Messages posted by: lloyd_borrett

G'day...

I've been having a go at modifying Advanced Guestbook 2.3.1 to make it look more like the implementation of phpBB on my site, which uses the subSilver style template.

I think it's coming along okay. There are still a few icon graphics to tidy up, plus a few other changes to make, but it's nearly there.

Along the way I've added "Not specified" as an option for the Gender field. I also don't display anything about the Location if the field is empty. A lot of the changes have been around the way entries are displayed by the entry and preview php files. I still have a few things to tidy up there as well. Adding fields for MSN and Yahoo is my next major task though.

Please feel free to check it out at http://www.borrett.id.au/guestbook.

(It's not linked anywhere to my "live" user community just yet, and any of the data from this testing phase will be dumped before I do go properly live.)

Any comments / suggestions / corrections would be most appreciated. When I'm done, I'll try to make my changes available to you all.

Best Regards, Lloyd.

Problem found.

I hadn't found success.php and had been assuming addentry.php still was in control but not including header.php.

But in fact I need to put most of what I have added to header.php into success.php.

It's fun trying to figure out a new system

Many thanks to those of you that visted my site to check out what the problem might have been for me.

Best Regards, Lloyd.

Thanks Jared,

I have just finished implementing the Gender change.

Currently working on dropping out the display of the Location if one wasn't provided.

Also still working on a few style changes.

Eventually I will try and document what I've done and post the mods back into this forum.

Best Regards, Lloyd.

The register gets signed okay. That's not the problem.

But when I do it, the brief "Thank you" page that is displayed after the user submits the entry, comes up without the content of header.php. Just a garbled body section and the footer.php section without teh CSS definitions that are loaded via header.php.

I just thought of what it might be. Maybe because there is a URL redirection set for some 2 seconds, all of the content of haeder.php just doesn't have time to be loaded.

I'll see what happens if I extend it out to 5 or 10 seconds.

So where can I find them?

The only Advanced Guestbook mods I've really found via this forum is how to add in support for MSN and Yahoo.

G'day...

Though I haven't gone live to my users with my installation of Advanced Guestbook, I'm really finding it great. But naturally, in the course of setting up the guestbook, ones mind tends to come up with ideas for additions / changes / enhancements to the system.

So I thought I'd put down a few of my thoughts for the developers, not in any particular order of importance. Please take these suggestions in the spirit in which they are offered.

GENERAL SETTINGS

Add the ability to specify the URL of the web site's home page in the general settings, and display it somewhere on all user pages if specified.

Allow the administrator to set the width of the page/main table in pixels and/or percentage value in the general settings.

Allow the administrator or provide a title for the guestbook and a description in the general settings. That is, replace the use of the "Guestbook" graphic with a heading text title, and make the description a configuration option rather than editing the language files.

EMAIL SETTINGS

Allow the administrator to set the e-mail subject line for the email that is sent to users in the email settings, instead of via the language files.

Allow the text of the message to the user to be substantially longer than is currently permitted.

Allow the administrator to set the name to be used with the sender/return address on email messages sent to the user.

FIELD DEFINITIONS

Add in provision for MSN and Yahoo fields.

Allow the administrator to specify the image files to be used for the user's email, web site, icq, aim, yahoo and msn icons.

Add a "Not Specified" option to the gender field. Some people just don't want to provide personal information.

Add a birth date field, and use it to display the users astrological sign and/or Chinese birth year animal.

CUSTOM QUESTIONS

Provide support for the administrator to add in up to 10 more custom questions from the general setting page. They would all be text box type questions. The administrator provides the question text, and specifies whether it's a required field or not.

Provide support for at least one more large text area questions. Again the administrator provides the question text, and specifies whether it's a required field or not.

By providing even more of these, users could be prompted for things like: Interests, About Me, Favourite Movies, Favourite Music, Favourite Books etc.

This would give administrators far greater flexibility in customising their guestbook, without having to resort to changing code and database structures.

That's it. Just a few ideas from a slighly different perspective. I think most would be pretty easy to implement, and I think most would make Advanced Guestbook an even more pwerful and flexible service. But that's just my humble opinion. It's up to the developers to decide in the end.

Best Regards, Lloyd.

G'day...

I'm in the process of customising the look of the Advanced Guestbook I'm setting up on my web site at www.borrett.id.au/guestbook. I've made changes to the header.php, footer.php and body.php files, which seem to be working just fine on the main pages.

When a user chooses to add an entry, the input page displays fine.

But when the entry is submitted, a thank you page comes up and it is corrupted.

It appears that when the thank you page is displayed, header.php isn't loaded into the page. Just some form of body content, and the contents of footer.php.

Is this a known problem, a bug, or have my changes to header.php somehow stopped it working in this part of addentry.php? Can anyone help?

Best Regards, Lloyd.

G'day...

I've just started to setup my guestbook and change its style. I think I'm getting the jist of it, but I've just hit a snag.

When someone adds an entry, addentry.php displays a thank you page for a few seconds, and then moves on. But on this page display, addentry.php doesn't seem to include the contents of the header.php template file, just the footer.php template file. Thus the page loads crook.

Check it out at http://www.borrett.id.au/guestbook/addentry.php.

I'd also like to add a simple navigation bar at the top and bottom of the guestbook listing with something like:

First | Prev | Post | Next | Last
Viewing page 1 of xxx (Total entries: yyyy)

With appropriate formating and graphics of course. I can handle the HTML, CSS and graphics just fine. But I'm not quite sure about how to do the PHP code required. Is anyone interested in working with me to create such an enhancement?

Best Regards, Lloyd.

G'day there,

I have been using Bravenet's Guestbook facility on my personal web site for some time now. Now that my hosting provider supports PHP and MySQL, I've decided to switch to Advanced Guestbook for more control.

Is there any chance that someone else has done this before?

I need a way to extract the existing data out of the Bravenet Guestbook web pages and place it into the new Advanced Guestbook database? With more than 2000 entries, cut and paste isn't really an option! A programatic solution is required.

Best Regards, Lloyd Borrett.

G'day there,

I would like to be able to set a title for my guestbook. I guess it can be done by replacing the logo image with text and/or another image in the body template file, but it would be nice for it to be a configurable setting.

I'd also like to be able to set the subject for the email messages sent to users that post. Does anyone know how I can do this?

Again, it would be nice to be able to set the subject in a setup option in a later version.

Best Regards, Lloyd.