Miscellaneous Hacks - Live Topic

. . . . . . . . Brought to you by scriptasy.com

. . . http://www.Scriptasy.com

Live Demo:

Live Topic 1.07b Demo (you must be logged in, and the topic must be "live")

Videos: 1.00b 1.06b

watch the damn videos... ^_^

Description:

This product is different from anything you have seen before, it raises the bar for forums. It will make your forums much more interactive, and also reduce server load.

Technical Details:

If a thread has been posted in X seconds then its now Live, if other users are viewing the Live topic and are on the last page they will experience a clean ajax experience while talking to other members. Once the thread is older than X seconds its no longer Live and it will now act like a normal thread. Also if a user edits one of their posts that's inside of the thread, it will be updated too so there is no longer a reason to ever have to refresh.

There is also logic for the viewer, the viewer of the thread has to be in an active state to see responses. An active user state is determined upon the users actions, if no actions were made in X seconds then the user is marked as inactive.

Also you may wonder why this could save your server bandwidth and CPU. If a user is refreshing to talk to another members the queries on a normal thread load are way more intense than the ajax call that this modification makes. So if you have 5 people talking to each other none of them have to refresh the page, all they are doing is simple page requests and one intense request when there has actual change.

You can test Live Topic with two users, you will see how amaizing this is... And probably spontaneously combust.

Found a bug? Want to request a feature?

Live Topic - Project Manager

Installation:

This is take less than 3 minutes to install, takes longer to notice its amazing feature. (you need multiple people to be active in the same topic)

Upgrade:

[1.01b to 1.XXb] Uninstall the product, then reinstall it. Overwrite all old files with new files and you should be fine.

[1.02b to 1.03b] Overwrite files, upgrade product (dont install product)

[1.03b to 1.04b] Uninstall the product, then reinstall it. Overwrite all old files with new files and you should be fine.

[1.04b to 1.05b, 1.05b to 1.06b,1.06b to 1.07b] Upgrade the product. Overwrite all old files with new files and you should be fine.

Works With (FF2, FF3, IE6, IE7, IE8, SF2, SF3, CHROME):

vBulletin [3.8.X]

get the vBulletin [3.7.X] version here

INCOMPATIBLE HACKS:

• USC
• PassiveVid (1.x)
• gXboxLive
• Topic (incl. Blog) of the Week
• Marquee Text

Versions:

1.01b
1.02b

fixes

safari 2 support
safari 3 support
google chrome support
added live topic icon on new posts page
fixed security issue, strongly suggest upgrading!

changes

added live edit (to avoid a performance hit i had to add two rows to two tables in the database)
added external style sheet

1.03b

fixes

fix double post
phrase notification
fixed an edit bug for people with table prefixes

changes

ability to change interval in ACP

1.04b

fixes

javascript error for guests
fixed live topic activation (first poster to raise a dead topic)

changes

auto quick reply focus after post

1.05b

fixes

css flaw
js error for unsupported browsers (random)
fixed chrome issue

changes

edit notification - thanks to nso
rebuilding some of the original logic to hopefully prevent product conflicts

1.06b

fixes

fixed a little javascript issue that had to do with displaying posts
uses GPC cleaner now

changes

limit the number of ajax posts on the live topic (example 40) and fade them away.
changed the way the hooks are used
tightened up everything a bit

1.07b

fixes

fixed a bug where the live topic notification always making an ajax call

changes

support user ignore list
changed the way the javascript logic worked (hopefully there are less compatibly issues) added support for IE6 and IE8

1.10

hmm

{Mark As Installed}

{Don't forget to vote for Modification of the Month}

[Dilldogs]

Very cool Mod. with this mod you don't need to add a chat room or a shout box and that is great.

[stuartn]

loved it but unfortunately many users complained that the site had slowed to a near halt as a result of it and I had to turn it off.

[megroup]

Hello, thank you for your mod.

Unfortunately, I cannot tell the difference in posting a message. Except i receive a notification on bottom of my browser

[stuartn]

We loved it but some members where not experiencing any lag while others just couldn't get around the site due to it. I personally think its intensive on the browser hence some are fine and others were puling there hair out. The idea is great the ease of its install is great its just a pity it has a strong side effect on peoples browsers.

[megroup]

Also, once i'm in a live topic, it doesn't seem to add new posts automatically. I only get notification on the bottom of my browser. Also, server load has increased from usual 0.80 to 3.2

[megroup]

I found the problem. If you set post sorting "new post at the beginning", Live Topic feature does not work. It only works with sorting "new post at the end".

[Charles_1]

Originally Posted by Coders Shack

seems like there's a conflicting mod

Yes, you are right. Mentioned problem was caused by another hack, Let user choose how many reputation points to give (up to their limit) (in version 1.1.0), which is really useful too.

I disabled one of its plugins called "Remove popup rep" and Live Topic is working fine again.

Thank you for this hack.

[jchamber2010]

do you think it would be possible to add a feature that makes it so that the browser title flashes, until you go back to the page to view it? This would make it so that you know when someone replied to a post you were viewing, if you were in another tab, or another browser window.

I don't know how useful this would be to others, but it'd be extremely useful to me, especially because I made it so that the Liveness basically doesn't ever turn off, making our entire forum completely live.

If you could add this feature (shouldn't be too hard to do, and i'd do it but your javascript is condensed which makes it extremely difficult to edit) but I'd apreciate it extremely.

Thanks,
Jchamb

[movslow]

Interesting Idea for a Live Topic intergration.

A few forums I'm on, different than VB, allow the page to refresh w/o reloading when you hit Preview.

Currently Preview reloads the page, and takes time, it would be nice if the page would just appear below your post so you can quickly read it...similar to how Live Topic appears.

:up:

[PGAmerica]

I just installed this and left the default configuration. I went to a private thread and posted several messages back and forth with a friend of mine.

This is not doing anything at all, other than acting like a regular thread. It is not "Live Updating" anything.

Ideas?