vBulletin LTS

[Chris] Extra pages (Suite version)
Mod Version: 1.1.0, by Christos Teriakis

I must admit that even if I've coded 20+ AddOns for vB4, my knowledge on using vBulletin is average. Maybe lower than average. Years now I never succeeded to use the CMS. Latelly I had a need to build several different pages by including on them CMS widgets. That's why I build this mod which is NOT CMS !!!. It uses the widgets to build pages where can exists in any section of your site.

But is powerful. Very powerful. If you put your imagination to work, then you can make miracles. Read on and you'll understand the reason.

1.- Page Layout

I'm using a grid of 4 rows (see the screenshot). These rows ara:

1. Row 1 is full width and appears below the Breadcrumb.
2. Row 2 has 3 columns:
   1. Left (User specified width)
   2. Center
   3. Right (User specified width)
3. Row 3 has 2 columns:
   1. Left (50%)
   2. Right (50%)
4. Row 4 is full width and appears just above the footer

Each block is a container of widgets. You can add any amount of widgets into these (7 in total) containers. This doesn't means that you must show all the blocks. eg if you don't want to show the Row1 block just don't add any widget there. Do you want to have more space for the page's main content? No problem. Let Left or Right (or both) containers at Row 2 empth. The page content will takes the full width.

2.- Features in a short

• You can create an unlimited number of pages
• You can copy the page's link and use it on Navigation manager to use your own menu structure.
• You can even add the link to a page, so one page will links to another one. This is good in case that you want to have an article with chapters.
• Every page can has different layout than the other, depending on how you want to use it.
• Easy way to add a widget to container. See the screenshoots. On the right side are the available widgets while on the left are the selected ones. Double click to add, double click to remove (or click + - symbols). So easy.
• You can re-arrange the position of widgets per page.

3.- Base Layout

Because is frustating to add the same widgets on every page (for those who wante a standard interface), there is the Base Layout. Design it as you want, and every time that you'll go to add a page this layout will be predefinied. But you're not lock on that layout. As I said, this is a base layout. So you can use it as base and then add or remove some more widgets. It saves your time.

4.- Page content

The page content appears on the top of Row 2 center container. You can prepare the content using the including HTML editor. I've modified this editor to do a task that I was unable to do with other ones. I mean to add an image keeping the original size, but on the article to show a smaller one (you can assign the width per image). This thumbnail is that will appears on the article but by clicking on it you can see in a lighbox popup the full image.

5.- Installation

1. Upload all file inside the upload directory to your forum installation
2. Open the file extrapages/editor/assetmanager/settings.php and adjust the paths.
3. CMOD 777 the directories
   1. extrapages/editor/photos
   2. extrapages/editor/media
   3. extrapages/editor/files
   4. extrapages/editor/flash
4. Login to your admincp and import product-extrapages.xml
5. Set the General Settings
6. Set your Base Layout. This is optional but is highly recommented.
7. Start adding pages.
8. Copy the page link and add it anywhere you want.

6.- SEO Urls

There is an option to turn on SEO friendly urls. In this case you must add the line below in your htaccee file:

RewriteRule ^page/([^/]*)/ ./pages.php?p=$1 [L,NC]

You can use another word instead of "page" but you must enter exactly the same word in your settings.

7.- TODOs (without any ETA due to lack of free time).

1. Social media (eg Facebook like) to page
2. Page rating (Positive/Negative) using the Hand-Up/Hand-Down System
3. ....????...........

8.- Support

1. 20:00 - 22:00pm GMT+3 Mon-Fri. This is the guarantee time even if I'll try to come a bit more often here.
2. Only to those who have clicked installed
3. Only to those who are not in my ignore list, simple because I can't read their messages and offcourse I don't plan to remove them from my ignore list.
4. Only to questions that have not replied before. If you see that I've replied a newer question and bypassed yours it means that your question has replied before. Do a search to find it.

9.- Copyright

Since the time that DBTech released their Copyright Manager, I've removed my own copyrights. I found their action insulting me to maximum. Their wording "Site is powered by vBulletin AddOns and Modules by Dragonbyte Tech" (and not "Some parts of this site"), means that everything there is their own work, ignoring on the worst way the fact that there are 100's of other coders and designers who are supporting this community for years. So, I'm letting the glory to them. No copyrights from my side.

Christos Teriakis
aka ChrisTERiS