UBB Features

[Seph]

please delete

[Floris]

1. At any UBB forum you will find an additional bar across the top of the page that you will not find on vB. In this bar it will show your user name (or "guest") and it will also give you the ability to log in or log out. This is a nice feature so anyone can log in or out from any page, not only the main page.
This can be made, you can the variable $bbusername on every template. And the login/logout code can be achieved through template and/or code hacking. I do not think this is really hard to accomplish.

2. Can you set the default options for new registers? I know that many people get annoyed by recieving e-mail notices from the boards and other things that I would like to set the defaults for. Well, can you?
Goto the admin demo on-line at vbulletin.com and browse trough the user group permissions, here you can set per usergroup some default permissions. And with some template hacking you can replace visible input fields and other options to hidden. So they will not show up and are processed with the pre-set selection. I used this to prevent users from certain settings and make the registration page smaller and quicker.

3. On UBB forums your member number is the form of identification throughout the UBB administration center, does it work like this in vB?
Everybody on vBulletin database is unique. Every registered member has its own userID. I do not know what you mean, because I am not experienced with UBB, but I would say yes. Just not sure if it is in the way you mean. But yeah, everybody has their own userid.

4. Can you make it required that someone chooses a message icon for every post or at least be able to disable the "no icon" selection.
You can disable the 'use default icon is none is selected'(or enable it). And if you remove any other icon, they are kind of forced to only use one. Altering this is doable, and also done through template system I think.

5. Can you edit the topic view page to make it that it will have your member number underneath your avatar?
Yes, you can alter the template to do so, you can also include a few other things there too, I have seen this on many different vB boards.

6. When someone is registering or editing their profile, can you make it like UBB in giving a list of every avatar and making it required to choose one, as many people get confused when they cannot set an avatar while registering or directly from a profile. Is there any way to simple make it a "selectable box" in which they choose one instead of forcing the member to go through the avatars page?
During registration, and if avatars is enabled, you can let them select one from the drop down menu which will appear. When they goto the user control panel, and alter their profile / edit options, there is a button that says 'change avatar', this will bring them to a page where they can select from a pre-set of avatars, or when enabled, from http:// upload or when enabled, from their own hard drive, and store in the database. I never tested it, but I think you can set a few fields and options from registration to 'required' like location, maybe this can also be used to make the avatar required .. I myself have applied a welcome panel hack, everybody registered who did not pick an avatar will have the icon 'no avatar selected'. That way they will some day notice it and either remove it, or change it to one of their liking.

7. Can you edit how the vB code bar while posting an image is? Can I make it that all of the default buttons be replaced by images?
Sorry, I do not understand this question

8. Can you make additional pages form more "smilies"? People love simlies.
You can add as many smiley's as you want, this is done through the admin control panel. And done pretty easy, even bulk!. You can also give up how many rows of smiley's to display, like, 5 by 5 (as I have it) which will display 25 smiley's... if you have more then 25, then it will have a link "click here for more smiley's". Yeah, people love smiley's

9. Can you disable the use of polls?
Yes, very easy, you can alter the Poll Permissions through the admin control panel. You can find them in the options for the user group permissions. So you can do it like this: guest > can't start a poll, can't vote. registered members > can't start a poll, but can participate. Moderators > can start a poll, and can participate.

10. Can you disable topic rating? I just find this annoying because it is often abused.
Yes. The same way as with polls, per user group .. Posting Permissions > can rate threads? yes/no. I believe you can also enable this per forum/board

11. Can you setup "member ratings" in which from their profile you can rate them from 1/5 sort of like UBB forums?
No, I believe that vBulletin doesn't have member rating feature. Yes, I think there is a 'hack'(code hack) out for this over at vbulletin.org

12. Can you edit the "user details" part of a post so that you can fool around with the avatar size and remove where it says "location" etc?
Sorry, this question isn't clear to me. But you can probably alter/modify/remove stuff from template's ..

13. Can you move some of the stuff like when the member registered, their location, e-mail, etc from the left side of a post near the avatar, but rather put it in a seperate box underneath the post, right above "edit, quote, e-mail, pm, etc" is?
Yes, you can alter their places, in the same template.

14. I see that 5 is the maximum amount of pages of a thread it willd display when entering the thread, what if someone wants to go straight to page 20? Is there a way to set the amount of pages viewable from the start so they can get to the end without pressing "last page"?
Not sure if this is what you mean, but in the admin control panel, > vbulletin options > you can alter thread display. I just found this: Pages to show in nav bar: (i have it set to 3)
In the list of links of pages in the current thread (or current forum), this option selects how many pages either side of the current page are shown. Set this to 0 to display all pages.
Maybe you can set this to 20 ?

15. Can you edit the "moderators" box on the main page and on other pages so that it will simply have a drop down box that says "moderators", but when they scroll through the list they can see all of their name?
Yes, there is a template hack for this, which is pretty easy to apply, either on vbulletin.com or on vbulletin.org, but it is not by default.

16. Can you move where it says "last edited by Seph" to actually inside the post area instead of in the signature?
Yes, through template alternation, but you will end up with a empty column. Maybe a bit tricky to remove that too, but I think it can be done. (i have no experience though)

17. Can you add borders to all of the images used in signatures that link to other pages? That way they will know if it is a link or not. This features in all UBB forums.
Nice request! I was also thinking of this. I hope we think the same thing.
You can add a style sheet class, and then edit the signature part maybe? uhm.. Actually I think this requires some code-hacknig, but not sure .. idea is like: you can add a class to the code where it would show up as a link. Then when you view it, it will have the border, as set in the stylesheet class. When you purchased it, you can maybe request this

18 How can you do or use the above hacks that I have requested? Can you do it all from the administration center, editing the files, changing the template, how?
See my awnsers :P I tried my best







I hope this was enough info for you, took me like 10 minutes to write haha.
vBulletin all the way!!
PHP And MySQL .. way better then UBB

[Bane]

7. Can you edit how the vB code bar while posting an image is? Can I make it that all of the default buttons be replaced by images?

Yes

11. Can you setup "member ratings" in which from their profile you can rate them from 1/5 sort of like UBB forums?

There is a hack for this that installs in about 5 min.


12. Can you edit the "user details" part of a post so that you can fool around with the avatar size and remove where it says "location" etc?

Quite easily by modifying 1 template.

17. Can you add borders to all of the images used in signatures that link to other pages? That way they will know if it is a link or not. This features in all UBB forums.

yes, using css you can.

[Steve Machol]

The info to access the admin demo cp is at the top of the admindemo.html page:

u: admin
p: admin

[Floris]

1. This may seem a little funny, but how would I go about learning PHP? I have learned HTML, XML, CSS, Perl, being pretty new to web design. Well, how did you guys learn it? I have learned everything from books up to this point, if I continue to do this, will I learn everything you guys did however you did?
http://www.php.net/

2. I have never made an online database in my life. I know nothing of SQL or MySQL, how should I get started there?
Inform your hosting company if they support PHP and MySQL, and if so, can you access one! It is not required to know anything about mysql, the installation is 99% automated, the only thing you need to config is the mysql database host > mostly localhost and a login and pass and name of the database, your hosting provider can provide this

3. For that "test admin center thing", what is the password for "admin" so that I can test out all of these things that you keep talking about.
admin as login and password Additional information You can download the vB lite version for free, and see if it will install on your servers, it doesn't have the features the full version has, but this is made so you can see if you can run the full version. Do not get scared away if you try it and fail, feel free to ask the questions, we will try our best to awnser them

4. After you have created the forums, like forum1, forum23, etc. Can you change the order of the forums and actually rename the forums. For example I wanted forum1 to be switched places with forum4, can I really do that? Can you do that with categories as well?
Yes! Very easy too, admin control panel > forum > modify > order numbers! pretty cool eyh!

Feel free to follow the link in my signature, support me keeping my forums online It wont cost you more, and I gain a little bit commission. But ofcourse, you are free to choose to do so or not.

ANYWAY: hope the info helps you and hope to see your vb forum soon! it will kick some MOo0

[Floris]

Originally posted by Seph
You probably wont see my vB forums any time soon, but that isnt because I dont like the software. I just dont have the money and even when we do get them, we are going to spend a lot of time perfecting them before we release them to the public.

2. Well, I know that we do not have it installed on our server and know that they will not put it on unless I move to one of their more expensive plans, but I want to learn more about what it is. What exactly does it do? What can you do with it? Why use it? What does it have to do with PHP?

3. Holy! That admincenter kicks ass! They have like a million features and you can find where everything is! Yeah!

The purchase is worth its money, if you check out how flexible it is, thanks to PHP and MySQL, you understand why ther are so many options in the admin control panel.

Not only the admin control panel kicks ass, but when you have vB, you will find out even more. How expandable evrything is, and how easy it is. Perfecting it will take a week It is just a matter of time.

Yes it is a little bit of money, but it is more secure then most out there, and it is sometimes even cheaper. And for that money you get lifetime support and free upgrades to any version in the first year, and you can even renew that optionally every year for only 30$ !

THis is by far the best license agreement I have ever seen. And with the kick ass features, and back-end and admin control panel and the fast pages and only 250kB of sourc code. DAMN it is worth it.

I purchased it a few months ago, within 6 hours I was online, and this month I am even up for 'board of the month' (not that I will win, but is a little bit recognition for me).

Anyway.
PHP can spit out files on the fly, composed in under one single second, personalized by database information and if needed, by cookie. It is flexible, and personally i think it is the best. SO far I haven't found anything I couldn't do, with the help of php & mysql. And even if you dont know MO00o about it. With a little help from friends, or after reading the online manual. You'll get it.

[filburt1]

Originally posted by Seph
I will probably be getting vB in a few months. Well, probably next September for a brief goal, so I will have plenty of time to read up on some hacks and get ready to install them and have every prepared to make them one of the best Squaresoft forums out there.

Reading up on hacks could be trouble, since at http://www.vbulletin.org/, you have to be a paying customer to see many things just like here...

[tubedogg]

You have to be a customer to download hacks but you can read all of the threads there.

[tubedogg]

Re: UBB Features

3. On UBB forums your member number is the form of identification throughout the UBB administration center, does it work like this in vB?

No, in vBulletin the username is the identification.

[Floris]

No,
I have not yet seen it.
But you can use the find user feature
If the user is named "^/$#moo$#%$^
then you can search all users with moo
which will also find the weird named moo user enjoy

[Steve Machol]

The only hack site is vbulletin.org. There are some sites that offer buttons and perhaps styles. I only know of one off-hand:

http://www.bbaddons.com/

[filburt1]

As a side note, would it be legal to have a site other than the official one that has vB hacks?

[Floris]

Originally posted by filburt1
As a side note, would it be legal to have a site other than the official one that has vB hacks?

Why not? Call it a unofficial vBulletin support site?
My question rises: "This is 'the' place for unlicensed vBulletin holders to get their hands on hacks and tweaks .. because vbulletin.com & .org require users to enter their username's etc".
But I have seen more sites like this, for example 'yaxay from cprompt'.

[Mike Warner]

Seph - my forums (www.migweb.co.uk/forums) used to be a UBB. I converted and imported my UBB info.

I had never used php or sql before and I swear it took 10 minutes to install the forum. It then took a bit to copy all the UBB flat files across and import them all. Once done, everything worked a dream.

The template system in vBulletin is so good - UBB does not come closed to the flexibility of it.

Although a moderator my delete this bit - my impression is that UBB make their money out of the naive. (Sorry)