatever).
- Selected letter cell class now match styles automatically.
- You may still customize the colors, if you want a "highlight".
- Re-ordering results in forum footer keeps the thread list filtered.*

* This may not work with all styles (let me know).

[S]Known bugs: pagination works fine, however, page totals are not decreased after filtering.

e.g.: if you have 200 threads, divided in 10 pages (20 per page), after filtering the forum for the letter "A", if you have 35 results, you will see not only 2 pages, but all 10 (pages 3 to 10 returns the default "no threads to show" error). I do not see it as a big problems, specially because I added both Asc/Desc orders in the filtering, so you don't need to waste your time trying to find the "last page" of a filtering with 5+ pages: just inverse the order and go to page 1[/S]

IF YOU'RE USING IT, MARK AS INSTALLED. IT'S GOOD FOR YOU AND ME.

[z0diac]

Is there a way to make it DEFAULT to Ascending alphebetical order? So when a user clicks on a letter, it automatically lists them in ascending?

Right now, you have to first click the letter, then click the letter again and select ascending.

[laztrix]

Works smoothly.
Marked as installed, great work.

[conankid]

Does this mod support Unicode charater like Đ Ê Ơ .....? Thank you

[mykkal]

I need to add no follow tags to this to keep SEO high. Where should I put that code? Also can that be added by default to future renditions?

Search engines penalize for duplicate content. And since VB has SEO and sitemap already there's no need for bots to see it. Especially since its just a tool for registered users.

[lazydesis]

Originally Posted by thedvs

@RenatoMN

PLEASE! (with cherries on top) code it for vb4.0, seriously everyone who uses this will be begging you to.

i second that pretty please

[lazydesis]

Originally Posted by thedvs

@RenatoMN

PLEASE! (with cherries on top) code it for vb4.0, seriously everyone who uses this will be begging you to.

i third that ... and i am sure there will be many to follow who will fourth, fifth and may be 100th it

this was such an awesome mod and all my users loved it absolutely

may be you can put up your paypal link in the 4.0 release and I am sure many people including me would love to donate for this

thanks

[CILGINKRAL_]

Thanks, wonderfull

[marianoblesa]

Please Update VB4.

Thanks.

[djpatch]

Please recode for vb4

[z0diac]

Any chance to have it list threads alphabetically once you click on a letter, by default? Maybe in ACP you could have it ask what the default listing mode is..