MyBB Community Forums

UNMAINTAINED

I'm sorry to say that I no longer maintain this mod. There are just too many issues with subforums that can't be fixed by this plugin, so I decided against using subforums in my own forum, which in turn means that I do no longer need this plugin myself.

My sincerest apologies to anyone who was looking forward to a stable release of this.

Since this is Open Source, if you want to take over, please feel free to do so.

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This plugin is version 0.6, public BETA (updated 2009-01-09), GPL, for MyBB 1.4.3 and 1.4.4.

The main goal of this plugin is to implement a more consistent lightbulb behaviour than the current MyBB lightbulb logic. The MyBB logic sometimes marks a parent forum as unread even though there are no new posts. The plugin originated from this bug report: http://community.mybboard.net/thread-40284.html

Optionally, this plugin replaces the read/unread/locked forum indicators (lightbulbs) with indicators that also include the subforum status. Hence the name of the plugin, "Subforum Bulb" (lame excuse for stupid plugin name, I'm sorry). See the attached screenshot to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

It can also sort subforums to show newest unread subforums first, followed by read and locked ones, so new and unread subforums do not get grouped with "and X more subforums" that easily.

For it to work, you have to upload the plugin and the new icon graphics (generated with ImageMagick). Since the plugin replaces a MyBB core function, which can't be done with a hook, you also have to make a change to one line of index.php and forumdisplay.php. So in order to use this plugin you must both be able to upload as well as follow instructions to edit two files.

Since this is a public beta release it may still be buggy. If you are interested in the plugin, please try it, and report any problems that arise in this thread. Thank you.

Official Mods page: http://mods.mybboard.net/view/subforum-bulb (awaiting validation)
Download link: http://www.metamorpher.de/files/subforum_bulb_0.6.zip
Installation instructions: http://www.metamorpher.de/files/readme_s...m_bulb.txt

(2008-11-16, 01:31 AM)frostschutz Wrote: [ -> ]Updated to 0.3, click green arrow for update notice.

(2008-11-27, 04:15 PM)frostschutz Wrote: [ -> ]Updated to 0.4, click green arrow for update notice.

(2008-12-19, 01:03 AM)frostschutz Wrote: [ -> ]Updated to 0.5, click green arrow for update notice.

(2009-01-09, 10:52 AM)frostschutz Wrote: [ -> ]Updated to 0.6, click green arrow for update notice.

i think it's great plugin!

I must admit I really like the idea of this, but I personally don't like plugins that edit core files. However I understand there may be no other way of doing it... I'll test this on my localhost.

The plugin doesn't edit core files, you have to do that yourself. (I just wanted to clarify because I have seen at least one plugin that requires you to chmod a core file 777 so the plugin can modify it). In general I agree that plugins should work without modification to any files, but it's not possible here (or at least I don't know of a way).

Maybe once the plugin is tested by more people, and as development goes on it becomes more sophisticated (e.g. currently it has zero options to customize the behaviour), maybe the MyBB team will consider integrating some of the changes into their core. Especially since the current MyBB lightbulb logic is slightly buggy.

I'd be more than happy to hear about your test results. :-)

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I'll add some more options and features in the next version.

Add options that let you customize the behaviour of the plugin:

• "light" option that keeps the old icons, but fixes the "parent forum marked as unread even though the new post in the subforum is already read" bug that MyBB refuses to fix
  
• "sort" option that sorts the mini subforum list: newest unread subforum first, followed by read subforum, and locked subforums dead last.
  Since the mini subforum list is often incomplete (Subforums: a, b, "and x more") this will make sure you see the most important subforum at once and not have the only unread subforum hidden under "and x more".
  The order of the big forum list (when you click the parent forums) will remain unaffected.
  

I'm also pondering wether "Subforum Bulb" is a too stupid name to keep. "Advanced Subforums" is not really a good name either but maybe it will attract more people.

What do you think?

Fine but i want to, that it will be like in IPB, too many icons for me...
maybe Mybb teams fixed default files in mybb P

(2008-11-13, 03:36 PM)@r3 Wrote: [ -> ]too many icons for me...

I must agree there are quite a few images, but I also can't deny that it does make a whole lot of sense when looking at it. I certainly don't find it confusing in any way.

(2008-11-13, 03:36 PM)@r3 Wrote: [ -> ]that it will be like in IPB

Sorry, what is IPB?

Basically it's just four icons (parent and sub on, parent and sub off, either parent or sub on and the other off). And the same four for mini icons. The locked forum icon is a rare case, and a locked forum with locked subforums probably shouldn't even exist.

In the next version I'll provide an option that sticks to the original simple icons but does no longer mark a parent forum unread when the subforums are already read.

The 0.2 version of this plugin is still awaiting validation in the mods section, once that's through I'll post an update (or does every update have to wait for validation too? ).

IPB = Invision Power Board

(2008-11-13, 04:16 PM)frostschutz Wrote: [ -> ]

(2008-11-13, 03:36 PM)@r3 Wrote: [ -> ]that it will be like in IPB

Sorry, what is IPB?

http://forums.invisionpower.com/

I want to 1 main icons, no 2 different. It too much for me ;P

Ok, the main difference I see there (apart from the icon design - I'm not a graphics designer, sorry, so I had to base my icons on the original ones), is that clicking the icon does not only mark the clicked forum as read, but also all of its subforums. So I assume that the icon shows as "unread" if there is at least one unread (sub)forum.

I could add this as "aggressive" option, as this way the unread marker keeps nagging you to read unread posts even if they are in a subforum that you are not interested in. This is good for news sites where you don't want your users to miss even a single message, but in a forum you can not 'unsubscribe' from a subforum (news group) so it may be annoying.

However this would require me to mess with the AJAX 'mark as read' logic, which is something I'm not doing currently which in turn leads to the minor bug that if you mark a subforum as read by clicking on the mini icon, it does not update the icon of the parent forum if that was the last unread subforum - the icons for the forum would have to be recalculated at that point.

I'll try to implement something in this direction, let's see how it goes...