I decided it's time to hack our beloved forum a bit... yesterday I went through the many hacks available on vbulletin.org official site and I found many many useful things that will probably make it here unless they are too tricky or difficult to install (which isn't likely).

Among the hacks I've been thinking on installing:
Advanced stats (global and individual profiles), quick reply box, Yesterday-Today datestamp, who was online today and last but not least, a series of other hacks that will let you host your computer specs (2 or 3 machines) in your profile with much ease.

Will keep you updated, probably will start installing tonight.

Nice. Those sound good, I've seen a couple of them on another board and I think they will be nice additions to our own.

Julio - you're good to us. And I love you for that.

They have ALOT of hacks too. Linkeh (http://www.vbulletin.org/hacks/index.php?)

I'd like the automatic resizing of avatars and the User Control Panel Signature Preview :D

Thanks for your suggestions... I wouldn't have thought certain hacks to be that useful unless you told me so, keep 'em coming, I can't guarantee they will be installed but I do guarantee you I will check them all out and give them a try in some manner.

-http://www.vbulletin.org/hacks/index.php?action=showhack&hackid=641

-This (http://www.vbulletin.org/hacks/index.php?action=showhack&hackid=46) hack would be cool, but I'm afraid it would be abused.

-User sets mood when posting (http://www.vbulletin.org/hacks/index.php?action=showhack&hackid=420)

-Emailing a post into a thread (http://www.vbulletin.org/hacks/index.php?action=showhack&hackid=464) Dunno why, just sounds cool :D

-Speel Cheker (http://www.vbulletin.org/hacks/index.php?action=showhack&hackid=428)

-Who am I a buddy of? (http://www.vbulletin.org/hacks/index.php?action=showhack&hackid=352)

-Change user's style on his birthday - Very nice :D (http://www.vbulletin.org/hacks/index.php?action=showhack&hackid=264)

-I was actually thinking about this one before I saw this hack - Thread starter moderator for thread (http://www.vbulletin.org/hacks/index.php?action=showhack&hackid=222)

-Away message for users - I really want this one (http://www.vbulletin.org/hacks/index.php?action=showhack&hackid=19)

-User has started X threads (in profile) (http://www.vbulletin.org/hacks/index.php?action=showhack&hackid=131)

-Last X posts in profile (http://www.vbulletin.org/hacks/index.php?action=showhack&hackid=515)

Hide unentered fields (http://www.vbulletin.org/hacks/index.php?action=showhack&hackid=516)

...and that's it I believe

Talking of vB hacks and tools... guess what I found on vb.org? A Jawbreaker import script! heh, though it only became available a couple of months ago, that sure could have been useful almost a year ago.

It wasn't nice going all the way back to zero when we moved to vB for sure, but it served quite well as a clean up process and I'm happy standing where we are today :grinthumb

I'm installing more hacks as we speak... a design facelift will come soon, too (a month away I would say). Should look accordingly to our new design.

Installed so far:

* Quick Reply box
* Active Users today (trying to fix now ;))
* User Forum Activeness Hack

Some other two hacks failed installation.

vBstats and Today/Yesterday datestamp hacks definitely didn't make it, in fact one of those screwed up how the "active users today" hack was working, I'm hoping it will refresh and back to work normally tomorrow (so it's a new date).

I got installed now two more hacks:
* One that removes unentered custom fields (this will help me putting up new fields for your PC specs soon :)).
* The other adds a field on your profile indicating how many threads you have actually opened.


Just take a look to your profiles to see the difference:

Profile For TS | Julio

Total Posts: 454 (1.75 posts per day)
Threads Started: 25

User Forum Activeness:
TS | Julio is most active in Site Comments & Suggestions
Accounting for a total of 96 Posts which is 21 % of TS | Julio's total posts!

More stuff soon, too !

Thank you for the quick reply box!!!
I just love it... :)


About that jawbreaker import... Is it possible for you to get all our old threads back? (Not postcount, but the messages?)
It'd give us back many answers which are still current...
(Like the "added memory, now games hang" which came up here a short while ago, and was answered in the old forum bout a year ago...)

This "Quick Reply Box" feature is awesome!! It helps to save time and increase efficiency. Great work, Julio!

Yeah that's a great feature

Wow these new features are awesome Julio. Keep em coming if you can. New things, just like new people to the boards are always welcome.

Unfortunately that's not possible, Jawbreaker didn't seem to be much of a portable script and when we moved to the current server, for some reason things wouldn't work properly... so I rather keep this vB installation as clean as possible; probably we won't be upgrading to any other version until vB 3.0 comes out, until then enjoy the hacks ;).

Originally posted by MrGaribaldi
About that jawbreaker import... Is it possible for you to get all our old threads back? (Not postcount, but the messages?)
It'd give us back many answers which are still current...
(Like the "added memory, now games hang" which came up here a short while ago, and was answered in the old forum bout a year ago...) [/B]

I love this thing...

Much thanks Julio.

I absolutely love the quick reply box

LNCPapa

edit: So much for being the first one to post about it... :(

Originally posted by LNCPapa
I absolutely love the quick reply box

LNCPapa

edit: So much for being the first one to post about it... :(

So do I... even although I did not get to use it in quoting you...

I had a pretty neat surprise for you, installing a new hack that would let users set their status to "Away". Much like the IRC feature, you could set this if you were going to be absent for a week, etc, like it has already happened with some of our members, in fact the hack let you leave an away message on your profile and a few other things.
Unfortunately this was another hack that didn't work correctly so now I'm in the process of reverting things the way they were.

Hacks are extremely cool but let me tell you, some of them are a real pain in the ... Now just going to test custom fields for adding your PC specs ;).

You can add your system specs to your profile now !

How about the spell checker? Several people here spell alot of things incorrect and I'm sure it would be a big help. Is it one that didn't work?

I'm really surprised to see all these changes. I was having a vacation, only one week away and what do I see when I log in? New features, new mods and of course a ton of new messages. Now I'm just testing this "quick reply" feature :)

About this quick reply - does it have the same message length limit?

Yes as far as I know. I am pretty sure it does. Julio should be able to verify that.

10000 characters is the limit for the quick reply box

LNCPapa

Originally posted by Julio:
Unfortunately that's not possible, Jawbreaker didn't seem to be much of a portable script and when we moved to the current server, for some reason things wouldn't work properly... so I rather keep this vB installation as clean as possible; probably we won't be upgrading to any other version until vB 3.0 comes out, until then enjoy the hacks ;).

Oh, well... Was worth asking... :)

And too bad about that away hack...

But keep up the good work! It's nice to see these new features!

Are you playing around with hacks right now?

Just wondering since I've gotten quite a few errors these last 15 min...
First Opera wouldn't open www.techspot.com/vb
And then I got an errormessage when trying to enter any group (see attached picture)

I couldn't access the site at all for about those same 15 mins Mr G.

The server was quite unstable for about 30 minutes, I'm aware of that. I have sent a formal complaint to our host hopefully to see what's going on and if they can get things fixed ASAP (referring to this and the occasional slowdowns).

Thanks for your continued support.