My Forum - Personalised Forum Aggregator

M

mastram

New Member
My Forum - Personalised Forum Aggregator​


This is the first BETA release of this modification, please read the entire description before proceeding to install.​

Background

As a forum administrator the chances are that at some point you have received "feedback" from members that they would prefer a different forum layout. For example, lets say you have the following forum structure:
  • Cats
  • Parrots
  • Eagles
Some members might prefer:
  • Parrots & Eagles to be in a single "Birds" forum.
  • A single "Animals" forum that includes all three.
  • Cats & Eagles to be in a single forum as they have no interest in Parrots.
  • Things to be left exactly as they are.
Most sites have many more than 3 forums so the possible user prefered combinations are impossible to cater for, which means you cannot keep everybody happy, until now!

My Forum - What Does it do?

This modification uses the existing vBulletin forum subscription system to allow users to aggregate/mashup/join forums into a single "forum" where they can view all threads in the forums they have subscribed to. This gives a personalised "My Forum" which means that you can cater for all of the preferences mentioned above.

So taking the first preference example given above UserSmith would subscribe to the seperate Parrots & Eagles forums and then visit "My Forum" where he/she would see all threads in these two forums in a single forum.

The following is a brief summary of the key features
  • You can specify which user groups are allowed to use My Forum.
  • Guests don't have subscribed forums, however you can allow guest access by configuring guest viewable forums. Or you can disable Guest access completely.
  • If the current user cannot use my forum you can choose to display the standard vBulletin "no permission" page or a custom message of your choice. You can specify different no permission message for Guests and Registered User, for example "Please purchase XXX subscription to use My Forum" or "Please register to use My Forum".
  • With the exception of ACP this modification is fully phrased.
  • You can configure the modification to place a link in your navigation bar and/or quick links. You can also choose to hide/show these depending on whether the current viewer has access to My Forum.
  • As users are bringing together lots of forums there is a possibility that there will be a lot of stickies (if sticky display is enabled), so these are separated from normal threads and placed into a collapsible box. If there is an unread sticky the title of this box highlights how many sticky threads are unread.
  • You can choose to not display stickies.
  • You can choose to display stickies on all pages or only page one.
  • You can globally switch the modification on or off and display a custom message if it is off. On first install the default setting is off.
  • As with normal forums you can specify a default view age.
  • Uses a very similar look and feel to normal forums so your users don't need to get their heads around a different UI.
  • Fully integrated into the Who's Online pages (i.e. it won't display "unknown location").
  • Can be added to the Forum Jump menu.
  • Includes an vBulletin FAQ entry.
Demo

You can see a live demo here:

My Forum - Community @ The Rev Counter

In this setup My Forum is running in Guest Mode with guest forum subscriptions for "General Mayhem" and "Motorbike Chat". If you want register for an account and play with it in user mode.

Installation

Installation is fairly simple, follow these steps:
  1. Download the zip file attached to this thread.
  2. Extract the contents to your local machine.
  3. Upload everything in the "upload" directory to your forum root directory.
  4. Open up your Admin CP and goto : ACP -> Plugins & Products -> Manage Products -> Add/Import Product.
  5. In the "EITHER upload the XML file from your computer" section click the browse button and browse to the product XML file on your machine (product-my_forum.xml).
  6. Click the import button and sit back while vBulletin does its magic.
Configuration

Once installed you can configure this modification via:
  • ACP -> vBulletin Options -> My Forum
The configuration options are fairly self explanatory, so I won't go into details here. However there is a screen shot attached.

Other Setup

These additional setup items are not necessary but might prove to be useful

Add My Forum to Forum Jump

To make life easier for members you might want to added "My Forum" to the forum jump menu. Unfortunately vBulletin does not include any hooks that can be used to dynamically add this. So if you want this functionality it requires a, drum roll please, file edit:
  1. Download and open forumdisplay.php in your favourite text editor.
  2. Find the following line:

    Code: 
    case 'subs':    $goto = 'subscription'; break;
  3. Immediately after paste in:

    Code: 
    //START - MOD - Added case to added jump to My Forum support
case 'myforum':    $goto = 'myforum'; break;
//END - MOD - Added case to added jump to My Forum support
  4. Save the file and reupload to your server.
  5. Goto ACP style manager and open the "forumjump" template for editing.
  6. Find the following line:

    Code: 
    <option value="home" $frmjmpsel[home]>$vbphrase[forums_home]</option>
    Immediately after paste in:

    Code: 
    <option value="myforum" $frmjmpsel[myforum]>$vbphrase[myforum_navtext]</option>
    If you are running multiple styles this change will need to be added to them all (unless you are using inherited styles)
  7. Add thats that.
Adding the link to Forum Jump is obviously optional, not adding this will not break the modification.

Add My Forum to Breadcrumb box

To make My Forum even more accessible to your members you could also add a link to it in the breadcrumb table at the top of your forum. To do this follow these steps:
  1. Via ACP style manager open the "navbar" template (under Navigation / Breadcrumb Templates).
  2. Find the first instance of the following line:

    Code: 
    <td class="alt1" width="100%">
  3. Immediately after this paste in the following:

    Code: 
    <span class="smallfont" style="float:$stylevar[align=right]"><img class="inlineimg" src="$stylevar[imgdir_misc]/myforum.png" alt="" border=0> <a href="myforum.php">$vbphrase[myforum_navtext]</a></span>
  4. Save the template
Doing this will require you to upload a "myforum.png" image file to your styles misc images directory (I have included the icon I use in the zip). Or you could change the code above and use an image that already exists on your server.

If you prefer you can only display this link to logged in members by adding the following code instead:


Code: 
<if condition="$show['member']">
    <span class="smallfont" style="float:$stylevar[align=right]"><img class="inlineimg" src="$stylevar[imgdir_misc]/myforum.png" alt="" border=0> <a href="myforum.php">$vbphrase[myforum_navtext]</a></span>
</if>
What it doesn't do right now, but will/might in later releases
  • Allow members to order the columns (i.e. order by replies/views etc).
  • It doesn't currently display announcements.
  • As vBulletin does not see this as a normal forum you cannot use forum based notices.
  • There is no moderation functionality in My Forum you have to use the actual forum for this.
  • If the viewing member has ignored users any threads by these users are not shown at all.
  • Depending on feedback My Forum might be unlinked from the vBulletin subscription system and a separate forum selection system added.
I have been running this modification as it is here on my own site for almost 6 months and my members love it and the missing functionality has never been a problem.

So there you have it!

This is the first release of this modification, before posting here I have obviously put it through its paces, however there is always a possibility of a current unknown bug rearing its ugly head. If this does happen please post the details here and I will endeavour to quickly resolve the problem. It goes without saying that you should try this on your test forums before going live.

It is also worth mentioning that you should suggest to your members that they choose "no email notification" forum subscriptions.

Version History
  • 1.0 - First Release
  • 1.0 - First Release Update (after 20 minutes of posting )
    • Fixed bug where a DB error would be displayed if the viewing user had people on their ignore list.
    • Fixed Bug where Who's Online would show PHP errors at the top of the page.

 
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