Threaded / Hybrid Mode Options (showthread) Back to Top

z Use Threaded Mode by Default

Set this value to 'Yes' if you would like users (who have not explicitly set a preference) to view threads in the threaded display mode.

Note:

This setting will have no effect if 'Enable Threaded / Hybrid Mode' is set to 'No'.

z Threaded Mode: Posts Depth

When in the threaded display mode, a list of posts within the current thread is displayed at the bottom of the page. This option allows you to set how 'deep' this list displays beyond the currently selected post.

z Threaded Mode: Maximum Cached Posts

When in the threaded display mode, a list of posts within the current thread is displayed at the bottom of the page. This option allows you to set how 'deep' into the tree of posts that vBulletin uses the Javascript 'caching' mechanism. This makes the initial download larger, but means that the page does not have to be reloaded for every post that is viewed.

z Threaded Mode: Trim Titles

This value will chop the title of the thread titles in the viewing pane down to a specific number of characters. A value of 0 will not trim the titles at all.

Settings > Options > Private Messaging Options

Private Messaging Options

Private Messaging Enabled (yes/no)

Turns the entire private messaging system on and off.

Instant Messaging Support - Check for New Private Messages (yes/no)

Selecting 'Yes' for this option will cause the system to check the private message database every time a user loads a page, and will display a visible prompt if a new message has just been saved.

Maximum Characters Per Private Message (default: 5000) Maximum characters to allow in a private message.

Set this to 0 for no limit.

Floodcheck - Minimum Time Between Messages (default: 60)

Private Message Flood Checking. Select the minimum time that must pass before a user can send another private message. This is to prevent a single user 'spamming' by sending lots of messages very quickly.

Set this to 0 to disable the option.

Default Messages Per-Page (default: 50)

This setting allows you to define the default number of messages displayed per-page on the private messages listings pages.

Maximum Messages Per-Page (default: 100)

This setting allows you to limit the number of messages users may display per page on the private messages folder view pages.

Allow Message Icons for Private Messages (yes/no) Allow the use of the standard message icons for private messages.

Allow vB Code in Private Messages (yes/no)

Allow users to include vB Code in their Private Messages? (Such as [b], [i] etc.) Allow Smilies in Private Messages (yes/no)

Allows users to include smilies in their Private Messages.

Allow [IMG] Code in Private Messages (yes/no) Allows users to include [IMG] codes in their Private Messages.

Allow HTML in Private Messages (yes/no)

Allow users to include raw HTML code in their Private Messages?

(Strongly not recommended.)

The Settings > Options >Who's Online Option allows you to control the display of http://www.example.com/forums/online.php.

z Who's Online Enabled

This is the master switch for the Who's Online page. If you select no, anyone who tries to access the page will be shown a no permission page.

If you select yes, you may still control usergroup permissions for Who's Online via Usergroups > Usergroup Manager.

z Who's Online Refresh Period

If you set this to a value greater than 0, after that many seconds of being on the same page in Who's Online, your browser will automatically refresh the page.

z Who's Online Display Guests

Controls whether guests are shown on Who's Online. Browsing registered users are always shown.

z Who's Online Resolve IP Addresses

If you have permission to view IP addresses on Who's Online, this controls whether you will be shown a raw IP address or something that has been resolved to a name-based host. The name-based host cannot always be resolved, but when it can additional information about the browsing user can be more easily determined (for example, his or her Internet Service Provider).

Resolving IP addresses to names is a very slow process. If you have problems displaying Who's Online, you should disable this option.

z Enable Spider Display

Search Engine Friendly Archive

Forum Archive Enabled (yes/no)

The Search-Friendly Archive works only under the Apache web server with PHP compiled as a module.

It provides a basic structure that search engines can spider to grab all the content on your site.

Display Simple View of Threads (yes/no)

By default, threads in the Archive are displayed in a simple manner. Set this to no to have the real threads linked from the archive.

Forum Archive Threads Per Page (default: 250)

The number of threads to display per page in the threads listing.

This is done on a per-forum basis.

Forum Archive Posts Per Page (default: 250)

The number of posts to display per page in the thread listing.

Note:

On your own forum you can find the Archive here: http://www.yourforum.com/forumdir/archive/

(live example: http://www.vBulletin.com/forum/archive/)

Settings > Options > Admin Control Panel Options Control Panel Style Folder

This setting allows you to specify an alternative style for the Admin / Moderator Control Panels, based on a folder contained within the 'cpstyles/' folder. The style you select here will be displayed to all Moderators, and any Administrators who have not expressed their own preference.

Comes default with 5 different Admin Control Panel Styles to choose from. You can set a default here, but upon login one could select the style they prefer.

Folders in the 'cpstyles' folder must contain at least the following:

- controlpanel.css - cp_logo.gif - cp_help.gif

Admin Control Panel Options

Timeout Admin Login (yes/no)

After a period of inactivity, Administrators are logged out of the Admin Control Panel. If this option is set to yes, the inactivity period will be the same as the Cookie Timout setting found in vBulletin Options -> Help Cookies and HTTP Header Options (defaults to 15 minutes). If this option is disabled, then the period will be one hour.

Logins to the admincp are more secure with this enabled.

Control Panel Quick Statistics (yes/no)

Displays the 'Quick Stats' on the main index page of the Admin Control Panel.

Forum Manager Display

There are three options for the display of the Forum Manager:

z Default - Displays all of the forums on one page but may not work on all browsers, especially if you have a large number of forums.

z Collapsible - Allows collapsing/expansion of certain forums within the forum manager. This may

reduce the ease of usability of the forum manager, but will prevent rendering problems with the dropdown menus with certain browsers/operating systems.

z Single - Display a single dropdown from which you may choose the forum you wish to modify. This is most useful if you have a large number of forums.

User Editor Columns

Number of columns to display in user editor. Smaller resolutions will probably want to set this to 1.

Besides the main forums, the search friendly archive and the printable version of a thread, you can also choose to turn on the external data provider. (Settings > Options > External Data Provider)

Here you can select which type can bse turned on/off. You can choose between javascript, rss and/or xml.

z Enable External Javascript

This setting allows you to enable/disable the Javascript content syndication system that allows you to embed vBulletin data in HTML pages.

If you set this option to 'yes', you can call it by going to:

http://www.example.com/forum/external.php?type=js

You could use javascript directly in your html pages to control the returned data.

z Enable RSS Syndication

This setting allows you to enable/disable the RSS content syndication system.

If you set this option to 'yes', you can call it by going to:

http://www.example.com/forum/external.php?type=rss

(example) There is a news-plugin for Trillian which lets you use RSS feeds to get the latest information posted in your Trillian program.

z Enable XML Syndication

This setting allows you to enable/disable the XML content syndication system.

If you set this option to 'yes', you can call it by going to:

http://www.example.com/forum/external.php?type=xml When you are done, click the [Save] button to apply the changes.

The External Data Provider is used to syndicate this information to external websites. This feature uses the permissions for the Unregisted / Not Logged In usergroup. If that usergroup doesn't have permissions to view the forum, the feeds will not work.

Below are examples on how you can control what is shown on these websites.

To syndicate in a Javascript format you would call the following URL from your external site. This will require additional javascript on the external site (an example is listed below).

www.yourdomain.com/forumpath/external.php?type=js Example Code:

The External Data Provider also gives alternative feeds in commonly used formats. These are useful if you have external readers or a script to read them already. These feeds are available in XML, RSS and RSS2 so it should fit a wide variety of readers. The system defaults to RSS so if you leave off the type, that is what you get.

The URLS to access these feeds are:

XML -www.yourdomain.com/forumpath/external.php?type=xml RSS -www.yourdomain.com/forumpath/external.php?type=rss RSS 2.0 -www.yourdomain.com/forumpath/external.php?type=rss2

You can refine the listings by specifying forumids in the path. For multiple forums separate them with a comma.

External Data Provider

Implementing the External Data Provider Back to Top

<!--for (i in threads) {

document.writeln(threads[i].title + " (" + threads[i].poster + ")<br />");

} //-->

</script>

This will limit the feed to the specified forums only. (Below example uses xml as type, but it works with rss, rss2, and js too)

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/external.php?type=xml&forumids=1,2,3,4

Settings > Options > Error Handling & Logging Log Database Errors to a File

If you would like to log all database errors to a file, enter the path to the file here. The file will be saved as {filename}.log.

Note:

Error Handling & Logging

Please note that the directory in which this file is to be created must be writable by the web server.

Log Failed Admin Control Panel Logins to a File

If you would like to log all failed Admin Control Panel login attempts to a file, enter the path to the file here. The file will be saved as {filename}.log

Note:

Please note that the directory in which this file is to be created must be writable by the web server.

Log PHP Errors to a File

If you would like to log all PHP fatal errors to a file, enter the path to the file here. The file will be saved as {filename}.log.

Note:

Please note that the directory in which this file is to be created must be writable by the web server.

Maximum File Size of Error Logs (default: 1048576)

If you would like your vBulletin error logs to be rotated when they reach a certain size, enter the maximum file size in bytes here.

1048576 bytes = 1 megabyte.

When a log file reaches this size, it will be renamed as {filename}{unix timestamp}.log and a new file will be created.

Set this value to 0 to disable log rotation.

Disable Database Error Email Sending (yes/no)

If you would like to prevent vBulletin from sending email to the $config['Database']['technicalemail'] address you specified in config.php, set this value to 'Yes'.

z Error reports about database connection errors will still be sent.

z It is not recommended that you set this value to 'Yes' unless you are logging database errors to a file.

(see above)

Paid Subscriptions

Settings > Options > Paid Subscriptions Paid Subscription Email Notification

An email will be sent to this email address when a paid subscription is purchased or reversed.

Note:

The main Paid Subscription settings are found at Paid Subscriptions > Paid Subscription Manager. The main manual section relating to Paid Subscriptions can be found here

Plugin/Hook System

Settings > Options > Plugin/Hook System Enable Plugin/Hook System (yes/no)

This setting allows you to globally enable or disable the plugin/hook system.

The plugin/hook systems allows for insertion of arbitrary code into specific locations in the PHP files without having to edit the files (see Plugin Manager). This can be used to extend the functionality of vBulletin without hacking. When upgrading to future versions you do not have to re-apply these modifications to the original vBulletin files, making upgrading an easier task.

By switching the system off, only vBulletin-native code will be run, so it can be used to establish whether errors exist within vBulletin itself or in plugin code.

Note:

You can code these plugins yourself or download existing ones from the official resource community at http://www.vBulletin.org/. Please note that these plugins are unofficial and are not supported by Jelsoft.

Warning:

If you have attempted to import a product or a plugin and run into the problem of being unable to navigate/work with your forum or control panel you might require to update the config.php file with this variable, which will force-disable the hook system. Allowing you to restore your forum and uninstall the bad code/plugin.

(Remove from the config.php file when done.) define('DISABLE_HOOKS', true);

Spam Management

Settings > Options > Spam Management Anti-Spam Service

Controls the service that is used for scanning supported data. The corresponding API key for the service has to be entered. The current options are Akismet and Typepad Anti-spam.

vBulletin Anti-Spam Key

Enter a vBulletin Anti-Spam service key to enable scanning of user data where supported. You obtain your key from the service selected in the option above. Entering a key, enables this functionality.

Spam Scanning Post Threshold

This setting controls how many of a user's posts will be scanned by the Anti-Spam Service. Once a user's post count exceeds this threshold, his or her posts will not be scanned for spam content. To always scan posts set this value to 0.

Anti-Spam Data Storage Length (Days)

Whenever a post is made, extra anti-spam data is stored. This allows details about false positives and false negatives to be submitted to the chosen anti-spam system to improve it.

This value controls the length of time (in days) for which this data is stored.

vBulletin allows you to create and submit an XML sitemap to your favorite search engines and website management tools. This facilitates easier indexing of your site and with various tools can even tell you if there are problems with the content on your site. You can find the options for this here: Settings > Options > XML Sitemap Enable Automatic Sitemap Generation

When enabled this tells vBulletin to generate your sitemaps automatically via the Scheduled Task Manager. If you have a large forum, you may want to leave this disabled as it can be a time consuming task. Even if this is enabled, you can always generate your sitemap files manually by clicking on Rebuild Sitemap. Default Value: No Automatic Sitemap Generation Frequency (Days)

If automatic sitemap generation is enabled, this option controls the number of days between automatic builds.

Default Value: 14 Default Sitemap Priority

The default priority for content in the XML Sitemap. This may be configured on a per-content basis in the XML Sitemap group. Only a limited amount of content should be listed in the sitemap as a high priority, so you shouldn't set this value too high. Default Value: 0.5

Automatic Sitemap Search Engine Submission

Allows you to select one or more search engines to submit your sitemap to. Options include Google, Yahoo!, Bing!/Live Search, Ask.com, and Moreover. Default Value: All selected.

Sitemap File Path

XML sitemap data must be written to the filesystem to function. Enter the full path to the directory the files should be written to. Do not include a trailing slash. This directory must be writable by the webserver. It also must be accessible via a web browser. Default Value: <blank>

URLs Per Page

Enter the number of URLs that will be processed per page (and placed in each sitemap file). Note that only one type of content will be written to a file, so it is possible that there will be files that have less URLs than the number specified here.

Enter a value no larger than 50,000. Larger values may cause more performance impact while the sitemap is being generated. Default Value: 30000

This section will show the different search engines installed in vBulletin and allow you to switch between them.

In a new installation, there is only one type of search installed. This is called "DB Search" and is an indexed implementation of Fulltext Search allowing you to search all content types marked as "Searchable" when they

In document Manual vBulletin Version 4.1.4 (Page 44-50)

Threaded / Hybrid Mode Options (showthread) Back to Top

Private Messaging Options

Who's Online Options

Search Engine Friendly Archive

Admin Control Panel Options

External Data Provider

Error Handling & Logging

Paid Subscriptions

Plugin/Hook System

Spam Management