XThreads

My Spiel
XThreads is one of my larger plugins which I have been working on for a while.  Originally planned to release it inline with MyBB 1.6, but who knows when that'll be out.  It perhaps doesn't include everything I wanted it to, but does have most of the things (plus I want to move onto other projects).

What does it do?
Take a look at RateU's forum for some nice ideas of what it can do.  I also have some more basic examples here of what can be done with XThreads.  I'm pretty sure there are many other applications of this plugin, but those examples just give you some simple ideas.

The basic idea is giving you the ability to define custom fields for your threads, and providing methods to give you a lot of flexibility with customising forums.

Warning: I'm not going to bother with "beta" labels and so on.  I've done some testing on this myself, but it's by no means extensive.  Use this at your own risk.

Installation Instructions: standard installation procedures apply - you can find them in the announcement here.
You may need to CHMOD the uploads/xthreads_ul/ folder to 0777 after uploading the files (probably won't though).

Upgrade Instructions: unless stated otherwise, the general procedure for upgrades is to simply upload the new files, then visit your AdminCP.  In there, you'll be presented with a notice to run the upgrade - just follow what it says from there on.

Usage Instructions: this is a complex plugin, and unfortunately, you're probably going to have to figure this out yourself, depending on what you want to achieve with this plugin.  HTML and CSS knowledge is strongly recommended; you should also be familiar with MyBB's template system.  Some demonstrations can be found here - hopefully these will give you a good idea of how things work.  I suggest looking at the thread descriptions example, as this is fairly easy to understand (IMO).  If you can understand how everything works, there, perhaps try out the gallery example.

Known conflicting plugins
- MyPlaza Turbo -
If you are using MyPlaza Turbo, note that the author decided to use a particularly odd method to implement certain functionality, practically destroying compatibility with any plugin which hooks into the forum add/edit routines.  I've included a patch to address this issue - you need to replace inc/myplaza/myplaza_admin_plugin.php with the following file (it's unlikely that this will be committed as the author has decided to discontinue development)

  myplaza_admin_plugin.php (Size: 56.27 KB / Downloads: 2400)

- PL9 Forum Icons -
Affects certain functionality.  See here for a solution.

- PHP in Templates, v1.4 or older -
Similar to PL9 Forum Icons - solution is just to update to the latest version.

- MyAdvertisements - (update: older versions only, later versions may not conflict)
Affects some thread functionality, see here for a solution.

- Group Post CSS -
See here http://mybbhacks.zingaburga.com/showthre...http://mybbhacks.zingaburga.com/showthread.php?tid=378&pid=59

All bug reports, suggestions, criticisms are appreciated (though I may not always implement suggestions) so please feel free to post them.
If you find this plugin useful, I would be grateful if you could give some token of appreciation for the work that has gone into this, and perhaps post some example usages you've come up with in the XThreads forum to help others get an idea of what can be achieve with this plugin (and for my own interest's sake ).


Github: https://github.com/zingaburga/XThreads-MyBB-Plugin
Note: do NOT use the Github version, unless you know what you're doing
Changelogs: v1.10, v1.20, v1.21, v1.22, v1.23, v1.24, v1.25, v1.26, v1.27, v1.30, v1.31, v1.32, v1.337, v1.40, v1.41, v1.42, v1.43, v1.44, v1.45, v1.46, v1.47, v1.50, v1.51, v1.52, v1.53, v1.60, v1.61, v1.62, v1.63, v1.64, v1.65, v1.66, v1.67, v1.68

[RateU]

If you look at the forum now, I've forced the forum id to the default theme. Note: I've checked - Save. Then Edit the forum again, unchecked - Save. Edit again, checked - save. Now, the forum id = 2 forced to the default style. Other forum use custom theme (unchecked condition). It still work for me. You can see the difference between the theme at the header.

EDIT: What I meant with the default theme is the MyBB default theme. I have two theme there, MyBB default theme and a custom theme.

[leefish]

I have it fixed RateU. I think it is because of the updates and so on to 1.6 for me....all very odd.

[RateU]

Ah... Glad you can solve the problem, Lee

[ZiNgA BuRgA]

(08-18-2010 04:42 AM)leefish Wrote:  So today I took that force style off and resaved the forum. It took a little bit longer than usual to save. I went into the forum and the xthreads option I had added was visible. Then I went back to the forum settings, and put the original force style back on again. It saved pretty quickly, and when I went back into the forum - the X_thread setting was there.

That's very odd.  XThreads doesn't care about forcing styles or not - MyBB handles all that.
The only thing that makes sense there is perhaps if MyBB's forum cache somehow got messed up.  FYI, simply commiting an edit to the forum refreshes the forum cache.

Templates wise, I was thinking a custom theme template may be overriding one you've defined.
Say you're using theme "MyTheme" (it doesn't matter if it's forced or not) and a template prefix of "pref_", then MyBB/XThreads will try to load the first template (say the "header" template), according to this order: [note, in form templateset.templatename]
MyTheme.pref_header
Global.pref_header
MyTheme.header
Global.header
Default.header

[Pirata Nervo]

Hey zinga, the upgrader message does not disappear. Do I need to chmod any files for it to be able write to somewhere or something? I've moved to a VPS yesterday so I still need to fix some permissions here and there and not sure if XThreads need it.

I've ran the upgrader twice because I wasn't sure if I had clicked it (since the message was there), do I have to rollback anything manually now?

[ZiNgA BuRgA]

Actually, nothing has really been "upgraded" in the previous few releases, so it doesn't matter so much.  It's just to update the internal version number.

But do check that you have cache/xthreads.php and check if the version specified there looks valid.  The cache directory should be writable, as per MyBB requirements.

[Pirata Nervo]

Yeap the cache directry is writable (777) but I had to chmod the xthreads.php file to 777 too.
Anyway, does uploads/xthreads_ul need to be chmodded to 777 too? I think so

[ZiNgA BuRgA]

Yes, in general, everything in the uploads/ folder needs to be writable (including subfolders).

[Pirata Nervo]

Yeap that's what I did and it worked, thank you

[ZiNgA BuRgA]

Out of interest, if you don't mind saying, where are you using XThreads?  Am just interested to see what sort of stuff you've come up with