vBulletin LTS

I've downloaded quite a few hacks from these forums and thought that I should contribute one of my own (First hack and first post ever!)

I dislike the way that vBulletin sets up way you send AIM messages. You have to go from that pop-up window to the profile in order to IM someone by clicking on the icon. With this hack, the image will display whether or not the user is logged into AIM as well as opening the AIM IM window upon clicking the icon. To check whether the user is online, it checks with the AIM server. This only requires two file uploads (images) and a one-line file edit.

STEP ONE:
Upload the files aim_online.gif and aim_offline.gif to any directory.

STEP TWO:
Open up includes/functions_showthread.php and replace this line:

PHP Code:

        eval('$userinfo[\'aimicon\'] = "' . fetch_template('im_aim') . '";'); 


With this:

PHP Code:

        $userinfo['aimicon'] = "<a href='aim:goim?screenname=" . $userinfo['aim'] . "'><img src='http://big.oscar.aol.com/" . $userinfo['aim'] . "?on_url=http://yoursite.com/path/to/aim_online.gif&off_url=http://yoursite.com/path/to/aim_offline.gif' width='16' height='16' style='border: 0;' /></a>"; 


Make sure you change the url's in there to match the path to your images. The icons are attached.

Well, it's not much, but it is my first hack. Just a fun 'lil thing that makes your forum more convenient. I don't know if this can be done with MSNM, but if it's possible, I'll post a follow-up to this thread.

Feel free to edit the images as you like