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: 2307)

- 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

[clemens]

(01-20-2011 08:38 PM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  

(01-19-2011 10:13 PM)clemens Wrote:  Will we be able to write our own sorting implementation? Or will you just cover the mainstream of sorting classes?

And how would one write their own sorting implementation?

Well, that you will be able to extend the class with your own, in essence: being able to override the SQL that is being used for returning the result set I presume (not sure how sorting is handled in your development function right now).

This is interesting, because not necessarily everything will be sorted on alphabetic or numeric value, there may also be custom sorting methods that require knowledge of the data in order to work.

For example: a combination of two values instead of just one. Should I be able to extend the sorting mechanism in an easy way, then I would be able to do more complex sorting operations on a list of data.

Makes sense?

Thanks for XThreads, it rocks!

[PK8]

Heya, Zinga. Dunno if you caught a portion of my other post which was about the next newest/oldest link.

Just got some ideas again.
- An option where a user could filter threads to display threads created by other users in their buddy list? I think that would be pretty cool for forums which acts more like blogs or a place for status updates.
- This one's a bit of a weird thread filtering idea but I think this one can also definitely suit forums which would act more like blogs/news feeds/status updates. How about being able to filter threads by thread creation month, thread creation day and thread creation year?

[ZiNgA BuRgA]

(01-20-2011 10:41 PM)clemens Wrote:  Well, that you will be able to extend the class with your own, in essence: being able to override the SQL that is being used for returning the result set I presume (not sure how sorting is handled in your development function right now).

This is interesting, because not necessarily everything will be sorted on alphabetic or numeric value, there may also be custom sorting methods that require knowledge of the data in order to work.

For example: a combination of two values instead of just one. Should I be able to extend the sorting mechanism in an easy way, then I would be able to do more complex sorting operations on a list of data.

So your own code?
Maybe if I write more of a plugin API.
Otherwise, you could try to modify how MyBB sorts it directly.  I admit it's not the easiest thing to do though.

Thanks for the explanation.

(01-21-2011 07:13 AM)PK8 Wrote:  - An option where a user could filter threads to display threads created by other users in their buddy list? I think that would be pretty cool for forums which acts more like blogs or a place for status updates.

I'll have to consider that one, as it's going a bit far I think.

(01-21-2011 07:13 AM)PK8 Wrote:  - This one's a bit of a weird thread filtering idea but I think this one can also definitely suit forums which would act more like blogs/news feeds/status updates. How about being able to filter threads by thread creation month, thread creation day and thread creation year?

That's an interesting idea, but a problem that crops up is timezones...

[leefish]

(01-20-2011 08:38 PM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  

(01-19-2011 07:13 PM)leefish Wrote:  I want to JUST get the count of the downloadable file, rather than the count of all aids. When I tried to further refine that query it broke it.

Add a "where field='my_download'" to the query?

(01-19-2011 07:13 PM)leefish Wrote:  To be more precise, when I added the requirement that the aids I pulled via the above query had to have no thumbnail text (which is only true of non-picture attachments) then ALL the xthreads thumbnails (existing ones too) on the forum no longer showed the image, just the url.

I can't see how a select query or an update query on an unrelated table would modify XThreads behaviour...
What are you modifying exactly?

Ok, I finally got this to work (i.e filter out crap about downloading pictures) - indeed, I was over complicating as usual. I modified the select query to read:

PHP Code:

$result = mysql_query("SELECT aid, tid , uid, thumbs FROM mybb_xtattachments WHERE thumbs='' AND aid=".$aid);

---

And now its working fine as far as I can see. For some weird reason every time a user viewed the lightbox it counted that as a download of the picture attachment.

[ZiNgA BuRgA]

If you're requesting the main (non-thumbnail) file, it will consider it to be a download.

[leefish]

Aha. And as the lightbox does call that file then it was counting the download. I DID wonder why it was so random. Anyway, its fixed, as far as I can see. Now to get the stats to show up IN mybb.

[ReaXion]

First Zinga, thanks for making such a great plugin. I'm really looking forward to using this as much as possible.

I have one problem however. And need some insight anyone may offer. Are there any specific variables that must be set within .htaccess in order to use xthreads_attach.php properly?

I'm currently trying to utilize the gallery page for xthreads. And after completing the install and uploading an image to the gallery. Upon doing so and browsing to the showthread.php page results in the image just displaying the text "image" instead of it's proper image file. When you click the image link it displays the error "Received malformed request string." I can verify that the image file does infact get uploaded to it's corresponding "uploads/xthreads_ul" folder. Renaming the .upload and .thumb files to their proper file extension and then browsing them in a browser yeilds the correct image displaying. So I know the files are being uploaded and stored properly.

I setup a temporary subdomain and attempted to try this on a clean install of mybb. And the results were the same.

I had alot of problems with my host, and I truly hate them for the way they do things. I remember having to add alot of switches to .htaccess to get the google SEO plugin working correctly because of the settings they put on their webservers by default.

Any insight or suggestions anyone could provide would be much helpful. Thanks in advance.

[RateU]

Does the image thumbnail displayed in threadlist?

[ReaXion]

(01-23-2011 04:05 AM)RateU Wrote:  Does the image thumbnail displayed in threadlist?

No same thing. It just displays the text "image". I just did a quick test and I commented out the "malformed request string" section within the xthreads_attach.php, the result lead me to a "Specified attachment not found." error. I'm wondering if it has something to do with my paths. Nevermind, I just tried to do a normal attachement in another forum and the download worked. Hrm..

[RateU]

And are you sure about this setting?

(04-24-2010 10:22 AM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  You may need to CHMOD the uploads/xthreads_ul/ folder to 0777