vBulletin LTS

User's Social Groups on Forum Home (like forumlist, fully templated)
Mod Version: 1.5.2, by cellarius

What does it do?

• Shows all social groups the actual user is a member of or is subscribed to, just below the forumlist (or anywhere else on forumhome). If there are new messages, the corresponding forum statusicon is highlighted - just like in forumlist.
• If there are no groups to show, you can choose to show a teaser message.

Things to set in AdminCP/Options:

• show member of / subscribed to /nothing
• sort by name or last message date
• limit max number of groups shown, then link to appropriate page (grouplist for members, usercp for subscribers)
• restrict use by usergroup
• show a teaser message if there are no groups to show
• show buttons to open new discussion etc.
• apply custom css to grouptitle
• trim group description to max length or disable
• parse bbcode in group descriptions
• use a different set of statusicons for groups than for forums
• use .png for statusicons instead of .gif (global in AdminCP, per style in groupsbit template)
• show groupicon instead of statusicon

Looks

• Out of the box: I tried to copy the standard look of the forumlist on forumhome.
• As requested, it is now fully templated (following the forumbit-scheme) for easy adjustment to custom styles.
  See the screenshot of a modified example in this post

  Spoiler (click to open)

  
  

  Promised a screen, here it is. Added links to start a new discussion, unsubscribe, view members, and view photos
  
  Thanks man.

  Attached Thumbnails

   

  
  

  Close
  .

Install/upgrade

1. Upload folder "images" to your forum root (can be omitted if you do not want to use the buttons).
2. Import the product file.
3. Check settings in AdminCP->Options->Social Groups on Forumhome.

Template edit
Will be automatically inserted below your forums list if you are using TMS, which I highly recommend to do. If not:

Find:
Above add:
If you don't like it there, you can insert $cel_social_groups anywhere you like on forumhome.

Technical stuff
1 product file that adds
+ 3 templates (following the forumbit-scheme)
+ 3 plugins
+ adds 2 queries to forumhome (only if groups are shown, of course).
+ a bunch of phrases (prefix: cel_sgfh_).
+ 4 png-buttons, taken from the http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/.

Limitations

• Marking of new messages only works with database, not with cookie based marking of read threads (-> AdminCP setting)
  Explanation: This mod relys on the information in the database when a discussion was last read by the actual user. If you rely on cookies for this, you can use this mod anyway, but there will be no marking if there are unread messages by changed statusicons.
• 3.7 Discussion groups will show up as "no messages yet" as long as there was no message written under 3.8
  Explanation: When converting the old 3.7 message board into a discussion, Jelsoft was a little bit slack. While normally all the information about the last updated discussion is stored in the socialgroups table, this information is not entered for the auto-created discussion. For example: The discussion ID for the last updated discussion simply is 0 instead of the actual id of the auto created discussion. Therefore, this mod can not retrieve the information it needs since the discussion is not linked to the social group. This only changes when the first message under 3.8 is written.
• Not a bug note: In vB 3.8 there was an issue where the last discussion title was not correctly updated by vB in the socialgroup table. This would lead this mod to show a wrong last discussion title under some circumstances. This was resolved in 3.8.1.
  See Bugtracker: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/project.php?issueid=27176

Version history

v 1.4
+ some bugfixes
+ option to turn teaser message off
+ option to show several buttons: to start a new discussion - see the group's members list - see the group' photos (only shown if there are any attached pictures) - unsubscribe (only if subscribed groups are shown) (Thanks to glorify

Spoiler (click to open)

cellarius, I added an unsubscribe link as well and updated the http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showpost.php?p=1734791&postcount=45.

If you are interested in the link code for each without having to search, here they are:

New Discussion

Code:

<a href="group.php?$session[sessionurl]do=message&amp;groupid=$cel_groups[groupid]">

Unsubscribe

Code:

<a href="group.php?$session[sessionurl]do=unsubscribe&amp;groupid=$cel_groups[groupid]">

View Members

Code:

<a href="group.php?$session[sessionurl]do=viewmembers&amp;groupid=$cel_groups[groupid]">

View Photos

Code:

<a href="group.php?$session[sessionurl]do=grouppictures&amp;groupid=$cel_groups[groupid]">

And, you may not need these, but attached are the icons I used, from FAMFAMFAM.

Attached Images

Close

)
1.4.1: Template/Style error in Google Chrome fixed

v 1.3
+ now fully templated. New templates: forumhome_cel_social_groups_groupsbit and forumhome_cel_social_groups_lastmsgby.
1.3.1: Link to user profile error fixed

v 1.2
+ added option to sort groups by date of last message
+ added missing phrase

v 1.1
+ improved database query
+ limitations somewhat lessened
+ added settings page to AdminCP
+ choose whether to show groups the user is a member of or subscribed to
+ limit number of groups shown, then link to appropriate page
+ restrict use by usergroup
+ some minor bugfixes

Planned features (no promises made!)

none atm

option to use a set of different statusicons for the groups
option to use the social group's icon instead of the statusicon
and to go with that, for additional/substitunional unread marking, possibility to add css markup to the social group's title

Translations

• Polish

  Spoiler (click to open)

  
  

  Here you have Polish translation of this mod (unfortunately there are few hard coded phrases for admin options).
  
  Regards

  Attached Files

  vbulletin-sgf1.4pl8859-2.xml (5.0 KB, 14 views)

  
  

  Close
  (thanks to RadioErewan)
• German

  Spoiler (click to open)

  
  

  Awesome Mod. Here is the german Translation (Frontend)....
  
  @cellarius - please include the Template edit-Instruction at the next Update to the install.txt.
  
  Regards

  Attached Files

  User's Social Groups on Forum Home_german.xml (2.4 KB, 45 views)

  
  

  Close
  (thanks to redlabour)

Screenshots:

• AdminCP
• Forumhome (with groupicon and css formatted groupname, bbcode in description parsed)
• Forumhome (with forum statusicons and trimmed description -> bbcode not parsed)