[Ted S]

Tips & Tricks Using Template Variables:

While the Helpful Answers section may appear to only add to a small part of your post it can be used much more extensively to change the color of an entire post, to add a special icon or just about anything else you like. Here are list of the variables available for your postbit and postbit_legacy templates.

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Additional variables can also be found in the user's profile page (if enabled).

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Identify the top rated post.

Step 1 - Enable the top rated post feature from your Helpful Answers Settings.
Step 2 - Add the code:

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To your postbit or postbig_legacy template

This can be changed around to add colors, an icon or anything else you want.

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Digg Like Ratings (Format: +6 Yes | No)
Step 1 - Open the template helpful_answers
Step 2 -
Replace the code

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With the new code:

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(Thumb Up)...5 (Thumb Down)...2
Step 1 - Open the template helpful_answers
Step 2 -
Replace the code

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With the new code:

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Highlighting the top rated post:

Step 1 - Set "Get Top Post per Thread" to on in your Helpful Answers settings.
Step 2 - Open your postbit or postbit_legacy template (whichever your forum uses)
Step 3 - Find all instances of class="alt1" and class="alt2"
Step 4 - At each instance add the following code directly after style="

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#CCCCCC is the color to highlight the post with. You may change this to another HTML Color Code

Step 5 - Repeat this for each instance (there may be as many as 5 depending on the template)
For example:

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Utility Scripts

Three utility scripts are attached to this post which you may need to use if you are modifying the addon or doing a special import. Each of these should be run from your admincp folder and deleted after use.

1. ha_userstats.php - This file will resync user votes for the postbit templates.
2 . ha_old.php - This file will resync vote summaries for version 1.5 and below.
3. ha_revote.php - This file will resync vote summaries for versions 1.6 and above

[esperone]

Sounds good but can u upload the mod files?

[Ted S]

Unfortunately there's no way to hide an addon while you're setting it up here. The files have been posted.

[mad@Max]

I get database error:

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Few questions.
This is don't work with ajax?
Why you don't use phrase in postbit?

[forexforum]

Does this mod add into the reputation/infraction points? It would be good if we can choose whether to allow infraction/rep points to be counted. It can be like, either choose one or both of the options. Thanks.

[Ted S]

forexforum,

This mod is intended for rating posts and does not deal with rating users or the reputation system. I'd love to get your thoughts if you feel there is a reason or way to relate the two.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by mad@Max

I get database error:

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Few questions.
This is don't work with ajax?
Why you don't use phrase in postbit?

Lots of questions!

1. Please check to see if you have the table helpfulanswer or anything related to it using phpMyAdmin or a similar tool. If not the installer was unable to create it but you can manually with the query:

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Be sure to add any prefix to the table.

2. This addon now offes ajax. Fun stuff!

3. As far as using phrases for the template look for an upgrade soon to handle that.

[Ted S]

I know I just released the core addon a few hours ago but after doing some additional work AJAX rankings are now supported.

[WoodiE]

Ted,

Just upgraded my forum to version 1.3 - the AJAX rocks! Nicely done.

[Ted S]

Thanks WoodiE. I've really never dived deep into AJAX and I was pretty pleased to have it go so fast although for a mod like this it was a pretty simple change.

Also releasing 1.3.1 which moves the helpful_answers template to phrases for better translation support and easier editing.

[Ted S]

Thanks for the private feedback; I've added a simple page showing the Most Helpful Answers. This can be disabled through the options and the number of results to show can also be configured.

[buileminh]

How does this impact to server load?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by buileminh

How does this impact to server load?

Fair question and as I'm sure it will be asked later, I'll break down the different areas of potential impact:

1. Viewing a thread

No new queries are made with this addon but there is a change that impacts the existing post query. Basically with this addon 3 additional fields are pulled from the select routine, 2 exist in the post table and one is from a join on the helpful answers table. Joins certainly add to the query length but as both keys are indexed it's minimal.

There are also a few template conditionals called; while conditionals don't do much to load on their own they do add up if you use enough.

While testing this script I used microstats to measure impact and did not identify any noticeable impact to the page rendering or CPU usage.

2. Rating a post

When a post is rated the script goes through a series of checks including 2 queries to read out data and two updates to insert the vote record and change the post table. This is fairly minimal and since it's a specific request option (rather than something passive that happens when viewing a page) it should be expected.

3. Viewing the most helpful answers page

When enabled this page will run one looping query with a single join. This is not a major process at all.

4. Admin functions

The admin functions are mostly simple querying one or two times per page. The exception to this is doing a bulk delete on a user with a lot of rating history; in this case there's two queries per rating which can be intensive. As such this function is marked as being intensive.

Summed up

It's easy to get worried about a function like this where data is read on every post but I have done my best to minimize any impact. For example, rather than querying tables to get vote totals for every post the totals are stored with the post record and calling them up adds minimal load. Other steps are also taken to prevent load like using an array with banned members and a forum option to check if the forum is allowed to use the addon rather than querying the database for a standalone piece of data.

To be crystal clear, this addon has been used for over a year on a decent traffic forum that runs, as most of the users would say, fast. While there are new functions with the public release this is not an untested app and if it was impacting performance on my sites I wouldn't be using it let alone releasing it.

I'm confident this addon will have minimal additional performance impact but like every addon it does introduce more queries on some pages, more joins, more conditionals and more code which does mean more load. For larger sites I always encourage basic load testing (even just watching load times with microstats is often enough).

Hope that answers your question.

[The3rdNipple]

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My error after visiting a thread