flgreyhound
05-24-2006, 10:34 AM
I've searched around the net for this and checked other places and didn't find what I was looking for so I thought I would ask here.
I run a forum for a band website. A lot of the threads on the site are quite long. Some of our "better" users have asked me if their is any software that I know of that will allow them to download an entire thread.
I've looked at Website 'grabbers' and they don't seem to be specific enough to just grab one particular thread and not the whole site or a "chunk" of the site. I believe there is a plug-in to Vbulletin for this, but I didn't want to go that route. I'd rather just provide a few select people with the ability to do this and not open it up for all users, so I thought if I could find some software that was "client side" I'd be better off.
Anyone know of anything like this?
Thanks in advance for your assistance!
Susan
05-24-2006, 05:33 PM
:wave: There may be a hack over at vbulletin.org that converts a thread into a pdf file. Until you get it worked out you can remind these select people they can use thread tools-> show printable version or email this page.
flgreyhound
05-24-2006, 06:15 PM
Susan: Thanks for the response. However, that won't really work. First, I don't want to make any mods to the board software for these guys. 2nd, the couple of threads they are asking about are like 50 pages long, so changing to "printable page" and then saving it would have to be done 50 times. Not a good option.
Anyone know of anything else? I've been messing around with "Website Downloaders" and none of them have selective enough filters to work. GRRRRR!
sandman
06-05-2006, 09:15 AM
Have you found anything yet flgreyhound ?
I too searched google and could not turn up anything either.
noppid
06-05-2006, 09:40 AM
Here is a work around. But it puts effort on the member.
In the ACP under vBulletin Options->Thread Display Options (showthread)
Set "User-Settable Maximum Displayed Posts" to 5,10,20,30,40,10000
Make 10000 whatever ya need. That sets up vB to do the task.
The member must do some work to print a thread now if it is multipage.
1) Go to the user control panel
2) Select Edit options
3) Select 10000 from the "Number of Posts to Show Per Page" drop down menu under "Thread Display Options".
4) Save the settings
5) go the the thread, select view printable
6) print it. All posts should be on one page.
Repeat steps 1 to 4 selecting the default of 40 for step 3 to get the thread display back to normal till printing is needed again.
It may be very important to reset the setting in step 3 back to default. If the forum has alot of long threads, the performance could be degraded if everyone does full thread displays all day long. A caveat of putting members in control.
I think a pulgin on the printthread_start hook that forces the 10K posts, or more, per page would be best. You could add a piece of code that forces the 10K only for the printable thread php page. That would fix your problem and take away the possible bad behaviour of members.
noppid
06-05-2006, 10:23 AM
OK, I whipped up a product for this. The product makes the max number of posts to show on printthread.php settable.
Show all posts in vBulletin Print Thread (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=117712)
