vBulletin PDA version

[Gholsie]

Damn, looks like my cell phone (LG VX4400) doesn't support HTML. It's a WAP only device.

[coreymcl]

OK I also own a PPC site and am looking for a way to do this with Avanto and Mazingo.net service. I am willing to pay for this if somebody can create it and make it work. Let me know.

Corey McLaughlin
www.pocketpcminds.com

[mccollin]

I am also interested in a PDA template. I am in the process of migrating pdaPhoneHome from phpBB to vBulletin. The site is heavily modified and has a lot of phpBB driven pages that pull data from the database. I have a complete version of the site done for PDAs and need to do the same for vBulletin before I can migrate. I've bought my license for vB and started working on porting the site, thinking that I could drop the PDA version for now... but my users don't agreee. I need a PDA template quickly.

If the PDAToon's version is in French, is there anyone here who could translate it? Or, could PDAToon give us a "step by step" on what you had to do to get this template done? I'm stuck on phpBB until I can figure this out... and now that I've seen vB.... I really want to get moved over.

[mccollin]

I'm not ready to post a link to it yet, but I have had success in doing a PDA version. This was way easier than with phpBB. I intially got the French template from pdatoon, but all the templates in that template set are French, and I didn't want to translate all of them, especially since you don't need to convert every template to PDA format. Many of them handle it already, and many of them can be left full screen for the few times you'll need it. So, in the end I just modified them myself, it it only took a few nights to get the majority of the highly used ones.

I grabbed a copy of my existing template which has a lot of additions already. Then I went to the index page, grabbed the template for it.. cut out all I didn't want, and modified the remainder. With each page, there are several templates involved, so you'll refresh the page and find that you missed something, open that template and repeat the cycle. Then I did the forums, then search, the replies/new threads, then all my vbIndex pages. I is pretty straightforward. You can always go back to the original if it breaks during your edit. But... beware... you need to go back to the original that you started with for your site. I was pulling my hair out becuase I reverted to the original, but that backed out a hack that was in my default template... so I just had to copy the default back in for that one and restart the hack for that template.

For the big templates, I found it much faster to copy the code into an HTML editor that would color code the tags, then edit, then copy it back. This also gives you some undo abilty without total backout. I probably did about 30-40 template... about 5-10 minutes per template. I still need to do the messaging template, and I'll probably stop at that.

I recommend that anyone doing this do their own, because otherwise you'll be dealing with hack mismatches, and you may hve different desires for what you want to cut out our leave in.

By the way, you just need to through in ?styleid=x to get to it, then reverse to get back to full screen. When this is production ready I'll have a link on each version's navigation menu to get back and forth.

I am loving vBulletin more every day.

[filburt1]

I made a PDA version of WDF that includes forumhome, showthread, forumdisplay, getinfo, and most PM templates (which I am selling). Most of the work is just completely gutting the templates of 90% of their HTML. Of course, you lose some functionality in the process, but you won't be doing much important stuff on a 240x320 screen.

[djr]

In pdatoon's version (which I sadly don't have) you can reply to posts and start new threads. Is yours also capable of that filburt? And what about mccollin's? This is essential functionality for me.

- djr

[mccollin]

I have included so far index, all forum views (if nested), thread view (with the main moderator functions like move), new thread, reply, search, search results, new posts, and most of my vbindex portal pages. But, all the pages are there, so if you hit a page that isn't in PDA format, it still works, just not small. I will probably call it done after I do the private messaging page. I won't do the remainder of the control panel because I can't imagine why any one would need to use that from their PDA. If you did, you could use the bigger screen. pdaToon's template does basically the same stuff, but he has scaled it back much more than I have. For example on post reply, he just has the subject and body, and buttons. I left the thread review in there, and a few other things. On the forum views, he's got just the title of the forums or threads... I take up a few rows and include the other stuff in a colapsed fashion. I'm basically replicating what I had done with phpBB, so I had a model I liked.

Once you start doing it, it really isn't that bad. Just make sure you are on a test site, or you are very careful not to get mixed up on what template you are editing.

[filburt1]

Today at 04:53 PM djr said this in Post #36
In pdatoon's version (which I sadly don't have) you can reply to posts and start new threads. Is yours also capable of that filburt? And what about mccollin's? This is essential functionality for me.

- djr

Yes, in mine you can reply to posts and make your own threads, tedious as it is on the on-screen keyboard or handwriting recognition

[mccollin]

filburt,

What kind of device are you using .... pdaPhone, PDA, phone? Before moving to vB, I used the PDA version of my site to stay in touch during the work day. It was great... slower to type than my laptop, but not too bad.

[filburt1]

I'm using a Pocket PC with Pocket Internet Explorer on a wireless network. It's very nice for reading, worse so for posting (just because it's tedious when you're used to a full-sized keyboard).