yea i just keep noticin odd things today

[The Man]

there's spaces after people's names in who's online before the commas. surely this isn't meant to be. :(

[Erdrick Holmes]

Also the default style scheme is all black and blue. Its almost like my forum's default colour scheme.

[crono_logical]

I think Cid's in the middle of doing a lot of stuff right now seeing as how everything seems to change per page refresh, so I'm staying away from fixing anything at the moment :p

[The Man]

yea i was thinkin the same thing

it doesn't make it any less odd though :p

[Squires]

Next, turn all the text upside-down!

[The Man]

Please, no b forum reprise.

Not like it would do anything to Firefox anyway though ;p

edit: ok, so it looks like it's sorted now, you can close this if you want (but it'd probably be better left open so we can continue <s>spamming in it</s> making valid commentary on the state of the forum)

[Cid]

Yeah, I'm working on integrating the forums into the main page.

[Erdrick Holmes]

Delta Roo: Cid's playing around with stuff.

Akuma o u 8 1 2: Great if something blows up I know who to blame it on

[The Man]

Originally posted by Cid
Yeah, I'm working on integrating the forums into the main page. Great stuff then. I'd thought you should do that for ages actually; in fact I should probably actually talk to you once you've done that, since I'm finding it a pain in the rear end to write my own scripts for everything except the front page ;)

[Cid]

http://www.eyesonff.com/index.php

watch the progress :P

[The Man]

obviously not finished then ;)

what hack are you using, just for reference? i used the myvbindex hack and it's absolutely beautiful except for the fact that it does nothing except the main page ;) still nice though :p

edit: wait, nm, you're apparently using vbhome lite ;) aight, fair enough then ;)

[Citizen Bleys]

Originally posted by Joel
Delta Roo: Cid's playing around with stuff.

Akuma o u 8 1 2: Great if something blows up I know who to blame it on

Leave me out of this.

[Erdrick Holmes]

Hey, you werent supposed to read this.

[The Man]

Bleys sees all.

[Dr Unne]

I remember when BOU suggested we do this and everyone ignored him. Those were good times.

[Citizen Bleys]

It was work, and Sean wasn't around to do it.

I had tech skills, but I'm a programmer, and programmers are lazy.

[The Man]

Originally posted by Cid
http://www.eyesonff.com/index.php

watch the progress :P gives a 404 error now. is that intentional?

i should actually bother you on aim later about this anyway, since i've got a hunch it'd be helpful to both of us ;)

[Endless]

See the:

"You may post new threads
You may post replies
You may post attachments
You may edit your posts HTML code is enabled
vB code is enabled
Smilies are enabled
[IMG] code is enabled "

box down the page?
Just below it there is a leftover "-->".
*nitpicky*

It's also next to the aim and icq buttons.

Edit: just saw the other thread. Someone please merge all (yes, all) of Aaron's threads in feedback. xD

[Burtsplurt]

Glad to see we're giving feedback on the big issues! I'm interested to see how the frontsite will turn out.

[Cid]

I semi cancelled the project. You can view what I intended for it to look like at http://www.eyesonff.com/indexer.php

[The Man]

bleh. if it's due to technical problems feel free to contact me on aim, you should be able to see me right now ;) i'd have very much liked to see the main page go interactive though, that could have been very nice.

[Cid]

Well, I don't know how to go about including ssi in the vbulletin templates. Because I don't, it would make it really difficult to switch around the poll, or change the links on the left, or put up the old news (they're all in text files so they can be changed easily and pull onto the server through ssi).

[The Man]

yeah, it should actually be relatively easy to do either exactly that or something functionally the same as it via templates and stuff. actually... hrm. i'll come up with a list of modifications you should make to the hack after i've actually looked through it. i might also come up with some admin cp modifications that would make working with the hack easier, but we'll see how it goes.

gotta go walk the dog now, but i'll probably have a little bit of time before i go to class. this reply is turning out pretty unnecessary though since i just talked to you on aim. ok!

[Loony BoB]

If we're upgrading to vB3 at all, making any changes based on these templates is a bad idea. If we aren't, well, no worries? I guess.

[The Man]

it should be possible to port templates to vb3 with very little difficulty if you know what you're doing, it just requires keeping track of all the variables and changing all the colour-based stuff to css (which is easily do-able through a hacked search and replace in the admin control panel). i haven't tried running fg's templates on vb3 yet, but i'm pretty confident that they're at least 95% vb3-compatible (although they still keep the appearance of vb2, but i want that).

edit: ok, downloaded the hack. apparently:

You ARE NOT allowed to REMOVE or MODIFY the copyright text at the bottom of the page.
You ARE NOT allowed to ALTER in any way the URL links listed in the copyright text.

you should probably put that back in then ;)

basically it's looking to me like you'll just have to put all this stuff in new templates, which should be relatively easy if you put debug mode on in the admin control panel. if you give me a second i'll give you directions to do that. :p

[Loony BoB]

Every single template gets clean-slated automatically when you upgrade from vB to vB2 or vB2 to vB3. The only things that stay are colours and possibly images, although I'm not sure of the latter and vB highly reccomends you backup everything. There's a chance you could lose your colours/images, but it's a definite that all your hacks and template changes will be GONE.

[The Man]

yes, but you should be able to copy-paste them from your old vbulletin to vb3 is my point. well, i should with all the modifications i've made to FG, anyway. ;) but anyone who knows what he's doing could make his vb2 templates more or less vb3 upgrade-safe, assuming the code isn't changed more than i think it is. you'll lose your templates on the install if you haven't backed them up, but once you've installed it you can probably reuse an only slightly different version of what you already have.

i really need to play around more in vb3's admin control panel. to be frank, it's terribly confusing, though. =/

[Loony BoB]

Dude, I can hack the crap out of vB3. xD Probably a bit of experience now, but seriously, it's dead easy once you figure it out. =P

EDIT: It's not copy/paste material, though. I dunno if you realise how different templates can be. xD Half the files are renamed and almost every single template has completely new functions such as java scripting and whatnot.

EDIT: But it's still dead easy to figure out once you know what you want to do and where to do it.

[The Man]

(Edit: BooB posted before me like the BooB that he is. Yeah, I figured it would require SOME upkeep.
Still, it really only boils down to twelve or fifteen templates that you'd probably end up needing to do a thorough
search of; the others (i.e. postbit_offline) you could just do a search for variables (easily located because of the "$"
that precedes them) and check to make sure they're all intact.)

Ok, it took more than a second, and I'm posting it in the thread on the off-chance it might help any other aspiring
vB administrators out there. :p This is probably gonna be a double-post, as well, but it's long and you might want to
copy it somewhere where you won't lose it, so it might be more convenient to leave it as a double-post. ;)

Ok ;)

Here is how to use debug mode to its fullest!

In admin/index.php, find:


if($debug==1)
makenavoption("Edit Settings","setting.php?action=modify","&lt;br>");
makenavoption("Add Setting","setting.php?action=add","&lt;br>");
makenavoption("Add Setting Group","setting.php?action=addgroup");
}Replace that with:


//if($debug==1) { //commented out because i want to leave debug mode on
makenavoption("Edit Settings","setting.php?action=modify","&lt;br />");
makenavoption("Add Setting","setting.php?action=add","&lt;br />");
makenavoption("Add Setting Group","setting.php?action=addgroup");
//}Find:


if ($debug==1) {
makenavoption("Download Set","template.php?action=downloadset","&lt;br>");
makenavoption("Upload Set","template.php?action=uploadset","&lt;br>");
makenavoption("Do &lt;img> Tags","template.php?action=imgtags");
}Replace that with:


//if ($debug==1) {
makenavoption("Download Set","template.php?action=downloadset","&lt;br />");
makenavoption("Upload Set","template.php?action=uploadset","&lt;br />");
makenavoption("Do &lt;img> Tags","template.php?action=imgtags");
//}In admin/template.php, find:


makechoosercode("Template set","templatesetid","templateset",iif(isset($templatesetid),$templatesetid,-1),iif($debug,"All - global to all template sets",""));Replace that with:


makechoosercode("Template set","templatesetid","templateset",iif(isset($templatesetid),$templatesetid,-1),/*iif($debug,*/"All - global to all template sets"/*,"")*/);Find:


if ($debug) {
if (isset($searchstring)) {
$sqlinsert=" AND INSTR(template,'".addslashes($searchstring)."')>0 ";
}
// display global templates
echo "&lt;li>&lt;b>Global templates&lt;/b> ".makelinkcode("add custom template","template.php?s=$session[sessionhash]&action=add&templatesetid=-1").
makelinkcode("show all","template.php?s=$session[sessionhash]&action=modify&expandset=-1&group=all").
makelinkcode("collapse groups","template.php?s=$session[sessionhash]&action=modify&expandset=-1").
"&lt;ul>\n";Replace the first line of that code with:


// if ($debug) {Find:


echo "&lt;li>$template[title]".
makelinkcode("edit","template.php?s=$session[sessionhash]&action=edit&templateid=$template[templateid]&group=$group").
makelinkcode("remove","template.php?s=$session[sessionhash]&action=remove&templateid=$template[templateid]&group=$group").
"&lt;/li>\\n";

}
echo "&lt;/ul>&lt;/li>\\n";
}Replace the last line of that with:


// }In forum/replacement.php find:


makechoosercode("Replacement set","replacementsetid","replacementset",iif(isset($replacementsetid),$replacementsetid,-1),iif($debug,"All - global to all replacement sets",""));
Replace that with:


makechoosercode("Replacement set","replacementsetid","replacementset",iif(isset($replacementsetid),$replacementsetid,-1),/*iif($debug,*/"All - global to all replacement sets"/*,"")*/);Find:


makechoosercode("Replacement set","replacementsetid","replacementset",$replacement[replacementsetid],iif ($debug,"All - global to all replacement sets",""));Replace that with:


makechoosercode("Replacement set","replacementsetid","replacementset",$replacement[replacementsetid],/*iif ($debug,*/"All - global to all replacement sets"/*,"")*/); Find:


if ($debug) {
// display global replacementsReplace it with:


// if ($debug) {
// display global replacementsLastly, find:


echo "&lt;li>".htmlspecialchars($replacement[findword])." is replaced by ".htmlspecialchars($replacement[replaceword])." &lt;a href='replacement.php?s=$session[sessionhash]&action=edit&replacementid=$replacement[replacementid]'>[edit]&lt;/a> &lt;a href='replacement.php?s=$session[sessionhash]&action=remove&replacementid=$replacement[replacementid]'>[remove]&lt;/a>&lt;/li>\n";

}
echo "&lt;/ul>&lt;/li>\n";
}
Replace the last line of that with:


// }

Come to think of it, I think there was an easier method for enabling debug mode that allowed you to just set $debug
to 1 and bypass all this crap (you can probably just stick it somewhere in global.php and it'll be fine, but i'm not sure
how safe that is); I'd need to go rummaging around to find it though. If I find it, I'll edit this post and you'll be notified. ;)

You are now finished enabling debug mode in the admin control panel! If you go any farther you will be
extending your board into futher "hack-intensive" territory, since you won't have the original vbulletin default
templates anymore, but you will also be able to perform modifications to the board with far greater speed.

Now you will be able to edit the default settings of the board. This means that without having to use custom
templates for any reason you'll be able to modify the appearance of the vb however you want, and it'll affect
all style sets that don't have custom templates specified for that template. Thus, it will be extremely easy
to manage multiple style sets, such as EoFF uses, and new style sets will require little time to create, need
almost zero upkeep after future hacks are installed, and introduce little to no additional strain on the server.

Basically, what you'll want to do is take all the custom templates and replacements from your current forum style,
paste them over the vBulletin standards, and then delete the custom templates from the standard forum style. You'll
want to delete most of the custom templates in other styles as well except where they're different from your
NEW defaults. Unfortunately, that will be a tedious search and replace more or less by hand, but on the fortunate
side of things you'll only have to do it once. And once you've done it, you can simply edit your main template set
whenever you need to make a template change, and it will then affect all style sets! That way you don't have to go
editing each template multiple times, which is probably more tedious than the search and replace.

The extra-nice thing about enabling vBulletin debug mode, though, is that it allows you to create new "default"
templates. Which is where the SSI stuff comes in! :p What you can do is create new templates for whatever you
want to insert onto the main page, then go into the PHP and hack in an eval code for each template with the
proper values. (If you need me to show you how to modify one of these, just ask). ;) This means you'll be able to use
whatever templates you want more or less wherever you want.

The only downside to this that I can think of, apart from the "non-standard" problem, is more or less related: you'll
want to make backups of your templates before editing them in case you screw up. More than once I've messed
up default templates accidentally, and was forced to retrieve a recent backup to correct things. (You'll also want
to inform your sub-admins to do the same before they edit templates, just in case you can't be there to correct things
quickly enough for things to sort themselves out. If the forumhome template got messed up everyone would be in
a pickle, for obvious reasons). However, it's overall been quite a time-saver (especially since I have something like
forty style sets). :p Quite frankly, FG wouldn't be half as customised (or as quick to get things done, to a certain
extent) as it is if not for debug mode.

There's more (probably lots more - I've only glanced over the vBhome hack, and I'm not yet sure what it's fully
capable of), but I think this is a fair kickoff intro and I should probably start getting ready for class now. Besides,
I think you said you were going to work. ;)

[crono_logical]

You might want to fix the tables in that post :p

[The Man]

yeah i just decided to put in line breaks instead of trying to make the tables work like i thought they would when i started raping them, too much effort to make them behave properly and i really need to run ;)

[Endless]

vB3 put pretty much everything that used to be hacked in a file in templates, so now it's easy to modify, all the more they set up some scripting language that allows to do tests and stuff.

Edit: the submit button (and preview and spell check) is gone from my submit post page. O_o
Look at the attachement.

[crono_logical]

Only for this thread, it's there if you scroll horizontally - blame The Man for stretching the tables a lot :p

[The Man]

renders fine for me on both IE and Firebird on the table-stretched page. ah well. really blame the php tag for stretching the tables a lot because i'd have broken the lines up or something myself instead of stretching the tables because of it ;)

[Endless]

Ahh, exact. It's there on the right.

[Meuterei]

also, I farted, and the screen moved... why?

[The Man]

the gas released by your MASSIVE FART caused a disruption in the area around your screen, causing it to shift.

[eestlinc]

By integration of the forums into the frontsite, I'm not sure exactly what you mean. I'd like to have it explained somewhat.

[eternalshiva]

I think he means to have a "general announcement-typ thing" in the Front Site where it would be like *Misfit Mutant Monkies are on a rempage!* and then you could click on the discuss button and it would take you to the Forum, to the specific thread where everyone would be rambling about the monkies. Right? Maybe I caught the gist of it wrong... meh.

[Squires]

Maybe it'll be something like "Most Active topics on our forums:" and then have like the 5 threads with the most posts or most posts per hour, or something.

[Yamaneko]

Something like this (http://foolsgold.kicks-ass.net/), but not as complicated?

[The Man]

I've been assuming that's more or less what Sean wanted all along, myself :p

[Loony BoB]

If it looks like that (and thus looks like every other site on the internet), I don't think EoFF would be as popular in the future. :p What I've seen (that Cid was showing me) is pretty nice, though. It actually doesn't look too far off from what you see on the frontsite now, so yeah. :)

[The Man]

well yeah, obviously he'd rearrange things to make it look more like eoff looks like right now. ;) the idea is the same though :p

[Burtsplurt]

The standard vb portal-thing looks pretty bad because it's just forum information. I think the trick is to incorporate forum features into the frontsite, rather than incorporating a frontsite into the forum.

[The Man]

absolutely. there'd be a lot more actual information on the fg main page if we actually had content and I could be arsed to write out the php for review posting scripts and stuff ;)

come to think of it, eoff might find those scripts fairly handy when I finish them, too ;)

[Leeza]

In my opinion, the FG page is just too cluttered, but it does have nice colours. :)

[Cid]

I really only planned on incorperating what I had in my indexer.php and adding a login field.

[Loony BoB]

Yay <3 :)

[The Man]

Originally posted by Leeza
In my opinion, the FG page is just too cluttered, but it does have nice colours. :) most of that stuff is gonna get moved down when we have actual content to balance it out with =p

really, the only things i find to be necessary on a site index page are the list of currently active users and the login field. all else are more or less extraneity. the only reason it's all on fg's main page is because otherwise it'd look really boring, like nothing was going on. come to think of it, it still looks boring since there hasn't been a news update in five weeks. bad luck