vB Assistant

Name: vB Assistant
Version: 1.1
templates to edit: 1 - 2

Description: vB Assistant is like a mini cpanel for your members, it small yet contains lots of information.

It will help you get to things much faster in a organized fashion. It will tell you all you need to know about your private messages, How many you have, how many in total, and show you the newest one in detail. It will show you the name of the person that sent it, the link directly to the PM (no hassle with going to inBox first), When you get a new PM within 24 hours It'll let you know with a flashing image and a "Received Today!" caption.

After the message ages (24 hours has past) it'll show the date instead. vB Assistant uses all your current forum settings, from date format, to forum title name.

vB Assistant will also let you know when a thread you started has a new reply which you haven't read. You will see a "View Replies" when someone posts in your thread. It will also tell you who the poster is, without even visiting the thread! It checks when was your last visit and determines if you read it or not. It wasn't easy since there isn't a "message unread" column in the database, so i managed to use the last login time.

vB Assistant has a mini quick search box, just type and hit enter.

When a user is not registered and he/she views vB Assistant, it will let them know what feature they have access to, and also tell them to register to get access to those features. (PM, cpanel links, etc...).

The buddie list is also available, clicking the username takes you to the PM window, clicking the red X will remove the buddie.

Each section in vB Assistant has a expandable/collapsible switch, If you do not want to see a part of it just click and it folds away with cool javascript affect

By having expandable/collapsible sections vB Assistant becomes even more compact and organized.

vB Assistant will also refresh every two minutes by default, it can be changed if wanted.

I see vB Assistant as a mini messenger that you can keep open (since it's small) while you browse the 'net

There is also a mini statistics section that will show you some information about how many registered members, users online, total post, etc...

Plus it will keep track of how many posts were made in the last 24 hrs.

Anyway, you get the idea.


Installation:

Very easy: Instructions are attached.
couple variables to edit, couple templates and your done.

Other information:

I wasn't going to release this yet, because i wanted to add more features, and remove anything that i later find unnecessary, But I am releasing in hope that i can get some ideas from you people on improving it.

If you find any bugs let me know and i will fix them. I have tested it many times. And have been using it for a couple days.

It should work with vbulletin version 2.x.x. I've tested it on 2.2.9 and 2.3.0

Please lick install if you find this useful

Updates:
March 30th: New version 1.1 Released.
Changes:

- Added: a PM Meter, shows percentage of how full inBox is
- Added: a preview of the private message, will show 75 characters of the message.,
- Added: 5 new images, for Meter.
- Fixed: PM Meter disappears when you have 1 new message to make space for the PM preview, Meter returns once the PM is read.

April 1st:

- Fixed bug: PM would show 1% full inBox when you had no PM's, now shows 0% when you have no messages in inBox

----------------------------------------------------------------

To upgrade simply re-upload assistant.php and overwrite. Edit new configuration settings.

Clear browser cache first to download the update.

[Sebastian]

@+Fares+ : the path for $forumdir isn't correct, if your forum directory is called "forums" then change it to $forumdir = "forums";

Otherwise change that setting to the name of your forum directory.

[Bison]

Today at 05:29 PM Sebastian said this in Post #58


I cannot seem to produce this error, I emptied my inBox and i don't see this.

@Pollo: you still have to put the name of the forum directory in $forumdir. If your forums directory is called "forums" then leave it as default, cause it's for linking to private messages, cpanel, etc..

I do suggest you use vB Assistant in you forum directory though.

This byte of code is causint the error:

if ($allpm[messages] <= 1) {
	$amount = "1";
} else {
	$amount = round(($allpm[messages]/$pmquota) * 100,2);
}

[amykhar]

Not everybody has a PM quota set. You should check to make sure it's not zero before you enter that code block.

Amy

[Sebastian]

@ Rolodex: what is your PM quota set at in the admin cpanel?

[Bison]

My quota is set to 100 ... my mods are 50, and members are 40.

Edit: My BAD ... I had this set to Zero (Unlimited) ... after placing the members amount into the box, the error went away.

Thanks for the heads up guys!

[D|ver]

hey really cool hack
but is it possible to show about 10 latest posts on the very top of the window?

that would be very cool

[Lethal]

I would like to have a template version.

also, its says my pm box is 1% full but yet I have no messages either in my inbox or sent box. ?? shouldn't it say 0% full?

also, how would I get this to work with multiple styles? I tried to use { imagesfolder } and { firstaltcolor } and { secondaltcolor } but it didn't work. Any suggestions?

[bandersen]

Thank you for a nice hack!

I am sorry, but I am fiddling with the $forumdir too! can you plz help... My forumdir is /forums/upload
Here is the line in assistant.php:

$forumdir = "forums/upload"; // name of your forum directory

If I type ../forums/upload/assistant.php in the browser, I get the vb assistant up on that page.

EDIT: OK... I found it... also changed the path in the code to insert in headinclude so that the line with the path looks like:

window.open('/forums/upload /assistant.php?s=$session[sessionhash]','vbassistant','width=235,height=500,resizable=ye s,scrollbars=yes');

[SgtSling]

Question.. and yes I am using version 1.1 of the zip

In my vbassistant it has under private messages
You have 2 new messages.
9 are old messages.

There isn't a meter or a preview of the message>
I did not upgrade from the old zip this is a new install

What do I have to do to make the pm images and preview show?
(YES I UPLOADED THE IMAGES)
It isn't a broken image problem.. the code just simply isn't there..

[bandersen]

I am not able to get the search function to work when I hit "submit".
Also, the image problem like SgtSling describes.

EDIT: :nervous: I know..... search worked ok after restart.