About Access Masks Related General Help Topics:
Users
User Tools
User Banning
Emailing Users
Access Masks

Access Masks:
Access Masks allow you grant permission to view a forum, or alternatively to deny permission to view a forum, on a per-user basis without making an additional usergroup. This works in conjunction with the Forum Permission system.

Note that inheritance applies here; if you allow a user to view a parent forum, they will also have access to any children forums.

You must enable access masks in your vBulletin options, otherwise changes made here will do nothing.]]> Access Masks For This Forum
Make sure access masks are enabled here or these user-level permissions will not work.]]> Modifying User Forum Access
You can also view a list of the users who are granted access, denied access, or all users with access masks related to a given forum. You can remove all access masks from a forum by clicking the Reset link next to it.

At the top of the page you can use the 'Delete All Access Masks' link to remove every access mask from all forums. (You will be prompted for confirmation, but be careful as this is not undoable!)

The 'Access Masks Quick Editor' allows you to list every access on a page, with Yes, No, and Default buttons for each mask to quickly mass-modify masks.]]> Access Masks Quick Editor Delete All Access Masks About Calendars Related General Help Topics:
Calendars
Calendar Permissions

Calendars:
vBulletin's calendar system is very advanced. In addition to allowing both public and private events, it allows you to have multiple calendars with usergroup permissions for each.

Calendar administration is relatively easy. vBulletin ships with a default calendar, with most options turned on. You can reach this calendar by clicking Calendar Manager under Calendars & Moderators in the left navigation bar. (see Modifying Calendars)

You can also assign moderators to each calendar. Follow the steps above to reach the calendar modification screen, then select 'Add' on the Moderator drop-down across from the appropriate calendar to start the process. (see Adding a Calendar Moderator)

Also on the Modify screen you can edit any existing moderators - simply select their name from the moderator drop-down and press Go. (see Editing a Calendar Moderator)

From the Modify screen, you can select to edit any calendar by choosing Edit from the Controls drop-down menu across from that calendar. (see Editing a Calendar)

After you have modified the default calendar, you may wish to add more. Click Add New Calendar under Calendars & Moderators in the left nav bar to add another calendar. (see Adding a Calendar)

After adding a calendar, you can add custom fields to facilitate easy entry of information that is particular to a given calendar. From the Modify screen, select Edit from the Controls drop-down across from the calendar you wish to add fields to, then select Add Field next to Custom Fields. (see Adding/Editing Custom Calendar Fields)

Permissions are usually the last thing to be given to a calendar, since it obviously must exist before they can be added. Each usergroup has default calendar permissions that are assigned to it when a new calendar is created. You can change these by clicking Calendar Permissions under Calendars and Moderators in the left nav bar. (see Modifying Usergroup Calendar Permissions)

The Holiday Manager allows you to add or remove holidays from the calendar system. Each calendar can be set separately to show or hide holidays; the Holiday Manager is where you determine what holidays show when holidays are turned on for a calendar. (see Modifying Holidays)]]> Adding a New Calendar
An example of usage of this would be if you have a forum for multiple high school sports teams, and each team is a different usergroup. You could have a calendar for each team, and each calendar could be configured to allow only those who are in the usergroup that corresponds to that team to add events while allowing everyone to view it.

The options on this screen are described below.]]> Title This is the title of the calendar, e.g. East High Basketball or No Birthdays. Display Order Custom Fields Adding/Editing Custom Calendar Fields)]]> Email Addresses to Notify When There is a New Event Entering email addresses here will cause an email to be sent to each address when a new event is posted to this calendar. Separate each address with a space or line break. Moderate Events If this is set to Yes, the moderators you assign to this calendar or you as the administrator must view and approve each event before it is displayed on the calendar. Date Range 2000-2006. Due to the way PHP works, the maximum range is 1970 to 2037; entering dates outside this range may result in errors or problems.]]> Default Display This sets the default display of the calendar. You can choose either Monthly, Weekly or Yearly. Start of the Week This sets the default first day of the week for this calendar. If the user is logged in and has selected a different day in their User CP, it will override this setting. Event Title Cutoff Setting this to anything greater than 0 will only show that many characters of the event title on the Monthly View of this calendar. Setting it to 0 will always display the complete title, no matter how long, on the Monthly View. Event Count Birthday Count Show Birthdays on this calendar? Determines whether or not birthdays are shown on this calendar. No matter who has access to this calendar, all users birthdays will be shown if this is set to Yes. Show admin defined holidays on this Calendar Any holidays that you have added to the system, or those that appear on the Holiday Manager by default, will be shown if you set this to Yes. (Due to complex methods of determining the actual date of several holidays, including Easter, Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, and Pentecost, these are built-in, with a separate option to disable them below.) Show predefined holidays on this Calendar
For all other holidays - those that appear in the Holiday Manager - use the "Show admin defined holidays on this calendar" option above to enable or disable their display.]]> Show Saturday/Sunday on this calendar? Show upcoming events from this Calendar on forumhome? Display Calendar Events? under Forums Home Page Options in the vBulletin Options.]]> Allow HTML This allows users to use HTML while posting an event. It is strongly recommended that you DO NOT turn this on as it can severely compromise security and/or severely mess up layout if users insert malformed HTML. Even if you set this to Yes, users still cannot use certain tags, including javascript: and about:. Allow BB Code This will allow users to use BB code in their events. Even if this is set to Yes, users will not be able to use the IMG code unless the below option is also set to Yes. Allow BB IMG Code This allows users to display images inline on the event page. If you set this to No, a link to the image will be displayed instead of showing the actual image. Allow BB VIDEO Code This allows users to display videos inline on the event page. If you set this to No, a link to the video will be displayed instead of showing the actual video. Allow Smilies Setting this to Yes will allow your users to type things such as :) and :( and have them automatically turned into the corresponding image. Adding/Editing Custom Calendar Fields
The options on this page are described below.]]> Title This is the title of the field as shown on the screen where events are entered and the screen where they are displayed. Description This description will appear next to this custom field on event posting pages. You should enter a description of and instructions for filling in this custom field. Options Enter one or more options for the user to select from for this field. Make sure to press Enter after each option. If you do not enter anything in this field, the user will be given an empty box in which to type their entry for this field. Allow user to input their own value for this Custom Field Enabling this option will allow the user to enter their own value for this custom field instead of being forced to choose from the values you have defined. Max length of allowed user input This is the maximum number of characters a user is allowed to enter if they are allowed to enter their own text for this field. You can select any number between 1 and 255, inclusive. Field Required If you select Yes, the user will be required to fill in this field when entering a new event. Adding a Calendar Moderator
The options on this screen are described below.]]> Moderator Username Enter the username of the moderator. This must be accurate or your moderator will not be added. Calendar Select the calendar that this moderator will have permissions on. If you wish for a user to have permissions in multiple calendars, you must add them as a moderator to each calendar separately. Can Edit Events Select whether the moderator may edit events on the calendar. Can Delete Events Select whether the moderator can remove events from the calendar. Can Move Events If this is set to Yes, this moderator will be able to move events from this calendar to other calendars. Can Moderate Events If you have the moderation queue for this calendar turned on, select whether or not you want this moderator to be able to approve and deny events from being added to the calendar. Can View IP Addresses Determines whether the moderator can view the IP addresses of event posters. Delete Custom Field Editing a Calendar
An example of usage of this would be if you have a forum for multiple high school sports teams, and each team is a different usergroup. You could have a calendar for each team, and each calendar could be configured to allow only those who are in the usergroup that corresponds to that team to add events while allowing everyone to view it.

This screen allows you to edit the settings and options of an existing calendar. The options on this screen are described below.]]> Editing a Calendar Moderator
At the top of the screen, clicking the Delete Moderator button will prompt you for confirmation to delete this moderator from this calendar.

The options on this screen are described below.]]> Modifying Calendars
Next to each calendar, in the Controls column, is a drop-down menu with a number of options. These are:
Edit Calendar: This will link you to the Edit Calendar page to change your calendar's settings. You can also edit a calendar by clicking on its title. (see Editing Calendars)
View Calendar: This will take you to view your calendar as your users see it.
Remove Calendar: After confirming your choice, this will remove the selected calendar and all of its' custom profile fields and moderator list.
Edit Permissions: This allows you to set per-calendar, per-usergroup permissions for various functions of the calendar. (see Modifying Calendar Permissions)

Next to the options are the display order of your calendars. The display order affects the order in which the calendars are displayed in the "Jump To" menu in the frontend, and on this screen in the backend. Setting a display order to 0 will prevent that calendar from showing in the Jump To menu, but a user will still be able to access it by typing in the direct URL to it. If you modify the display orders, be sure to click Update Display Order at the bottom of the screen to save the changes.

On the extreme right are a list of each calendar's moderators. You can modify the moderator by selecting their name, or add a new moderator by selecting "Add New Moderator". (see Editing Calendar Moderators and Adding Calendar Moderators)

At the bottom of the screen is a link to add a new calendar.]]> Modifying Holidays
Note that due to the complex methods used in determining the actual dates each year, several holidays are built-in and you cannot edit or remove them. (They can be disabled through a separate option on the Add / Edit Calendar screen.) These holidays include Easter, Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, and Pentecost.]]> Delete Calendar Delete Holiday Delete Moderator Adding/Updating Holidays Description The holiday description is displayed on the View Event screen. Short Name This is a short name for the event and is only used internally. It may only contain letters, numerals and the underscore character and must start with a letter. Title The title of the holiday is shown on the Weekly and Monthly views of the calendar as well as at the top of the View Event screen. Description The description of the holiday accepts BB code as well as smilies. You can choose to not convert smilies if you wish. This field will not convert HTML. Recurring Option You can set this holiday to recur once every year on a certain date, or a particular day in a particular month (i.e. the first Sunday in June). Convert smilies? If this is set to Yes, typing smilies in the description (just as when typing a post) will be converted to their graphical equivalents. About User Infractions
The first step in the system is the creation of Infraction Levels. These levels will vary based on the content of the forum and the scale of the system that you wish to create. You can create just a few levels or can get very detailed with many levels covering a myriad of forum infractions.

When creating levels, keep in mind a point total at which you wish to start penalizing users by taking away permissions. If you envision taking away a certain permission when a user accumulates 10 infraction points then you need to consider how many points will be given for each infraction and how quickly the user can get to 10 points.

Each infraction level has an expiration time. When the infraction expires, the associated points are removed from the user's point total and the user's infraction groups are recalculated.

Infraction levels can also be allowed to be given as warnings. A warning does not add any infraction points to the user's point total. Warnings serve as a method to remind user's of your forum's rules and encourage them to be followed without awarding infraction points. Moderators have the ability to give an infraction or a warning for those levels that have the warning ability enabled.

The second step in the system is to create Infraction Groups that penalize users in the manner that you wish.

Normal permissions work by combining all of a user's usergroup permissions and granting a permission for any that have a yes. Infraction group permissions work in the reverse as all infraction group permissions are combined and any permission with a No is taken from the user. You should set up your infraction usergroups (in the Usergroup Manager) by setting all permissions to Yes and then setting those that you wish to take away to No.

A user can have multiple infraction groups as they will gain all groups that apply to their primary usergroupid that have a point total less than or equal to their accumulated points.]]> Amount Method Primary Usergroup Move User to Usergroup The usergroup to move the user to during the ban. Lift Ban After The amount of time to ban the user for. Also allows you to set a permanent ban. Adding/Editing Infraction Groups -- All Usergroups --. Every infraction group that pertains to a user's primary usergroup will be added to a user's infraction groups when the user's infraction points are greater than or equal to the infraction group's points.]]> Override Display Points Primary Usergroup -- All Usergroups-- will apply this infraction group to all users. Otherwise this infraction group will be added to a user's infraction groups when their Primary Usergroup matches this one and the user accumulates infraction points greater than or equal to the points given for this group.]]> Override with Permissions from Usergroup No then the user will lose that permission. No permissions override Yes permissions.]]> Title Expires Points This is the number of points that are awarded for an infraction. Every infraction level must award at least 1 point. A users combined point score is used to determine which infraction groups to place him or her into. Warning Extend User Infractions From this screen you can view and modify your current infraction levels and infraction groups. About Control Panel Log Related General Help Topics:
Statistics
Control Panel Log
Moderator Log
Scheduled Task Log

Control Panel Log:
The Administrator's Log allows you to keep tabs on your co-admins, or have a record of IP address(es) and activity in case of a break-in. Each time an action is performed in the Administrator's Control Panel, it is logged. The information stored includes the username, their IP address, the script involved, the script section in use, and additional information which varies depending on the action being performed.

You can restrict other administrators from viewing and/or pruning the Administrator's Log by modifying your includes/config.php file. (see Restricting Access to the Admin Log)]]> Selecting Admin Log Viewing Options
Under Viewing, you have four options to limit your log search. These are explained below.

Once you have made your selection, press View Logs.

If you wish to prune your log, the pruning selector is very similar. The options are also described below.

Keep in mind that these options are cumulative. If you select JoeBlow for option #2 and enter 40 for option #3, you will remove all entries by JoeBlow that are more than 40 days old.]]> End Date You can filter log entries that were created within a time period. Here you can select the end of that time period. Start Date You can filter log entries that were created within a time period. Here you can select the start of that time period. Viewing: Log Entries to Display Per Page This limits how many entries are shown on each page. If you have a slower connection it is recommended you select a lower number. Viewing: Show only access to this script Allows you to only view accesses to a particular script, such as announcement.php or forum.php. Viewing: Show only logs generated by If you wish to only view logs that were generated by the actions of one person, select their username here. Viewing: Order log entries by You can order the entries by date created, script accessed, or the user who performed the action. Pruning: Remove entries relating script You can remove entries based on which script was being used at the time the entry was made, such as forum.php or template.php. Pruning: Remove entries logged by user This allows you to delete entries from one particular admin. Pruning: Remove entries older than days You can easily remove old logs using this option. Logs found that are older than this date will be removed. Prune Control Panel Log Reasons for an IP address not resolving There are many reasons why your IP address might not have been able to be resolved. These include a server being down, not allowing reverse DNS, or your server timing out while waiting for a response. Restricting access to the Admin Log
Access control to the admin log is not controlled through the control panel for security reasons.
Access to the admin log is controlled with two variables which are located in includes/config.php file.

Both variables can take either a single number, or a list of numbers separated by commas, each representing userids which have access to the admin log.

If you would like to change the current access permissions to the adminlog, you may do so by opening includes/config.php in a text editor and modifying the following variables

 $config['SpecialUsers']['canviewadminlog'] = '1,10';
 $config['SpecialUsers']['canpruneadminlog'] = '1';
This will restrict viewing access to this script to only you (usually userid 1) and the member with userid 10. Access to prune entries from the log would be restricted to you (usually userid 1).

If the $config['SpecialUsers']['canviewadminlog'] line is omitted from config.php, or if the value is blank ($config['SpecialUsers']['canviewadminlog'] = '';), all administrators will have access to view the admin log.
Conversely, if the $config['SpecialUsers']['canpruneadminlog'] line is omitted or blank, nobody will be granted pruning permission.
]]> Viewing the Admin Log
Log ID: This is simply an internal ID used for cataloging.

Username: This is the person who performed the action.

Date: This is the date and time the action was performed.

Script: This is the script involved. Most scripts' names are self-explanatory. For example, viewing the admin log would generate a log item with the script "adminlog.php".

Action: This is the action that the user performed. This may not always be easily understood, as it is the internal action name, not necessarily a verbose description of the action.

Extra Info: For some actions, this records extra bits, such as what userid was being modified, or which template was being edited.

IP Address: This is the IP address that was logged while the user was performing the action. Clicking on the address will attempt to resolve the IP address; that is, put it into an actual machine name and/or domain name. Sometimes this is not possible to do; see Reasons for an IP address not resolving.

At the bottom of the page, if there are more entries than could be displayed on one screen, you will find links to view the first page, previous page, next page, and last page. These buttons appear as necessary. For example if you are on the first page, the First Page and Previous Page buttons will not appear.

To return to the main screen, choose Restart from the bottom of any page.

You can restrict access to this script, or just to the pruning function or just to the viewing function. See Restricting Access to Admin Log.]]> About Administrator Permissions Related General Help Topics:
Usergroups
Forum Permissions
Administrator Permissions

Administrator Permissions:
vBulletin allows you to restrict administrator access to the Admin CP on a per-admin basis. In this way you can create co-administrators without giving them total access to mess up your forums.

Your userid # must be given access in the config.php file in order for you to access this page. Please see this help topic for instructions.]]> Editing Administrator Permissions On this screen you see the various permissions you can grant or deny for the user you chose to edit. They are described below. Can Administer Moderator Log
The ability to prune the moderator logs is still limited by the "users with admin log pruning permissions" setting in includes/config.php.]]> Dismissed vBulletin.com News Items
To reset this, simply remove all contents from this field.]]> Can Administer Settings This setting determines whether an admin will be able to access the Options area of the Admin CP. Can Administer Styles Can Administer Languages Can Administer Forums Can Administer Threads Can Administer Calendars Can Administer Users This setting determines whether an admin will be able to access the Users, Usergroups, User Infractions, User Titles, User Ranks, User Reputations,User Profile Fields and Paid Subscriptions areas of the Admin CP. Can Administer FAQs This setting determines whether an admin will be able to access the FAQ area of the Admin CP. Can Administer User Permissions This setting determines whether an admin will be able to access the Usergroup/Forum Permissions and Access Masks areas of the Admin CP. Can Administer Avatars/Icons/Smilies This setting determines whether an admin will be able to access the Avatars, Post Icons, and Smilies areas of the Admin CP. Can Administer BB Codes Can Administer Cron This setting determines whether an admin will be able to access the Scheduled Tasks area of the Admin CP. Can Run Maintenance Tools
Enabling this allows an admin to potentially run code directly on your server, please ensure you trust the admin prior to enabling this permission.]]> Can Administer Plugins
Enabling this allows an admin to run code directly on your server, please ensure you trust the admin prior to enabling this permission.]]> Can Administer Notices This setting determines whether an admin will be able to access the Notices section of the Admin Control Panel. Control Panel Style Choice Here you can set the style this admin sees in the Admin CP. (They can override this setting on the login screen - this is merely their default.) Administrator Permissions Manager
From here you can link to the Admin Log for a particular user by clicking View Administrator Log, or edit their area permissions by clicking Edit Permissions. Click their username to edit the user's profile.]]> About User Reputations User Reputations:
vBulletin's user reputation system provides a way of rating users based on the quality of their posts. Users on your forums can add or subtract reputation points from other users by clicking the reputation link in their posts. You can set restrictions on the giving and taking away of reputation points by users in your vBulletin options.

User reputations allow the users in your community to tell vBulletin which users are quality and which users are not. And in response to user feedback, vBulletin has the ability to label and reward users for the quality of their posts, as is indicated by their reputation.

You can label quality users by defining reputation levels in the User Reputation Manager. User reputation levels work very similar to user titles and user ranks in that they are an indicator of status that are displayed next to names in posts.

You can reward quality users by creating promotions on the Promotions page. Promotions are used to change a user's group memberships when they meet certain conditions, one of which can be their reputation level. Because forum permissions can be controlled with group memberships, a user's reputation in conjunction with promotions can be used to control a user's forum permissions. And so by using a combination of user reputations, promotions, and group permissions, you can enable your community to reward and punish good and bad posters on your forums.]]> Adding a Reputation level This allows you to add a new reputation level. Level Description This is what is displayed for the user when their reputation points are above the amount entered as the minimum. Minimum amount of reputation points required for this level Delete Reputation Click View Reputation Comments This is a list of reputations clicks that match your search criteria. You can edit or delete specific clicks by selecting those links to the right of each reputation click. Editing a Reputation Level This allows you to edit an existing reputation level. Edit Reputation Rebuild User Reputation.]]> Comment This is the reason this reputation click was given. Users may be able to view this reason depending on their group permissions. Reputation This is the number of reputation points granted by this reputation click. It can be positive or negative. View Reputation Comments This page allows you to search for reputation comments left by / for specific users over the specified date range. Reputation Comments Left For To limit the comments left for a specific user, enter the username here. Leave this field empty to receive comments left for every user. Reputation Comments Left By To limit the comments left by a specific user, enter the username here. Leave this field empty to receive comments left by every user. Start Date Select a start date for this report. Select a month, day, and year. The selected statistic must be no older than this date for it to be included in the report. End Date Modifying Reputation Levels
From this screen you can also choose to edit or remove any single level. Click the Edit link to modify the Level description (see Editing a Reputation Level) or click Remove to delete a level. If you remove a level or modify the minimum reputation needed to be at a level, all users will be updated to reflect their new level if necessary.]]> Delete Reputation About Announcements Announcements:
vBulletin's announcement system allows you to communicate important information to your users. While there are other methods for doing this (such as Sticky threads), announcements have several distinct advantages: you can use HTML without enabling it in a forum (which is very dangerous), you can set the announcement to not appear until sometime in the future and automatically disappear on a certain date, and you can add an announcement to show up in all forums.

If you have multiple announcements in a forum, global announcements included, they will all be displayed in one thread, which can be accessed by clicking on the title of the most recent announcement on forumdisplay.

Announcements are never automatically removed. When the End Date set for an announcement is reached, it will disappear from end-user view. It can be removed or reactivated from the Admin CP at any time. To reactivate an expired announcement, simply change the End Date to some date in the future.

To add an announcement, click Add New Announcement under Announcements in the left navigation bar, or click New across from the forum it should apply to. (see Adding Announcements)

Once you have one or more announcements, you can view a list of them and the forums they belong to. Click Announcement Manager under Announcements in the left navigation bar to see a list of your forums and announcements. From here you can create a new global or forum-specific announcement, or modify or remove an existing one. (see Modifying Announcements)

From here, click Edit to modify the properties or text of an announcement, or Delete to remove it. (see Editing Announcements)]]> Adding Announcements Options on this page are described below. Show Your Signature When this option is set to yes, your signature will be shown in your announcement. Forum Title This is what will show on the forum listing screen as the name of the announcement. Start Date This determines how long the announcement is shown. If this date is in the future, the announcement will be hidden until this date arrives. End Date not be deleted after the end date; rather it will simply be hidden from the end-user. You will still be able to view, edit, and/or reactivate the announcement from the Admin CP or Mod CP after the End Date.]]> Text This will accept HTML, BB code, and/or Smilies, depending on how you set the following options. Allow BB Code This lets you use the standard BB code in your announcement, as if you were writing a post on your forum. Allow Smilies This will translate text such as :) and :( into the actual smilie images, again as if you were writing a post. Allow HTML This lets you use standard HTML in your announcement. Remember to close all tags or it could mess up the layout of your announcement page when viewed by the end-user! Automatically parse links in text Editing Announcements Options on this page are described below. Reset Views Counter to Zero Modifying Announcements
At the top are global announcements; these show in all forums. There is a button labeled New that you can click to add a new global announcement. (If you don't currently have any global announcements, this section will not show. In this case, to add a new global announcement, click Add New Announcement in the navigation bar.)

Below that you will find a list of every forum, along with lists of announcements in each forum. Remember that just because an announcement is listed here does not mean it is viewable by the end-user. Announcements are not automatically deleted after their end date - you must manually remove them (by clicking the Delete link next to the announcement), or you can reactivate them (by clicking the Edit link next to the announcement and choosing a new end date that is after today's date).
You can view the announcements as your users see them by clicking on a forum name.

To create a new announcement in a specific forum, click the New button across from that forum name.]]> Delete Announcement About Attachments Related General Help Topics:
Attachments
Moderating Content

Attachments:
vBulletin supports file uploads to posts, called post attachments. Post attachments are useful in attaching any kind of file that relates to a post including images, text files, pdfs, zips, and any other file type you allow to be attached to posts.

vBulletin provides you with two options for storing post attachments: 1) you can store them in the database or 2) you can store them in the file system on your web server. Both methods have advantages and disadvantages. The database is more efficient with storage space and is easier to backup than individual files. However, storing attachments in the database is also an extra burden on the database when users download attachments. Other considerations include how you want to restrict access to attachments, whether you want to use vBulletin's permission system or directory permissions like htaccess.

vBulletin's attachment system allows you to specify maximum file-sizes for each type of file you allow to be attached. Some file types tend to belong to larger files (videos and images versus text for example) and this ability allows you to take that into consideration.

On the topic of maximum file-sizes, vBulletin allows you to limit the total size of all of a user's attachments at the group level (see the Usergroup Manager). This is useful in preventing any one user from taking up too much storage with their attachments.

Another nice feature of vBulletin's attachment system is its support for thumbnails. When a user posts an image attachment you can configure vBulletin to generate a miniature version of the image (called a thumbnail) that is linked to the larger version of the image. This is useful in preventing large inline image attachments from stretching your forum layout. You can configure thumbnails and many other attachment options in your vBulletin options. If you are using the ImageMagick library, then you may be able to create thumbnails from additional image types: BMP, TIF, PSD, and PDF. You should have the latest versions of ImageMagick and Ghostscript installed for creating thumbnails from PDF files. Thumbnailing large PDF files may still cause problems so use this option with caution.

Like other forum permissions in vBulletin, the ability of a user to post attachments can be set at the group level (see the Usergroup Manager), and at the group level for a specific forum (see Forum Permissions).]]> Delete Attachment Editing an Attachment You can edit or replace an existing attachment on this screen. The options are described below. Upload Select an attachment from your computer. The current attachment will be replaced with the selected file. The current attachmentid will be retained. Remote Upload
http://images.vbulletin.com/images_vb3/misc/vbulletin3_logo_white.gif]]> Filename You can change the filename of an existing attachment here. Views This is the number of times that the attachment has been viewed (or downloaded). Visible Moderate.]]> Searching for Specific Attachments Results of Searching Attachments)

At the top are several links to common searches. These are:
Largest Attachments: This searches attachments, ordering them by size, largest first.

Most Popular Attachments: This sorts a search of attachments by number of downloads, most downloads first.

Newest Attachments: This searches attachments and sorts them by date, newest first.

Oldest Attachments: Selecting this shows all attachments, sorted by date with oldest first.


Attachment Pruning finds attachments older than a certain date, with 30 days being the default. Enter the desired age and press View Results.

Under Advanced Attachment Search, you can use specific criteria to do a custom search. The criteria entry boxes are described below.]]> Pruning: Find All Attachments Older Than X Days You can search for attachments older than X days and on the following screen quickly prune them. Filename This is a case-insensitive search of the filenames to see if the string you enter is contained in it. This includes extensions (e.g. .jpg or .txt). Attached By If you wish to limit the search to attachments posted by one user, enter their username here. Attached Before Enter a date that attachments must have been attached before. The format is YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. For example, 2002-04-30 12:02:01. Use a 24 hour clock; that is, convert 01:02:02 PM into 13:02:02. Attached After You can also set a starting date, where the attachment must have been attached after this date. The format is YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. For example, 2002-04-30 12:02:01. Use a 24 hour clock; that is, convert 01:02:02 PM into 13:02:02. Note if you use both Attached Before and Attached After, Attached After must be a date before Attached Before or there will be no search period! More Than X Downloads Finds attachments that have had more than X downloads, X being the number you specify. Less Than X Downloads Finds attachments that have had less than X downloads, X being the number you specify. Note if you use both More Than and Less Than X Downloads, the More Than number must be less than the Less Than number or there will be no search range! File-size Greater Than not KiloBytes.]]> File-size Less Than not KiloBytes! Note that if you are using both File-size Greater Than and File-size Less Than, File-size Greater Than must be less than File-size Less Than or there will be no range to search!]]> Attachment Is Visible No will find only those attachments.]]> Order By You can order your search results by several options, either ascending or descending. They are Attached By, Downloads, Filename, File-size, Time Attached, Visible. This will not affect your search, only how the results are displayed. Attachments to Show Per Page Determines how many results are shown on each page after you click Find Attachments. It is recommended you do not set this too high for performance reasons. Delete Attachments Delete Attachment Type Results of Searching Attachments Searching for Specific Attachments)

From this screen, you are shown the following:
Filename: This is the filename of the attachment. Clicking on the filename will show you the attachment itself if it is an image, or prompt you to download the file if it is another type of attachment.

User Name: This is the user that posted the attachment. Clicking their name will take you to edit their profile.

Date: This is the date the attachment was posted. Next to the date is a link to view the post that the attachment belongs to.

Size: This is the size, in KB (KiloBytes), of the attachment.

Downloads: This is how many times the attachment has been downloaded.

At the extreme left is a column of checkboxes. You can check them individually or click the box in the header row to select them all. Clicking "Delete Checked Attachments" will remove the selected attachments.

At the extreme right is a link to delete an attachment.]]> Viewing Attachment Statistics
From top to bottom: Statistics:
Total Attachments: This is the total number of attachments on your forum.

Disk Space Used: This is how much disk space is consumed by all attachments combined.

Storage Type: Where the attachments are being stored, either in the database or the file system, and if they are in the file system, the actual path to them.

Average Attachment File-size: This is the average size of an attachment, determined by dividing the number of attachments into the total disk space used.

Under Five Most Popular Attachments, the columns are:
Rank: The rank of the attachment.

Filename: The filename of the attachment. Clicking on it will show you the attachment, if it is an image, or prompt you to download it if it is another file type.

User Name: This is who posted the attachment. Clicking on the username will bring up the edit user page for that individual.

Downloads: This is how many times the attachment has been downloaded by users.

To the left are several other options.
View Post shows you the post that the attachment was attached to.

Delete: Choose this to remove the attachment.

The Five Largest Attachments is nearly identical, save for having a Size column instead of a Downloads column. The Size column indicates the actual byte size of the attachment, in KB (KiloBytes).

Five Users Whose Attachments Take Up The Most Space shows you at a glance who is attachment-happy. For each user in the top five (if there are not five users who have made attachments, only those who have will be shown) their name, number of attachments, and the total size of those attachments is displayed. Clicking View Attachments at the end of each row will find all of the attachments that the user has posted. (see Searching Attachments)]]> Switching Attachments from the Database to the File System and vice-versa Attachments will not be removed from the database or filesystem and your storage type setting will not be changed until the end of the process.
If the process aborts before the end, you will need to free up space or prune attachments before trying again.

If you are moving attachments into the file system, it is recommended that you do *not* place the folder under your web root (usually named public_html or www or www_root) because people will be able to bypass vBulletin's permission system and download them. Also, you will need to make the folder writeable by PHP. The easiest way to do this is CHMOD it 777 (consult your FTP, Telnet, or SSH documentation for more info on how to do this). We do not recommended that you put a folder that is CHMODed 777 under your web root - another good reason to have it located above the document root.

If you are moving attachments from the file system into the database, you must have enough storage space on the drive and/or partition where your database is located.]]> Attachment File Path Modify Attachment Types On this screen you can see all of the types of attachments that you currently allow to be uploaded. From here you can Edit or Delete any type by clicking the appropriate link, or click Add New Type to add another type of attachment. Modifying An Attachment Type On this screen you can set various options regarding the file type you are editing. Extension vb.net has an extension of net.]]> Max File-Size You can set the maximum size of uploaded files per type. This number is in bytes. Max Height If this type is an image, this sets the maximum height that the image may be, otherwise it is ignored. Max Width If this type is an image, this sets the maximum width that the image may be, otherwise it is ignored. <![CDATA[MIME Type & Headers]]>
The correct format for this field is
Content-type: type/subtype
For example, for JPEG images:
Content-type: image/jpeg

You can find a list of types and subtypes here.]]> Enabled If this is set to Yes, users will be allowed to upload files of this type. Otherwise they will not be, but this type will still be listed in your Admin CP. Open Attachment in New Window The setting dictates how the attachment is displayed to the user. It is common to have image attachments open in a new browser window/tab while you would want compressed files to open in the same window so that the application associated with the file type opens the file directly. Opening a new window for this type of file will result in a blank window being opened for some browsers. Maximum Height If this type is an image, this sets the maximum height that the image may be, otherwise it is ignored. Max File-size You can set the maximum size of uploaded files per type. This number is in bytes. Can use this extension Maximum Width If this type is an image, this sets the maximum width that the image may be, otherwise it is ignored. About User Picture Storage Related General Help Topics:
Avatars, Post Icons, and Smilies
User Picture Storage

User Picture Storage:
vBulletin supports two storage types for avatars and profile pictures : database or file system.

Both methods have advantages and disadvantages. The database is easier to backup than individual files. However, storing user pictures in the database is also an extra burden on the database when images are loaded on forum pages. Other considerations include how you want to protect access to the images, whether you want to use vBulletin's permission system or directory permissions like htaccess.]]> Switching User Pictures from the Database to the File-System and Vice-Versa
If you are moving images into the file system, you will need to create a directory within your forums folder (/images/customavatars is a good one) for their storage. Unlike when you are storing attachments in the file system, this folder must be accessible from the web (usually CHMOD 777).

If you are moving images from the file system into the database, you must have enough storage space on the drive and/or partition where your database is located.]]> Avatar File Path
A setting of
./customavatars
would mean a directory called customavatars inside your forums root directory.]]> URL to Avatars
./customavatars

for the Avatar File Path option, you would set this option to
customavatars]]> Profile Picture Path
A setting of
./customprofilepics
would mean a directory called customprofilepics inside your forums root directory.]]> URL to Profile Pictures
./customprofilepics

for the Profile Picture File Path option, you would set this option to
customprofilepics]]> Signature Picture Path
A setting of
./signaturepics
would mean a directory called signaturepics inside your forums root directory.]]> URL to Signature Pictures
./signaturepics

for the Profile Picture File Path option, you would set this option to
signaturepics]]> About User Banning Related General Help Topics:
Users
User Tools
User Banning
Emailing Users
Access Masks

User Banning:
The banning pages in the Users tab of the Admin CP allow you to ban users and view users which are currently banned.

You can ban users at the Ban User page of the Moderator Control Panel. You are given a choice of ban length and banned usergroup to which you want to move the user. If you want a usergroup to be used for banning then you need to enable the "This Usergroup is a 'Banned' Group" option for that group in the Usergroup Manager; all usergroups with this option enabled will show up as selectable banned usergroups on the Ban User page.

Additionally, you can view a list of currently banned users on the View Banned Users page of the Moderator Control Panel. This page shows you all current temporary and permanent bans and gives you the option to lift any bans you choose.]]> Ban User Here you can ban a user by username. Username Enter the username of the user you want to ban. Move User to Usergroup Select your banned user group. Lift Ban After... Select the length of the ban. Reason to show the user This text will be shown to banned users when they login or try to access a forum page. Banned Users About BB Code BB Code:
BB code is a special coding system, similar to HTML, where you type in tags around your text and the text is formatted. For example, typing:

[b]My Text[/b]

...would produce:

My Text

It is a safe and easy way to allow your users to format their posts. It does not have the security risks of allowing HTML, and users cannot mess up page layouts by accidentally leaving a tag open. You as the admin control what tags are available to your users.]]> Adding a new BB code
Explanations of the options on this screen are listed below.]]> BB Code Title BB code user explanation screen, along with all other below options except "Use Option".

]]> BB Code Tag eg. For the bold tag, you type [b] - the BB code tag for this is simply b without the brackets.

]]> BB Code Replacement eg. [b]My Text[/b] turns into My Text. To create that tag, enter
<b>{param}</b>
If you were to create a tag like the URL tag, you would use {option}. The URL tag can be used like this:
[url]http://www.example.com[/url]
which turns into
http://www.example.com/
It can alternatively be used like this:
[url=http://www.example.com/]My Site[/url]
which would turn into this:
My Site
This is actually two different tags with the same code to make it easy on the end-user.
To create the first tag, you would enter
<a href="{param}">{param}</a>
To create the second, you would enter
<a href="{option}">{param}</a>
If you are using options, option is what is entered within the tag, e.g. www.example.com in the following:
[url=www.example.com]
{param} is what is entered between tags, e.g. My Site in the following:
[url=www.example.com]My Site[/url]
You will always use '{param}', but you will only use '{option}' when "Use Option?" is "yes" and you need a second bit of input from the user as in the above example.]]> BB Code Example e.g. to demonstrate the use of the [b] tag, you would enter [b]Some Text[/b].]]> BB Code Explanation This is a piece of text to describe the BB code tag. This can include HTML tags if you wish. Use {option} Button Image (Optional) If you would like this BB code to appear as a clickable button on the message editor toolbar, enter the URL of an image 16 x 16 pixels in size that will act as the button to insert this BB code. Remove Tag if Empty Disable BB Code Use Within This BB Code
For example
[tag][b]some text here[/b][/tag]
Will show as
[b]some text here[/b]
If set, and
some text here
If not set]]> Disable Smilies Within This BB Code Setting this option will make any smilies within this tag show as plain text. Disable Word Wrapping Within This BB Code Setting this option will disable word wrapping for text within these tags Editing BB Codes This screen allows you to modify the properties of an existing BB code. The options are explained below. Viewing/Removing BB Codes
Across, the columns are:
Title: The title of the BB code.
BB Code: The actual code that is used for the BB code.
HTML: The BB code example parsed into HTML.
Replacement: The results of displaying the HTML.
Button Image: If you specified an image for this to appear on the toolbar it will be displayed here.
Controls: Edit or Delete BB codes from here.]]> Testing Your BB Codes Delete BB Code Active Use this option as a toggle to temporarily disable links without actually deleting them from the database. An inactive link will not appear on thread pages at all until it is made active again by an administrator. Display Order The number entered here will dictate the placement of this bookmarking link in relation to other bookmarking links on the page. A link with a higher display order such as 20 will be displayed after a link with a display order of 10. Icon An icon should be 16 pixels by 16 pixels and placed within the miscellaneous images directory, by default this is images/misc. The icon will be used at the bottom of each thread page and used as a link to the social bookmarking site. Title Use this field to enter the name of the social bookmarking site in question, in a form that will be identifiable to your vistors. URL
  • {TITLE} - Title of the current page.
  • {URL} - URL of the current page.
]]> Social Bookmarking Manager
There are a number of third-party services offering social bookmarking facilities. vBulletin provides the ability to link directly to an "add page" for multiple services and pre-populate some of the data.

Links to the social bookmarking services will be shown when viewing a thread, below the posts. These links will only be shown in threads that guests have permissions to view.]]> About Calendar Permissions Related General Help Topics:
Calendars
Calendar Permissions

Calendar Permissions:
By default, users will have the permissions for their usergroup (see the Usergroup Manager) for each calendar. However, you might not want users of a particular usergroup to have access to every calendar. In that case, vBulletin allows you to create custom permissions for a specific calendar for a specific usergroup. This is useful in restricting certain calendars for certain usergroups.]]> Editing Calendar Permissions On this screen you set up calendar permissions for the specific calendar and usergroup. Options are described below. Use Usergroup Default/Custom Settings If you select Use Usergroup Default, the group will be reverted to default permissions for this calendar. If you select any custom permissions and have not set this to Use Custom Settings you will be warned. If you ignore the warning and set custom permissions without setting this to Use Custom Settings, the settings will not be saved. Can View Calendar Can Post Calendar Events
Please note, the way events work has been changed from vBulletin 2.2.x. The idea of "public" and "private" events has been changed to a single event type; therefore, there is now only one option regarding posting events. Whether or not events are "public" is determined by the setting Can View Others' Events, below. (see Can View Others' Events)]]> Can Edit Own Events If this is set to No, users in this usergroup will not be able to edit events they have posted on this calendar. This is overridden when a user in this usergroup is a moderator of this calendar and is allowed to edit events according to his moderator permissions. Can Delete Own Events If this is set to No, users from this usergroup will not be allowed to remove events they posted on this calendar. This is overridden if the user is also a moderator of this calendar and has his moderator permissions set to allow him to remove events. <![CDATA[Can View Others' Events]]>
Please note, the way events work has been changed from vBulletin 2.2.x. The idea of "public" and "private" events has been changed to a single event type; therefore, there is now only one option regarding posting events. Whether or not events are "public" is determined by this setting. If it is set to Yes, events on this calendar would be "public". Otherwise they would be "private". (see Can Post Calendar Events)]]> Posted Events are Not Moderated Modifying Calendar Permissions From here you can set custom permissions for any usergroup for a specific calendar. For each calendar you have, each usergroup is listed. If the name of the group is red, they already have custom permissions set. If the name is white, they are using default permissions. To change permissions, click Edit next to the group name you wish to change, under the calendar you wish it to apply to. About Scheduled Tasks Related General Help Topics:
Scheduled Tasks
Scheduled Tasks Log

Scheduled Tasks:
vBulletin's scheduled tasks system is used to perform regularly needed tasks at certain time intervals. Scheduled tasks are basically vBulletin cron jobs.

One benefit of the scheduled tasks system is that common vBulletin tasks, like updating view counters and sending emails, can be queued up and performed all at once which reduces the average server load. This can make a huge difference on high traffic forums. You can choose to schedule common vBulletin tasks in your vBulletin options.]]> Adding a Scheduled Task On this screen you add a new scheduled task. Active If this is set to No, the script will no longer be executed automatically though it will still be possible to use the Run Now button if required. Description This is the description of the scheduled task. It is only used for your information in the control panel, and can be anything you wish. Varname This is a short name for the task and is only used internally. It may only contain letters, numerals and the underscore character and must start with a letter. Log Phrase The log phrase allows you to phrase the entries that appear in the admin log. You need to call log_cron_action() with a 1 for the third parameter to invoke the phrase in the log viewer. Otherwise the value saved in the description field will be displayed as is. You may also save the description field in serialized form if you have more than one replacement in your phrase. Title This is the title of the scheduled task. It is only used for your information in the control panel, and can be anything you wish. Day of the Week This is the day of the week the task should run on. Set this to * to have it not apply, or for it to run every day (if Day of the Month is set to * below). Otherwise select a specific day. Note that this will override the day of the month option, unless this is set to *. Day of the Month Set this to the specific day of the month the task should run. This is overridden by the Day of the Week setting above. Set this to * to have it not apply. Hour This is the hour of the day the task should run. Set it to * to have it run every hour. Minute This is the minute of the hour the task should run. Set it to * to have it run every minute (not really recommended!). Log Actions If this is set to Yes, every time the scheduled task runs, a log will be made indicating that the task was run, and in certain cases, additional information will be provided (e.g. for the Birthday Email task, the usernames who were sent birthday wishes will be noted). Filename ./includes/cron/
Note the . at the beginning - this indicates that the following is an absolute path from the current directory, not from the root of the server (as /includes/cron would indicate). You could also write the above as
includes/cron
The file to be run should not echo anything or send output to screen.]]> Editing Scheduled Tasks On this screen you edit an existing scheduled task. Product This controls what product this task is associated with. You do not need to worry about this option unless you are planning on making an addon for vBulletin to be released. Scheduled Tasks
The columns across the top are:
m: (Minute) This is the minute that a task runs. If this is an asterisk it runs every minute.
h: (Hour) This is the hour of the day that a task runs. If this is an asterisk it runs every hour.
D: (Date) This is the day of the month (numerically) that a task runs. If this is an asterisk it runs every day.
M: (Month) This is the month of the year that a task runs. If this is an asterisk it runs every month.
DoW: (Day of Week) This is the day of the week that a task runs. If this is an asterisk, it defers to the Day setting.
Title: This is the title of the task.
Next Time: This is the next time the task is scheduled to run. You can run it immediately using the Run Now button at the far right.
Controls: This column contains a drop-down with Edit and Delete controls, and a Run Now button to run the task immediately.

At the bottom of the screen you can use the Add New Scheduled Task button to add a task.]]> Delete Scheduled Task About Scheduled Task Log Related General Help Topics:
Statistics
Control Panel Log
Moderator Log
Scheduled Task Log

Scheduled Task Log:
The scheduled task log contains log entries for every scheduled task that has been run since you last pruned the log. This log is useful in confirming that your scheduled tasks are running at their proper times. Log files can also be useful sources of information when you are tracking down a problem.]]> Viewing/Pruning the Scheduled Task Log On this screen you select the options to view or prune your Scheduled Task Log. A log entry is generated every time a Scheduled Task runs that has been set to be logged. Options are described below. Viewing: Log entries to display per page This determines how many log entries are displayed on each results page. Do not set this too high or your browser could crash. <![CDATA[Viewing & Pruning]]> Viewing: Show only entries generated by...
If you wish to only view logs generated by a particular script, select it from the list here.

Pruning: Remove Entries Related to Action
If you wish to only prune entries related to a certain script, select it from this list.]]> Viewing: Order Log Entries By Select how you wish to order your results. Choices are Date and Action. Pruning: Remove Entries Older than Days Select how many days old log entries must be before they will be deleted and enter that number here. The default is 30. Pruning Scheduled Task Logs
If no entries match your pruning criteria, you will be shown an error message.]]> Viewing Scheduled Task Log Search Results
The Result column displays extended information about each entry, if available.]]> About Common Templates, StyleVars, and CSS Related General Help Topics:
Styles & Templates
Common Templates, StyleVars, and CSS
Replacement Variables

Common Templates:
The header, headinclude, and footer templates are considered common templates because they are included / parsed on every forum page.

The header, headinclude, and footer templates are respectively represented in the templates by the $header, $headinclude, and $footer variables. The parsed contents of these three templates are substituted in for these variables when a forum page is loaded.

The header template contains the HTML code that makes up the top portion of your forum layout, including the title image and opening table code for the content table in which your forum content is displayed.

The contents of the headinclude template are inserted within the <head></head> tags on each forum page. Meta tags, style sheets, scripts, etc are added here.

The footer template contains the HTML code that makes up the bottom portion of your forum layout, including the closing table tags for the content table in which your forum content is displayed and the vBulletin copyright notice.

StyleVars:
The StyleVars on this page include the "Size and Dimensions", "Image Paths", and "Miscellaneous" tables below. These settings control various style related aspects of your forum pages. These stylevars are represented in the templates as:

$stylevar[var_name]

These stylevar variables are parsed into their corresponding values when a forum page is loaded. By representing commonly used stylevars as variables in the templates it is very easy to change them - just edit their values on this page and the changes will take effect for all forum pages.

CSS:
vBulletin uses CSS classes for its various page elements. These page elements all call on the various CSS classes defined here. Therefore, you can change the attributes of all page elements that use a CSS class by editing the class on this page. A good site to learn CSS is w3.org.

Note that several CSS attributes are color fields which use standard HTML color codes. You can click on the color box to the right to pull up the color picker window where you can visually pick a color by clicking on it. vBulletin will automatically insert the corresponding color code for the color you pick. The small button to the left of the close box allows you to switch color palettes for more choices. The dotted box on the top left represents no color (transparent).]]> Editing the Images, Fonts and other Style Options Header The header template contains the HTML code that makes up the top portion of your forum layout, including the title image and opening table code for the content table. Headinclude Footer The footer template contains the HTML code that makes up the bottom of your forum layout, including the closing tags for the content table and everything below it. Main Table Width
For example, if you want your forum content to always fill the entire browser window regardless of window size / screen resolution then you would set this to 100%. On the other hand, if you want your forum content to exist within a fixed box then you would enter a pixel value here... for example, 800 or a little less is optimal for 800x600 resolution.]]> Spacer Size options[forumhome]}.php" target="_blank">forumhome page, for example, you will notice there is a gap between the boxes that contain your forums and the outside border of your forum layout. This setting controls how large that gap is.]]> Outer Border Width
An example of a table cell is one of the boxes on your forumhome page that contains a linked forum name and its description.]]> Inner Border Width
An example of a table cell is one of the boxes on your forumhome page that contains a linked forum name and its description.]]> Table Cell Padding
An example of a table cell is one of the boxes on your forumhome page that contains a linked forum name and its description.]]> Form Element Spacer Size Form Width
Enter a number of pixels followed by a "px" (e.g., 640px).]]> User Control Panel Form Width Edit Profile page.

Enter a number of pixels followed by a "px" (e.g., 480px).]]> Message Area Width
Enter a number of pixels followed by a "px" (e.g., 540px).]]> User Control Panel Message Area Width Send New Private Message form, for example (if you have the PM feature enabled).

Enter a number of pixels followed by a "px" (e.g., 380px).]]> Code Block Width
Enter a number of pixels followed by a "px" (e.g., 640px).]]> Title Image
For example, if your title image is named titleimage.gif and you upload it to the images directory in your forum directory, then you would enter this: images/titleimage.gif]]> Button Images Folder
Enter a directory path that is relative to your forum directory (e.g., images/buttons).]]> Item Status Icon Folder
Enter a directory path that is relative to your forum directory (e.g., images/statusicon).]]> Attachment Icons Folder
Enter a directory path that is relative to your forum directory (e.g., images/attach).]]> Miscellaneous Images Folder
Enter a directory path that is relative to your forum directory (e.g., images/misc).]]> Text Editor Controls Folder
Enter a directory path that is relative to your forum directory (e.g., images/editor).]]> Poll Images Folder
Enter a directory path that is relative to your forum directory (e.g., images/polls).]]> Ratings Images Folder
Enter a directory path that is relative to your forum directory (e.g., images/rating).]]> HTML Doctype
At this time, vBulletin 3 defaults to the XHTML Transitional DTD of:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">]]> Reputation Images Folder
Enter a directory path that is relative to your forum directory (e.g., images/reputation).]]> Google AdSense vBulletin offers two different Google AdSense packages. Each package will implement a different set of advertising units into the forum advertising templates. You may also control the type of ad that is delivered in each unit.

Type of Ads to Show

With this option, you may control the type of ads delivered by Google AdSense.

  • Text ads only: AdSense will only show ads consisting of text and links.
  • Text and image ads: AdSense will only show advertistments that contain images if possible but fall back to text-only ads if necessary. This is the recommended option.

No Google AdSense Ads

This option will remove all Google AdSense code from the vBulletin forum advertising templates.

Low Package Ad Units

The Low package adds two small advertising units to the main forum pages:

  • Below the header navigation bar: Horizontal link unit with 5 contextual links to related advertising. This unit is always text. Ad unit color same as background.
  • Below the page content, above the footer: Small, horizontal advertising block. Ad unit color same as background.

High Package Ad Units

  • Below the header navigation bar: Medium, horizontal advertisting block. Ad unit color contrasts with background.
  • Below the page content, above the footer: Medium, horizontal text advertising block. Ad unit color same as background.
  • First post, right hand side of content: Only visible for guests (or registered members who haven't logged in). Nearly-square advertising block.

Further Information from Google

For more information about the individual advertising units, or any other aspects of the Google AdSense product, please visit the following URL:
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/

vBulletin Solutions, Inc. cannot be held responsible for the content of external sites.

]]> About Diagnostics Related General Help Topics:
Database Backup
Repair / Optimize
Update Counters
Diagnostics
Execute SQL Query

Diagnostics:
The diagnostics page contains several diagnostics that are useful for troubleshooting problems with your forums.

The "Upload" diagnostic tests file uploading functionality on your server. If your server isn't configured correctly for file uploads then several vBulletin features will not work including custom avatar uploads and post attachments.

The "Email" diagnostic will send a test email to the address you specify. If you receive the test email then PHP and your mail server are configured correctly. Otherwise they are not configured correctly and you need to contact your host. Without email functionality you will not be able to use any email features on your forums including email verification on registration and "send to friend."

The "Suspect File Versions" diagnostic checks the version of every PHP file in your forum directory and tells you which ones are for different versions of vBulletin than the one you are running. Running files that are not meant for your version of vBulletin can cause any number of problems. If any files are for different versions then you should upload the originals from the vBulletin zip file for the version you are running.

The "System Information" diagnostics report on your MySQL configuration and the status of your database. vBulletin team members may ask you to give them the output of these reports to help them troubleshoot problems with your server and forums.]]> Email Settings Test This is the results of your Email Settings test. If any errors occurred during the test, they will be listed, along with the values of several pertinent settings. System Information Results
The various types of information you can be shown is described below:
MySQL Variables is a list of the MySQL variables that are set. Please visit the following pages for more information on MySQL variables and their meanings: MySQL Variables, Tuning Server Parameters.
MySQL Status shows the status of many things related to the MySQL server. For more information on the items listed on this page, visit MySQL Status.
Table Status: If you are running MySQL 3.23 or higher, you can also view this page of information. The following link provides more information about the information displayed on this page: MySQL Table Status.]]> Upload Settings Results
For more information on the various PHP settings, please visit the following links:
file_uploads
open_basedir
safe_mode
upload_tmp_dir
upload_max_filesize
]]> Suspect File Versions All files listed below are suspected to be for different versions of vBulletin than the version you are running. You should overwrite the files listed below with the original files from the vBulletin zip file for your version. Running Diagnostic Tests On this page you can run several diagnostics to try and troubleshoot file uploading and email distribution. Additionally you can view three different sets of system information. More information is available below. Filename For this test, you need to select a file to upload to the server. This file will be removed immediately after the test is completed and it will not be stored on the server for more than about 1/2 second. After you select a file, press the Submit button to run the test. Email In this test, you must enter a valid email address to send a test email to. After you do so and click Submit, vBulletin will attempt to email the address and will show the results, noting errors, if any, that occurred. View... System Information Results)]]> Test Communication Payment API Manager. If anything below fails, then that means the corresponding payment processor is not currently working with your forum - that means you either set the wrong parameters for that processor or something is wrong with the processor itself.]]> About Emailing Users Related General Help Topics:
Users
User Tools
User Banning
Emailing Users
Access Masks

Emailing Users:
The email pages in the Users tab of the Admin CP allow you to send mass emails and generate mailing lists based on the same search criteria you use to search for users on the Search for Users page.

You can email users on the Send Email to Users page and you can generate a mailing list of email addresses on the Generate Mailing List page. Both pages use the same search criteria. vBulletin emails / includes in the mailing list only users whose profiles match the search criteria you specify. One obvious application of these email features is to send out mass emails notifying your members of updates to your forums. Other applications include sending warning emails to inactive users before you prune their accounts or otherwise deal with them.]]> Generating a List of User Emails
Keep in mind all criteria are cumulative; that is, if you enter a username string to match and select a usergroup, users that match the username string AND are in the selected group will be found, but those that match only one of the above will not.]]> Text To Separate Addresses By User Name Contains
For example, the string exam would match example, anexample, and theexam, but not exsiam.]]> Usergroup Is Users must be in the specified group to be emailed if you select a usergroup here. Also Belongs to Usergroups
Users must belong to all groups that are selected!]]> Include users that have declined admin emails? Enabling this option will send emails to users who have chosen not to receive emails. Email Contains Username Contains for information on the string matching used here.]]> <![CDATA[Parent's Email Contains]]> Username Contains for information on the string matching used here.]]> Is COPPA User If this is set to Yes, the user(s) found will all be COPPA users; that is, under 13. Set this to No to not find COPPA users, or leave it blank to find both. Homepage Contains Username Contains for information on the string matching used here.]]> ICQ Number Contains Username Contains for information on the string matching used here.]]> AIM Handle Contains Username Contains for information on the string matching used here.]]> Yahoo Messenger Handle Contains Username Contains for more information on the string matching used here.]]> MSN ID Username Contains for more information on the string matching used here.]]> Skype Name Username Contains for more information on the string matching used here.]]> Signature Contains Username Contains for more information on the string matching used here.]]> User Title Contains Username Contains for more information on the string matching used here.]]> Join Date is After Join Date is Before)]]> Join Date is Before Join Date is After)]]> Last Activity is After Last Activity is Before Last Post is After Last Post is Before)]]> Last Post is Before Last Post is After)]]> Birthday is After Birthday is Before)]]> Birthday is Before Birthday is After)]]> Number of Posts is Greater Than or Equal To Number of Posts is Less Than)]]> Number of Posts is Less Than Number of Posts is Greater Than or Equal To)]]> Reputation is Greater Than or Equal To Reputation is Less Than)]]> Reputation is Less Than Reputation is Greater Than or Equal To)]]> Warnings are greater than or equal to Enter the minimum amount of Warnings that a user has received that you wish to search for. Warnings are less than Enter the maximum amount of Warnings that a user has received that you wish to search for. Infractions are greater than or equal to Enter the minimum amount of Infractions that a user has received that you wish to search for. Infractions are less than Enter the maximum amount of Infractions that a user has received that you wish to search for. Infraction Points are greater than or equal to Enter the minimum amount of Infraction Points that a user has received that you wish to search for. Infraction Points are less than Enter the maximum amount of Infraction Points that a user has received that you wish to search for. User ID is greater than or equal to Use this option to list users with User IDs greater or equal to the value entered. User ID is less than Enter a number here in order to match users whose User ID is less than the specified value. IP Address Contains Enter a number in this field to search by IP address. It can be a full IP address (such as 24.23.120.15) or a partial (such as 24.23.120). In the case of a partial, it would match users with any number(s) for the last block. Mass Emailing Users
Keep in mind all criteria are cumulative; that is, if you enter a username string to match and select a usergroup, users that match the username string AND are in the selected group will be found, but those that match only one of the above will not.]]> Just a Test If this is set to Yes, no one will actually be emailed, but vBulletin will proceed as if they were, showing you who would be sent an email. Messages to Send at Once This is the number of messages to be sent in a batch. Unless you run your own server, it is recommended this is set to 100 or less. Even if you do run your own server, unless it is not very busy, you should keep this relatively low. From Subject Enter the subject line of the email here. Message $userid: This is the user's userid. Normally this won't mean much to a user, but if you are, for example, sending an email telling users what their referrer link is, you would need to include the userid like this:
www.mysite.com/myvb/index.php?referrerid=$userid
which would then give the user credit if another user follows that link and registers.
$activateid and $activatelink are only applicable if you have Email Verification turned on and the user has not verified their address yet. $activatelink is the link that the user needs to visit to activate their account. $activateid would be used if you are manually typing out that link, otherwise it is of no use.
$username: If you want to personalize the email, or remind the user what their username is, use this variable.
$email: This is the email address on file for the user. It is useful if you wish to include a line to the effect of
This email was sent to $emailaddress which was used to register an account at the vBulletin Community Forums.
Please note you can not send passwords in emails because they are now encrypted in the database. You can, if you wish, direct users to the Lost Password page which is located at
http://www.yoursite.com/yourvb/login.php?do=lostpw]]> About FAQs FAQs:
The vBulletin FAQ system allows you to create infinitely nestable sets of entries, or questions, and additionally allows end-users to search the FAQs. FAQs are typically a collection of Frequently Asked Questions, while vBulletin's FAQ system is something of a FAQ / Knowledge Base hybrid because of its searchability.

vBulletin ships with a number of default sets and entries that are focused on using vBulletin from the end-user's perspective. You may wish to add additional FAQs that answer questions about your specific forum configuration - forum permissions for example.

The FAQ system also supports multiple languages. Each FAQ entry can have a translation for each language in the Language Manager. When a user loads a FAQ page vBulletin will display its FAQ entries in the language in which the current logged in user is viewing your forums.]]> Adding FAQ Entries and Sets On this screen, you add a new FAQ entry or set. The options are described below. Product This controls what product this FAQ is associated with. You do not need to worry about this option unless you are planning on making an addon for vBulletin to be released. Short Name This is a short name for the FAQ and is only used internally. It may only contain letters, numerals and the underscore character and must start with a letter. Parent FAQ Item Any entry or set in the FAQ can be the parent for another item. Set the parent of this item here. Title
For entries, it can also be thought of as the "Question", which the "Text" answers. It does not have to be unique, but should be unique to this set of entries to minimize confusion.

For sets, it should be descriptive of what kind of questions are in the set.]]> Text Display Order This determines the order in which entries for a particular set are displayed. If you use 0, this FAQ entry will not be displayed, though entries within will still be accessible if their URL is known. Languages Delete FAQ
Any children of this FAQ will be deleted as well. This action cannot be undone!]]> Editing FAQ Entries and Sets This screen allows you to modify each option for the selected FAQ entry or set. Options are described below. FAQ Administration
You start at the top level of the FAQ. At the very top it says "FAQ" - this will expand to become a navigation bar as you drill down into the FAQ levels. Below this is a list of the top two levels of your FAQ structure. To view lower levels, click the parent of the level you wish to view. For example, under vBulletin FAQ, click User Maintenance to view all entries associated with that topic, and child sets (if any). Or, click vBulletin FAQ to view the entries associated with all three children of vBulletin FAQ.

You can edit the properties of a a set or entry from here by clicking edit across from the item name. (see Editing FAQ Entries and Sets)

You can add additional sets or sub-sets. To do so, click Add in the left nav bar, or click Add Child across from the item you wish to add an item under. (see Adding FAQ Entries and Sets)]]> Forum Title Related General Help Topics:
Forums
Forum Permissions
Moderators
Viewing Permissions

Forums:
There are two kinds of forums, a forum and a category. Forums can allow new threads and posts while categories cannot. Categories are used to group forums by topic. Forums of related topics are typically created as children of a parent category to group them by topic.

When adding / editing a forum there is an option called "Act as Forum". When this option is set to "Yes" the forum will act as a forum. When this option is set to "No" the forum will act as a category.]]> Adding a Forum Options on this page are listed below. Allow BB Video Code in posts This allows users to display videos inline on the showthread page. If you set this to No, a link to the video will be displayed instead of showing the actual video. Title This is the title of the new forum. You may use HTML in this, but be aware this will also be used as the title of the page. Since HTML formatting is not valid in the title of a page, it will be shown as plain text, and will look odd. Description This description is shown under the forum name on your forums home page, and on the forums listing page (forumdisplay.php). Link to other page If you enter a URL in this box, the forum will not be a real forum. Instead it will simply be a link to the URL you enter. Display Order This determines the order in which forums are displayed anywhere they are listed. If you set this to 0, the forum will not be displayed to end-users anywhere unless the user manually types in the URL to access it. Parent Forum If you want this to be a subforum of another forum, select that forum from this list. If not, select (No One). Default View Age Default Sort Field
Note that to select sorting by thread rating, ratings must be enabled for this forum. If they are not, the forum will be sorted by last post.]]> Default Sort Order This controls the order that threads are shown in by default. Users may still selectively override this setting and resort using the controls at the bottom of the thread list. Show Private Forum
Either of the yes options will allow users to see this forum if they don't have access to it. The ability to see the forum's post count is controlled by the two yes options. If the forum is passworded, it is treated as a private forum until the user enters the valid password.

Setting this option to 'Use Default' will use the setting in Forum Display Listings Options for this forum.]]> Email addresses to notify when there is a new post Email addresses to notify when there is a new thread Moderate Posts If this option is enabled, then posts will not show up in this forum until a moderator approves them. Thread Moderation Queue Determines whether threads will require a moderator to approve them before being displayed. Attachment Queue Determines whether new attachments will require a moderator to approve them before being displayed. If you have this set to Yes and Moderator Queue set to No, until the attachment is approved the post will be displayed with a message indicating that the attachment has successfully been posted but requires moderation. Custom Style for this Forum You can select which style to use for this forum. This will override the Default forum style if selected. Override Users Custom Styles Selecting this will force the custom style you selected above to be used instead of the style a user has chosen to browse with. Prefix for Forum Status Images
This prefix must only contain alphanumerical characters, though the following are also allowed - _ / ., a folder name is also acceptable to be placed within the status icon directory.

The following images are currently in use for status icons, you will need to create images with the specified prefix to match.
  • forum_link-48.png
  • forum_new-48.png
  • forum_new_lock-48.png
  • forum_old-48.png
  • forum_old_lock-48.png
]]> Password to Access not be allowed to access it.]]> Can Have Password If you set this to Yes, moderators will be able to set a password for this forum (even if you have given them the ability to do so in general). You as the administrator can still manually set a password for this forum, but unless you do so, if this option is set to Yes, it will not be password-protected even if parent forums are. Act as Forum If you set this to No, this forum will act as a category (that is, a non-posting forum that only exists to group other forums). Is Active This is equivalent to setting Display Order to 0, in that the forum will not be displayed anywhere but can still be accessed by typing in the URL manually. Open for New Posts This allows you to create a forum that acts as an archive - no one will be allowed to post to it, but you can still move threads into it. New Posts are Indexed by Search Engine not be indexed by the search engine. Such posts will not able to be searched for. This is desirable if you have a "Testing" type forum, or a forum that is chit-chat that you don't want indexed.]]> Allow HTML Code in posts strongly recommended that you DO NOT turn this on as it can severely compromise security and/or severely mess up layout if users insert malformed HTML. Even if you set this to Yes, users still cannot use certain tags, including javascript: and about:.]]> Allow BB code in posts This will allow users to use BB code in their posts. Setting this to Yes will not allow users to use the IMG code unless the below option is set to Yes. Allow BB IMG Code in posts This allows users to display images inline on the showthread page. If you set this to No, a link to the image will be displayed instead of showing the actual image. Allow Smilies in posts Setting this to Yes will allow your users to type things such as :) and :( and have them automatically turned into the corresponding image. Allow Icons for posts Setting this to Yes will allow users to select one icon for each post. This icon is displayed next to the title (if any) of each post and is also displayed on forumdisplay next to the thread title if an icon is set for the first post in a thread. Allow Thread Ratings in this Forum Setting this to Yes will allow your users to rate threads in this forum. They can rate them either at the bottom of showthread or while replying to a thread. Count posts made in this forum towards user post counts Show On Quick Navigation Enable this option to show this forum and its children on the Quick Navigation menu. Use Selected Prefix Sets Require Threads to have a Prefix
Note that certain situations may still allow a thread to exist in this forum without a prefix. This can happen if a thread has been moved, a thread has been imported from an RSS feed, or a moderator has manually removed the prefix.]]> <![CDATA[Editing a Forum's Settings]]>
If you change any of the posting options at the bottom of this page then you should rebuild your post cache to update the existing posts in this forum.]]> Apply this password to Child Forums will not have any effect if you do not change the existing password or add a new one.]]> Modifying Forums
Under the Forum Controls, across from each forum title, are the following options:
Edit: Lets you modify forum settings. (see Editing Forums)

Remove: Deletes the forum, any subforums, and posts in the forum and any subforums. This action cannot be undone, so it is highly recommended that you make a backup of your database before doing this.

Add Sub-forum: This allows you to add a forum that will be a child of the forum you select this for. (see Adding Forums)

Add Moderator: Lets you add a moderator to this forum. Moderators moderate the selected forum and any subforums of that forum. (see Adding Moderators)

Add Announcement: Allows you to add an announcement to this forum. (see Adding Announcements)

Move Contents: You can quickly move all the posts from the selected forum into another forum.

Empty Forum: Selecting this will (after confirmation) remove all the threads in a forum.

In the next column is Display Order. This determines what order forums are displayed in anyplace they are shown, including in the Admin CP. Setting this to 0 for a forum will make the forum not show anywhere to the end-user, but it can still be accessed if the user types in the direct URL to the forum. Be sure to select Update Display Order if you have changed any of them.

The last dropdown shows how many moderators you already have in each forum. If you have any, they will be listed. You can modify a moderator's permissions by selecting their name from this drop-down and pressing Go.]]> Media Author This is shown in the Artist column in iTunes. Category Category is a required field for adding your podcast to iTunes. Enable This options enables the output of iTunes specific tags. Podcasts will still work in iTunes without the information contained on this page but they can not be added to iTunes for others to find. Explicit This is used to indicate whether or not your podcast contains explicit material. Image URL This tag specifies the artwork for your podcast. iTunes prefers square .jpg or .png images that are at least 300 x 300 pixels. Keywords This tag allows users to search on text keywords within iTunes. Use commas to separate keywords. Owner Email This email address will be used to contact the owner of the podcast for communication specifically about their podcast. Owner Name This name will be used to contact the owner of the podcast for communication specifically about their podcast. Subtitle The contents of this tag are shown in the Description column in iTunes. The subtitle displays best if it is only a few words long. If this is left blank, the Summary will be used. Summary Delete Forum
Deleting this forum will also delete all thread and posts in it as well its subforums and their threads and posts. If you want to save the threads and posts in this forum and its subforums then you should move them first.]]> About Forum Permissions Related General Help Topics:
Forums
Forum Permissions
Moderators
Viewing Permissions

Forum Permissions:
By default, users will have the permissions for their usergroup (see the Usergroup Manager) in each forum. However, you might not want users of a particular usergroup to have access to every forum. In that case, vBulletin allows you to create custom permissions for a specific forum for a specific usergroup. This is useful in restricting certain forums for certain usergroups.]]> Using the Permission Duplicator
To use the Group-Based duplicator, select the group to copy permissions from. Then, use the checkboxes to select which groups the permissions should be copied to. Select which forum(s) permissions should be copied from in the drop-down. This will include any subforums of the forum you choose. Finally, select whether the incoming permissions should overwrite existing custom permissions, and whether they should apply to forums that are currently inheriting custom permissions from a parent forum. Click Duplicate Permissions to proceed.

The Forum-Based duplicator works in a similar way. First, select the forum to copy permissions from. This will *not* include subforums. Next, select the forums that the permissions should be copied to. If you wish to overwrite existing custom permissions, select yes to Overwrite Duplicates. Overwrite Inherited set to Yes will overwrite permissions in forums that are being inherited from parents. Click Duplicate Permissions to proceed.]]> Copy Permissions from User Group forum permissions for the forum you select will be applied to the usergroups you select below.]]> Copy Permissions to User Groups Only Copy Permissions from Forum Select the forum(s) from which you want to copy permissions. The permissions of the source usergroup for this forum will copied to the destination usergroups for the forum(s) selected here. Overwrite Duplicate Permissions Overwrite Inherited Permissions Copy Permissions from Forum Select the source forum from which to copy usergroup permissions. The permissions for the usergroups for this forum will be applied to the destination forums you select below. Copy Permissions to Forums Overwrite Duplicate Permissions Overwrite Inherited Permissions Editing Usergroup Permissions Per Forum
If you have edited permissions for this group and forum before, you will need to select "Use Custom Settings" to make your settings save. If you attempt to change a setting before selecting Use Custom Settings, you will be reminded to do so by clicking OK. If you click cancel on the popup, the setting will change but when you attempt to save your changes they will not be saved.

Settings on this page will override a usergroup's default permissions. If there are subforums of the selected forum, these settings will be inherited by any subforums unless the subforum has custom settings explicitly set for it already.

If you want to revert the permissions for this group, select "Use Usergroup Default" and press Save Changes. If any subforums of this forum are currently inheriting these settings, they will also be reverted to the default.]]> Can See Thumbnails Custom Settings vs. Usergroup Default Can view forum? If this is set to No, the rest of the settings on this screen are unused as the user will be denied access if they try to view any page that involves this forum. Can View Thread Content This permission controls whether or not users can view posts within a thread. This permission is independent of whether or not users can view the actual thread links within a forum. <![CDATA[Can view others' threads]]> Can See Deletion Notice If this is set to Yes, this group will be able to see deletion notices in this forum. Deletion notices are what is left behind after a user deletes a post or thread. Moderators will always be able to see deletion notices in forums they moderate - this setting does not affect them. Can search? If this is set to No, the user will not be allowed to search this forum, even if they can view it or perform other actions in it. It will not appear in the list of forums to search from on the search screen, and it will not be included if the user opts to search all forums. <![CDATA[Can use 'email to friend' feature?]]> If this is set to No, the user will not be allowed to use the Email to Friend feature (which is linked from the bottom of every thread). This setting is disregarded if you have set Email Functions to Off under general options - no one would be allowed to use Email to Friend in that case. Can download attachments Can post new threads? If this is set to No, the user will not be allowed to post new threads in this forum. They may, however, post replies to existing threads unless you revoke that permission below. Can reply to own threads? If this is set to No, users will not be able to reply to threads that they are the first poster in (started the thread). If you have Can post new threads set to No above, this setting is irrelevant. <![CDATA[Can reply to others' threads?]]> If this is set to No, users will not be able to reply to threads that other users start. New Posts Bypass Moderation Queue? If this is set to No, when a user from this group posts in this forum, their post will be put in the moderator queue regardless of whether or not you have turned on the moderator queue for this forum. Can post attachments? If this is set to No, users will not be allowed to attach files to their posts. They will still be allowed to use the BB IMG code to show images if you have turned that on for this forum. Can Tag Own Threads When set to yes, members of the usergroup have permission to add tags to their own threads within this forum. <![CDATA[Can Tag Others' Threads]]> Can Delete Tags on Own Threads When Set to yes, members of the usergroup have permission to delete tags from threads that they started within this forum. Can rate threads if thread rating is enabled in this forum? If this is set to No, users in this group will not be allowed to rate threads in the forum regardless of whether or not thread rating is enabled for this forum. Can edit own posts? If this is set to No, users will not be allowed to edit their own posts. Can delete own posts? If this is set to No, users will not be allowed to delete their posts. Note that if Can delete own threads below is set to No, they will not be able to delete their post if it is the first post in a thread, even if this is set to Yes. Can move own threads to other forums? If this is set to Yes, users will be able to move their own threads between forums that they have access to. It is generally recommended to leave this set at No, leaving the thread moving to your moderators or yourself. Can open / close own threads? If this is set to Yes, users will be able to close and/or reopen threads that they started. It is generally recommended to leave this set at No. The reason is if a moderator closes a thread and this is set to Yes, the user will be able to reopen that thread by themselves. Can delete own threads? If this is set to Yes, a user will be able to delete threads that he has started by deleting the first post in that thread. Can post polls? If this is set to Yes, users will be able to add a poll to new threads that they create. Can vote on polls? If this is set to Yes, users will be able to vote on polls in this forum. Modifying Forum Permissions
The color of each usergroup is significant. If the usergroup text is in white, it is using the default permissions for the group. If the usergroup text is in red, it is using permissions customized for that forum. If it is in yellow, it is using custom permissions from a parent forum. If you are using Internet Explorer 4+ or Netscape 6+, the circle next to each usergroup name is also significant. A hollow circle means the usergroup cannot view the forum, while a full circle means they can.

To edit the permissions for any group, or to revert them to default, click Edit next to the appropriate group under the appropriate forum.

The Permission Duplicator, accessible from the link at the top of this screen, allows you to quickly duplicate an existing permission set between usergroups or between forums. (see Using the Permission Duplicator)

You can also access the Quick Editor from here. The Quick Editor allows you to quickly revert permissions to default. (see Using the Quick Editor)

The last link at the top is Quick Forum Setup. You can use this to mass-apply permissions to multiple usergroups for a particular forum. (see Using Quick Forum Setup)]]> Permissions Quick Editor Using the Quick Editor From this screen you quickly revert custom permissions to default by selecting the checkboxes of the forums you wish to revert and clicking Delete Selected Permissions. You can also edit a particular set of permissions by clicking Edit across from the forum and usergroup combination you wish to edit. Using Quick Forum Setup
Start by selecting the forum to which these permissions should apply. Note that this will also apply (though inheritance) to any subforums of the selected forum, unless such forums already have custom permissions set for them. Existing permissions for the selected forum will be overwritten.

Next select which usergroup(s) these permissions should apply to. You can select any number that you wish.

Finally, set the actual permissions. You can use the All Yes or All No buttons to quickly change all of the radio buttons. Click Save Changes to apply the new permissions.]]> Apply Permissions to Forum Apply Permissions to Usergroups Check all usergroups you want these permissions to apply to for this forum. Any previously set permissions for the selected groups for this forum will be overwritten with the new permissions below. Action Display Order This field allows you to sort multiple help entries into a logical order. Option Product Use this field to attach an admin help item to a particular product or plugin. Script This is the name of the script which you want to add help for. Use the script name minus the extension. I.E. forum instead of forum.php. Text Title Specify a title for the admin help entry you are adding or editing. vBulletin Default About Avatars, Post Icons, and Smilies Related General Help Topics:
Avatars, Post Icons, and Smilies
Avatar Storage

Avatars, Post Icons, and Smilies:
The same system is used to manage avatars, post icons, and smilies. The help topics in this section apply to the Avatar Manager, Post Icon Manager, and Smilie Manager. Avatars, post icons, and smilies are referred to as "images" in these help topics.

vBulletin's image system is used to manage avatars, post icons, and smilies. These images can be arranged into categories and their access restricted by post count and usergroup. Usergroup restrictions are set at the category level while post count restrictions are set at the image level. To have access to an image category the user must be a member of at least one group (either primary or secondary group membership) that has access, as is explained in the general help topic for Usergroups.

]]> Add New Avatar / Post Icon / Smilie
You can either add a single image or add multiple images at the same time.]]> Path to Images - vBulletin
-- images
--- avatars
--- icons
--- smilies
and you were uploading a smiley, you would type
images/smilies
Do not put a filename on this path, and do not put a trailing slash on it either.]]> Number of Images to Display Per Page This is the number of images to display per page while adding them. Title This is the title of the image and will be displayed with the image (except in the case of smilies). Minimum Posts to Use this Avatar This only applies to Avatars]]> Text to Replace This only applies to Smilies]]> Path - vBulletin
-- images
--- avatars
--- icons
--- smilies

and your smiley was called tongue.gif and located in the smilies directory, you would specify:
images/smilies/tongue.gif]]> Image Category This is the category to which the image will be added. It can be changed later. Display Order This determines the order in which images are shown. This can be changed later. Add New Avatar / Post Icon / Smilie Category On this screen you can add an image category. Images are displayed by category and you can set permissions per category as to who can use them (except for smilies). Title This is the title of the category. It is displayed with the images in the category to your users. Display Order This determines in what order categories are displayed to the user. Edit Avatar / Post Icon / Smilie This page allows you to edit the settings for this image. If you have any questions about specific settings please see the individual help topics. Edit Avatar / Post Icon / Smilie Category On this screen you can edit an existing image category. Images are displayed by category and you can set permissions per category as to who can use them (except for smilies). Avatar / Post Icon / Smilie Permissions Avatar / Post Icon / Smilie Manager
At the bottom of this page you can click the [Add New Category] link to create a new category for images to go into. Click the [Show All] link to view all images for all categories.

Below is a list of your image categories. The "Title" column tells you the name of each category. You can click on the category name to view its images.

The "Contains" column tells you how many images are in the corresponding category.

The "Display Order" column tells you the display order of each image category. The display order is used to order the image category listing in this Image Manager as well as on your forums. You can update the display orders shown on this page by changing the number values and clicking the "Save Display Order" button.

On the right side you will find several options for each image category. The [Mass Move] link takes you to a page where you can select a new category for each image in the corresponding category and submit the changes all at once.

The [View] link does the same thing as clicking on the category name to the left, it takes you to a page where you can view all images in the corresponding category.

The [Edit] link allows you to edit the title and display order of the corresponding category.

The [Delete] link takes you to a page where you can delete the corresponding category and all of its images or mass move the categories images to another category and then delete the original category.

The [Permissions] link takes you to a page where you can specify which usergroups can use the images in the corresponding category.]]> Delete Avatar / Post Icon / Smilie Delete Avatar / Post Icon / Smilie Category This page provides you with options for deleting this category. First of all, you can choose to delete all images in this category or not. And second, if you do not choose to delete all images in this category then you can select another category to which this categories images will be moved. Upload Avatar / Post Icon / Smilie On this screen, you can upload one image at a time through your browser for use on your forum. To do this, both your web server and PHP must have permission to write files to disk. If they do not, this will fail. The directory that you are trying to put the file in must be CHMODed 777 (consult your FTP program documentation for how to do this). Smilie File Path This is the file path that smilies will be uploaded to and read from. This file path should be readable AND writeable by your web server (usually chmod 0777) so that they may be uploaded and displayed. Filename Here you can select the file to upload. Image file This is where you select the file from your computer to be uploaded. View Avatars / Post Icons / Smilies
At the bottom of this page you will see two links. Click the [Add] link to add a new image to your forums. Click the [Edit Categories] link to return to the Image Manager.

Viewing Images:
If you are viewing images then each image shown in the gallery below will have options associated with it. Click the [Edit] button to edit the settings for the corresponding image. Click the [Delete] link to delete the corresponding image.

The numbers under each image are the display orders of the images. These display orders are used to order the listing of images in this Image Manager as well as on the forums. You can change the displays orders on this page by changing the numbers and clicking the "Save Display Order" button at the bottom.

Mass Moving Images:
If you are mass moving images then each image shown in the gallery below will have a menu below it. Select a category from the menu under each image. When you click the "Mass Move" button the images below will be moved to the categories you selected.

Leave the menu set to the "blank" option if you don't want to move an image. If you want to move all images on this page to the same category then you can select that category in the menu at the bottom which will cause all menus on the page to be set to the category you choose.]]> Control Panel Home
If you have permission to run the "top" command on your server then you will see your server load averages under the "Quick Administration Links" section on this page. Click here for a detailed explanation of load averages.

The Quick User Finder allows you to quickly search for users based on a partial or exact username match.

The PHP Function Lookup will search the functions on the PHP site for the search string you enter. The results will be displayed in this frame.

The MySQL Language Lookup will search the documentation on the MySQL site for the search string you enter. The results will be displayed in this frame.

The Useful Links menu contains several useful vBulletin, PHP, and MySQL links that will open in a new window when you select their menu item.]]> About Languages Related General Help Topics:
Languages
Phrases

Languages:
vBulletin's language system allows you to translate your forum into other languages without editing any templates or files. This is thanks to the phrase system (see "Phrases" link above) which makes vBulletin's templates language-independent. The end result is that you can serve multiple languages from a single style.

Each phrase can have a translation for each language specified in this Language Manager. When a forum page is loaded, vBulletin checks what language the current logged in user has selected and parses the phrase variables into the appropriate translated text.

In addition to translated phrases, vBulletin's language system supports translated images (by allowing you to override a style's images folder setting), and language-specific date / time / number formats.]]> Creating a New Language On this screen you can add a new language. From there you will be able to translate all phrases into this language just as with the default languages that come with vBulletin. Language Name This is the name of the language as displayed in the Administration area as well as to users. Allow user selection? If this is set to No, users will not be able to select this language (it will not appear to them). This is useful if you are just adding a language but have not yet added any translations for it. Text Direction Is this language read from left to right or from right to left? Language Code this site for a list of language codes.]]> HTML Character Set
Setting this to ISO-8859-1 results in this charset being specified:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />]]> Button Images Folder Override
You may use <#> to represent the style ID the user is currently using. This allows you to support different styles for this language. For example, you can name the images folder something like images_name of language_style ID of style and then set this setting to images_name of language_<#>]]> Locale You can define a locale or just specify the correct date and time formats in the settings below. Since locales are not supported on all systems it is better to manually specify the correct date and time formats if you can. Date Format Override here. Leave blank to use the format that is set in your vBulletin options.

If you have defined a locale for this language, consult this page for a list of date variables. If there is no locale defined for this language, consult this page for a list of date variables. You can use these variables in combination with other characters to define a format.

For example, European format (e.g., 25-04-98): %d-%m-%y ('d-m-y' with no locale defined)

If you have defined a locale for this language then you can use %x to let the locale decide what format to use.]]> Time Format Override here. Leave blank to use the format that is set in your vBulletin options.

If you have defined a locale for this language, consult this page for a list of time variables. If there is no locale defined for this language, consult this page for a list of time variables. You can use these variables in combination with other characters to define a time format.

For example, AM/PM Time Format (eg, 11:15 PM): %I:%M %p (h:i A with no locale defined)

If you have defined a locale for this language then you can use %X to let the locale decide what format to use.]]> Registration Date Format Override here. Leave blank to use the format that is set in your vBulletin options.

If you have defined a locale for this language, consult this page for a list of date variables. If there is no locale defined for this language, consult this page for a list of date variables. You can use these variables in combination with other characters to define a time format. See the "Date Format Override" and "Time Format Override" settings above for examples.]]> Birthday Date Format Override with year format that is specified in your vBulletin options, here. Leave blank to use the format that is set in your vBulletin options.

If you have defined a locale for this language, consult this page for a list of date variables. If there is no locale defined for this language, consult this page for a list of date variables. You can use these variables in combination with other characters to define a time format. See the "Date Format Override" and "Time Format Override" settings above for examples.]]> Birthday Date Format Override without year format that is specified in your vBulletin options, here. Leave blank to use the format that is set in your vBulletin options.

If you have defined a locale for this language, consult this page for a list of date variables. If there is no locale defined for this language, consult this page for a list of date variables. You can use these variables in combination with other characters to define a time format. See the "Date Format Override" and "Time Format Override" settings above for examples.]]> Log Date Format Override here. Leave blank to use the format that is set in your vBulletin options.

If you have defined a locale for this language, consult this page for a list of date variables. If there is no locale defined for this language, consult this page for a list of date variables. You can use these variables in combination with other characters to define a time format. See the "Date Format Override" and "Time Format Override" settings above for examples.]]> Decimal Separator Use this setting to customize the way floating point (decimal) numbers are displayed for this language. Thousands Separator Use this setting to customize the way every thousands place is separated in large numbers for this language. Directional Markup Fix
The problem usually manifests itself when RTL user names and thread titles are used on a LTR forum (and vice versa). If you do not expect this to be an issue then leave this option disabled.]]> Delete Language Editing Phrases
Each phrase row gives the phrase name (that is, how it is shown in the templates), the phrase as it exists for that language (translated or not), and a link to revert a phrase to the default (English) value. Make sure to click Save Changes to save your work on this page.]]> Edit Language Settings On this screen you can edit the settings for a particular language. Is Default Language
You can also change the default on the Language Manager screen.]]> Downloading and Uploading Language Sets vBulletin.org and vBulletin.com forums.

You can also download a language set from your vBulletin to share with others if you have translated the vBulletin user interface into another language.]]> Charset This option sets the charset attribute for the language file. No conversion of data is performed. Read Charset from File Language to Download Select the language you wish to download from this list of all languages installed in your vBulletin. Product Select the vBulletin product for which you want to download. Filename for your language file. This is what your file will be named when you download it. It is suggested that you name it with something regarding the language you are downloading. Just fetch phrases Language Manager. If this language is just translated phrases and no custom settings then you can select "Yes" here. Otherwise you should select "No" to keep the language whole as it is now.]]> XML Language File to upload Select the XML language file to upload from your computer. Import XML File
For example, if the name of the language file is vbulletin-language.xml and you uploaded it to the install directory inside your main forum directory then you would enter this value: ./install/vbulletin-language.xml]]> Overwrite language If you wish to overwrite an existing language with the file you are uploading, select it from this menu. Otherwise make sure (create new language) is selected. Title For New Language This is what your language will be called on the forum. If you are overwriting a language, that language will be renamed with this title; otherwise, your new language will be named with this title. Use language file even if it was created for a different version of vBulletin?
Typically it is ok to use language files from newer versions but not from older versions. The reason is that newer versions may have extra phrases that your version doesn't have, but at least it will have all of the phrases that yours does, whereas an older version might not.]]> Modifying Languages
Selecting an item on the (edit) drop-down list will take you to edit the type of phrase you select, e.g. Privatemessage related phrases, or Error phrases, etc.

Clicking Settings takes you to edit the settings of the language.

Delete removes the language from your vBulletin

Download lets you download a language set, which consists of all phrases you have translated for that language. You can distribute this to fellow vBulletin owners.
The 'Set Default' button allows you to set a language as the default for your forum. The default language is what is shown to registered forum members who did not select a language at registration, and to unregistered users or those who are not logged in.

At the bottom of the list are links to add a new language and download or upload existing language sets.]]> Rebuild Languages About Update Counters Related General Help Topics:
Database Backup
Repair / Optimize
Update Counters
Diagnostics
Execute SQL Query

Update Counters:
This page allows you to update several vBulletin counters. Not all information that is displayed on vBulletin forum pages is dynamically generated. "Counters" are used instead of some costly queries in order to reduce the server load associated with retrieving information.

User post counts are a good example of a counter. vBulletin doesn't count the number of posts a user has every time their post count is displayed on the forums. Instead the user has a post counter that is incremented every time they make a post. This way when vBulletin wants to display a user's post count it only has to read a number instead of all of the records in the post table.]]> Update Counters
Update Forums:
This feature will update the information for each forum including: last post info, thread count, and post count. This may need to be done after mass moving / pruning threads and posts.

Update User Titles and Ranks:
This will go through every user on your forums and determine their correct user title and rank. This may need to be done after changing your user title ladder or user ranks.

Update User Names:
This will update user names everywhere they occur on your forums. This may need to be done after changing a user's name in the Admin CP.

Update Post Counts:
This will update the number of posts for each user by counting each user's posts in the database. If you have artificially inflated / deflated a user's post count by editing their profile in the Admin CP then this will reset it to its true value.

Fix broken user profiles:
Incomplete profiles are usually the result of hacks making user insertions from outside of vBulletin. Run this to fix any broken profiles.

Rebuild Forum Information:
This feature will update your forum counters and check for orphan moderators. This may need to be run after managing your forums.

Rebuild Thread Information:
This feature will update your thread counters including: last post info, reply count, view count, etc. You may need to run this after moving / pruning threads and posts.

Rebuild Similar Threads:
This feature will run a similar thread search for all threads on your forums. To show similar threads you need to enable the option in your vBulletin options. If you want your forums to search for similar threads when a new thread is posted (rather than having to update this counter later) then you need to enable the option on this page.

Rebuild Search Index:
This needs to be done after changing the max / min search word length in your vBulletin options.

Rebuild Statistics:
This feature rebuilds the information that is displayed on your Statistics page.

Rebuild Post Cache:
vBulletin doesn't parse BB code in posts every time they are displayed. Instead the parsed posts are saved in the "postparsed" table. In this way vBulletin reduces the processing time needed to display a post. Update this counter to rebuild the parsed posts. This needs to be done after changing BB code tags, posting allowances (like HTML code), etc.

Delete Duplicate Threads:
Sometimes duplicate threads are created during the posting process. Updating this counter will remove those duplicates.

Rebuild Styles:
Update this counter to rebuild your style structure.

Rebuild Attachment Thumbnails:
Rebuilding thumbnails is necessary after changing your thumbnail settings in your vBulletin options.

Rebuild User Reputation:
You need to update this counter if you change the default reputation value in your vBulletin options.

Remove Orphan Threads:
This function will delete any threads that belong to forums that no longer exist. Such threads are not accessible via the forums but they do add to your totals. You will see the number of orphan threads in parenthesis.

Remove Orphan Posts:
This function will delete any posts that belong to threads that no longer exist. Such posts are not accessible via the forums but they do add your your totals. You will see the number of orphan posts in parenthesis.]]> Quality of JPG Thumbnails This determines the quality of the thumbnails that are generated. A higher value will result in better quality thumbnails. A lower value will require less storage. Number of forums to process per cycle Here you can specify the number of forums / users / threads / posts / attachments to be processed at a time. This number may need to be set lower for extremely large forums because of time out concerns. Post ID to start at The post ID to start indexing at. If you were re-indexing and the process stopped for some reason, you can resume where you left off. Total number of posts to process Here you can specify the total number of posts to process, starting at the starting post ID specified above. Include automatic JavaScript redirect to next page Check For Styles With No Parent Styles with no parent are broken. This option checks for those broken styles. Renumber all templates from 1 Base Reputation Value All users with reputations greater than or equal to this value will be processed. Clear Auto-save Table Entries This function cleans out all old entries from the auto-save table based on the supplied limit in days. The default is 21 days which means any entries more than 3 weeks old will be removed. You cannot use this to remove any entries that are less than 7 days old. About Moderating Content Moderating Content:
vBulletin allows you to moderate forum content before it is publicly displayed. This is useful in preventing inappropriate or unworthy content from being posted in forums whose content needs to be of a minimum quality. This section of the Admin CP allows you to moderate content that is awaiting moderation.

Thread, post, and attachment moderation can be enabled at the forum level (see the Forum Manager), the group level (see the Usergroup Manager), and at the group level for a specific forum (see Forum Permissions). Similarly, event moderation can be enabled at the group level and at the calendar level (see the Calendar Manager).]]> Moderate Attachments
Validating an attachment removes it from this moderation queue and makes it visible on the forums. Deleting an attachment does exactly that. Ignoring an attachment leaves it in this moderation queue so you can handle it another time.

If you want to validate, delete, or ignore all attachments awaiting moderation then you can click the appropriate button at the top which sets all actions appropriately.]]> Action Select an action to take for this attachment. Validating an attachment removes it from this moderation queue and makes it visible on the forums. Deleting an attachment does exactly that. Ignoring an attachment leaves it in this moderation queue so you can handle it another time. Moderate Events
Validating an event removes it from this moderation queue and makes it visible on the calendar. Deleting an event does exactly that. Ignoring an event leaves it in this moderation queue so you can handle it another time.

If you want to validate, delete, or ignore all events awaiting moderation then you can click the appropriate button at the top which sets all actions appropriately.

You can edit the content of events on this page while moderating them. For example, an event might have an inappropriate title... just change the text for the title and then validate the event.]]> Subject This is the subject of this event. If the subject is not appropriate or you want to change it, simply edit this field before validating the event. Event This is the message for this event. You have the option of editing the message before validating this event. Simply change the message in this textarea before validating the event. Action Select an action to take for this event. Validating an event removes it from this moderation queue and makes it visible on the forums. Deleting an event does exactly that. Ignoring an event leaves it in this moderation queue so you can handle it another time. Moderate Threads / Posts
Validating a thread or post removes it from this moderation queue and makes it visible on the forums. Deleting a thread or post does exactly that. Ignoring a thread or post leaves it in this moderation queue so you can handle it another time.

If you want to validate, delete, or ignore all threads and posts awaiting moderation then you can click the appropriate button at the top which sets all actions appropriately.

You can edit the content of threads and posts on this page while moderating them. For example, a thread might have an inappropriate title... just change the text for the title and then validate the thread.]]> Title This is the title of this thread. If the title is not appropriate or you want to change it, simply edit this field before validating the thread. Message This is the message for this thread. You have the option of editing the message before validating this post. Simply change the message in this textarea before validating the thread. Notes The notes field records any moderative action that is made on this thread. You may want to enter a comment about this thread in the notes for reference. Action Select an action to take for this thread. Validating a thread removes it from this moderation queue and makes it visible on the forums. Deleting a thread does exactly that. Ignoring a thread leaves it in this moderation queue so you can handle it another time. Title This is the title of this post. If the title is not appropriate or you want to change it, simply edit this field before validating the thread. Message This is the message for this post. You have the option of editing the message before validating this post. Simply change the message in this textarea before validating the post. Action Select an action to take for this post. Validating a post removes it from this moderation queue and makes it visible on the forums. Deleting a post does exactly that. Ignoring a post leaves it in this moderation queue so you can handle it another time. About Moderators Related General Help Topics:
Forums
Forum Permissions
Moderators
Viewing Permissions

Moderators:
Moderators can be added to forums to help you manage your forum content. Moderator privileges should only be given to users whom you trust.

Moderators can perform several actions on threads including but not limited to: closing threads (thread no longer open for replies), moving / copying threads to other forums, sticking threads (stays at the top of the forum listing), editing threads, deleting threads, merging threads (two threads become one), splitting threads (one thread becomes two).]]> Add New Moderator On this page you can add a new forum moderator. Below is a list of permissions and options you can set for this moderator. <![CDATA[Change Moderator's Primary Usergroup]]> Make Moderator a Member of This option allows you to specify additional usergroups to make this user a member of upon making them a moderator. Forum Moderated This is the forum that the user will moderate. Keep in mind that any child forums of this will also be moderated by this user. Moderator Usernames
If you specify an invalid username, none of the moderators will be added.]]> Can Delete Albums/Pictures Can Delete Picture Comments Whether this moderator has permission to soft-delete Picture Comments. Can Edit Picture Comments Whether this moderator has permission to edit Picture Comments. Can Moderate Picture Comments Whether this moderator has permission to moderate Picture Comments Can Moderate Pictures Whether this moderator has permission to moderate new Pictures. Can Physically Delete Picture Comments Whether this moderator has permission to physically remove Picture Comments from the database. Can Edit Posts Can Delete Posts This determines whether a moderator can delete and undelete posts. Can Physically Delete Posts There are two levels of deletion in vBulletin 3... deletion with the option to undelete, and complete physical deletion so the posts cannot be undeleted. This option has to do with the later. Can Open / Close Threads This permission determines whether or not this moderator can open and close threads. A closed thread appears with a lock on it and no one can reply to it except admins and mods. Can Edit Threads Can Manage Threads
Sticking a thread makes it so it always appears at the top of the thread listing. Merging allows a moderator to combine the posts of two threads into one thread. Splitting allows a moderator to split the posts from one thread into two threads.]]> Can Edit Polls This permission determines whether or not this moderator can edit poll options and results within their forum. Can Post Announcements
This permission will allow this user to post announcements containing arbitrary HTML, which may be a security concern. Only grant this permission if you trust this person.]]> Can Moderate Posts Can Moderate Attachments Can Mass-Move Threads This permission allows this moderator to mass-move threads out of their forum. Can Mass-Prune Threads This permission allows this moderator to mass-prune threads from their forum. Can Set Forum Password If this forum has a password, this permission will allow this moderator to change this password. Can View IP Addresses Every post has an IP address recorded with it. This permission allows this moderator to click the IP address link in a post and view the IP address. Can View Whole User Profile Can Ban Users This permission allows this moderator to ban users, temporarily or permanently. Can Restore Banned Users This permission allows this moderator to unban users who are banned. Can Edit User Signatures Can Edit User Avatars Can Edit User Profile Pictures Can Edit User Reputation Comments This permission allows this moderator to edit reputation comments. Receive Email When a New Thread is Created Enabling this option will notify this moderator by email whenever a new thread is created. This is useful for low traffic forums that require close moderation. Receive Email When a New Post is Created Enabling this option will notify this moderator by email whenever a new post is made. This is useful for low traffic forums that require close moderation. Can Edit Posts Can Delete Posts Can Physically Delete Posts Can Moderate Posts Can Edit Groups Can Delete Groups Can Edit Posts Can Delete Posts Can Physically Delete Posts Can Moderate Posts Can Edit Albums/Pictures Edit Moderator This page allows you to edit this moderator. Below is a list of permissions that can be edited for this moderator. Can Delete Group Discussions Can Edit Group Discussions Can Moderate Group Discussions Can Physically Delete Discussions Can Delete Discussions Can Edit Discussions Can Moderate Group Discussions Can Physically Delete Discussions Can Transfer Groups
Additionally, the current owner of the group will receive a private message notifying them that the group has been transfered to another user.]]> Delete Moderator Remove this Moderator from All Forums Show All Moderators
Click the [Edit] link next to a moderator's forum to edit their moderator permissions for that forum. Click the [Delete] link next to a moderator's forum to revoke their moderatorship in that forum. Click the [Remove this Moderator from All Forums] link to do exactly that.]]> About Moderator Log Related General Help Topics:
Statistics
Control Panel Log
Moderator Log
Scheduled Task Log

Moderator Log:
The moderator log allows you to view the activities of your moderators. Each time a moderator action is performed on your forums it is recorded in the moderator log. The information stored includes the moderator's username, the date, the action performed, and additional information which varies depending on the action being performed.]]> View / Prune Moderator Log This page allows you to view / prune log entries in the moderator log. If you have questions about specific options on this page please see the individual help topics below. Log Entries to Show Per Page This limits how many entries are shown on each page. If you have a slower connection it is recommended you select a lower number. Show Only Entries Generated By If you wish to only view / prune logs that were generated by the actions of one person, select their username here. Order By You can order the entries by date created, script accessed, or the user who performed the action. Remove Entries Older Than (Days) You can easily remove old logs using this option. Logs found that are older than this date will be removed. Prune Moderator Log Viewing the Moderator Log
Log ID: This is simply an internal ID used for cataloging.

Username: This is the person who performed the action.

Date: This is the date and time the action was performed.

Action: This is the action that the user performed.

Extra Info: For some actions, this records extra bits, such as affected threads and forums.

At the bottom of the page, if there are more entries than could be displayed on one screen, you will find links to view the first page, previous page, next page, and last page. These buttons appear as necessary. For example if you are on the first page, the First Page and Previous Page buttons will not appear.

To return to the main screen, choose Restart from the bottom of any page.

You can restrict access to this script, or just to the pruning function or just to the viewing function. See Restricting Access to Admin Log.]]> Notice Title
The text displayed here should be entered in the base language for your board. If you want to create versions for other languages you have enabled on your board, click the 'Translations' link.]]> Notice HTML
If you want to refer by name to a user viewing your notice, include {username} or {musername} in the text of your notice and it will be replaced with the user's username when the message is displayed to them. {musername} will display their name with the markup specified by their usergroup.

You may also use {userid}, {sessionurl}, and {sessionurl_q} to assist in creating hyperlinks. {sessionurl_q} contains the session hash preceded by a question mark.

The text displayed here should be entered in the base language for your board. If you want to create versions for other languages you have enabled on your board, click the 'Translations' link.]]> Display Order In addition to changing the order in which notices are displayed in the Notice Manager, this control also defines the order in which notices will be displayed to visitors. Active This is a quick switch to allow you to disable a notice without actually deleting it. Persistent
On the other hand, a Persistent notice is displayed whenever all of its conditions have been fulfilled.]]> Display this notice if...
To activate a criterion, check the checkbox next to its description, then enter the values you would like to use in the form fields for that criterion, if it has any.

All active criteria must be satisfied in order for a notice to be displayed.

For criteria that are of the form 'value is between x and y', the condition is inclusive. Therefore, if you have a criterion saying 'User has between 10 and 20 reputation points', a user with 10 or 20 reputation points or any value between would be shown the notice.

Additionally, these 'value is between x and y' criteria can be used as 'less than' or 'greater than' conditions. To do this, leave the first box totally empty to set a condition of 'less than the value in the second box', or leave the second box blank to use a condition of 'greater than the value in the first box'.

The 'Criteria for notice x are not met' condition is a special case. It works by looking back over the list of notices that have been selected for display, and then removing notices that are dependent on another notice not being matched for display.

Consider the following example:
  • Notices A, B and C exist.
  • Notice A is shown when visiting users belong to the 'Registered Users' group
  • Notice B is shown if criteria for notice A are not met
  • Notice C is shown if criteria for notice B are not met
  • A registered user views a page. Notice A is shown
  • Notice B is not shown, because the criteria for showing Notice A are met
  • Notice C is not shown, because (with the exception of the 'Criteria for notice x are not met' condition), Notice B would have been shown.
  • The final result is that only Notice A is shown. The same is true regardless of the order in which the notices are executed or displayed.
]]> Notices Manager
At the top of the list is a checkbox that allows you to toggle the 'Active' status of all notices with one click.

To edit a notice, click its title. To delete a notice, there is a 'Delete' link at the end of each notice's row in the manager.

Each notice is displayed with two checkboxes and a text box containing a number. These represent the Active status, the Persistent nature of the notice, and the notice's Display Order.

If a notice is not active, it will not be displayed to visitors under any circumstances.

A notice that is not persistent will be displayed the first time a user visits the board and will then disappear until they visit again (it is displayed once per browser-session).

The display order text box controls the order in which the notice is shown, both in the notices manager and to visitors. Display order also controls the order in which notices are checked, so it's important for the 'Notice x has not already been displayed' condition.

After using the Active, Persistent and Display Order controls, you need to click the 'Save' button to commit your changes.]]> About vBulletin Options vBulletin Options:
This section of the Admin CP contains all configurable vBulletin options. The options are categorized into groups whose names indicate what kind of options they contain.

When configuring these options you have the choice of displaying all options (there are a lot of them) for all groups or displaying the options for one group at a time. If you are going through all of the options after a fresh installation or upgrade from vBulletin 2 you may find it more convenient to display all options so you can configure and save everything all at once. Otherwise you can just open the group containing the options you want to configure.

If you are looking for a specific option and you don't know what group it's in, you can display all of the options and do a page search in your web browser. Internet Explorer users can press Ctrl - F to pull up a search box. Other browsers may be different.]]> Modifying vBulletin Options On this screen you can select the group of options you wish to modify. You can also opt to view all settings on one screen by choosing Show All Settings. Internet Explorer users can double-click on their choice to be taken to that page automatically. Ajax Content Length Header When vBulletin sends XML (ajax) responses back to clients, it normally includes a content length header if IIS is being used. In some circumstances (such as when you are running IIS with server level compression) it may be necessary to disable this header, otherwise ajax will not work. Albums Per Page
Note: This number must be at least 1.]]> Picture Moderation
It may be a legal requirement to enable this option in some cases, such as for boards run in Germany.

If you would like to have all images from only certain usergroups sent to the moderation queue, the usergroup editor provides this ability.]]> Caption Preview Length Maximum Pictures per Album
You may control how many pictures a user can upload to all of their albums via user group permissions.]]> Pictures Per Page
Note: This number must be at least 1.]]> Recent Album Update Days
If user album permissions are changed then the Recent Abum Updates list may contain albums that are no longer accessible. This can be fixed by rebuilding the list on the Rebuild Counters page.

]]> Number of Pictures that can be Uploaded Simultaneously
However, setting this to a large value may cause strain on your server if the uploaded pictures need to be resized or recompressed.

This value cannot go below 1.]]> API Device Identification Threads and Posts generated with applications that utilize the vBulletin API can be publicly tagged and identified with a device signature that will appear in the post. You can add additional links to your Apple iTunes and/or Android Marketplace to promote your applications. If the option is enabled but the link definition is not defined, the signature will still appear on the post but not be clickable. Resize Images
GD
JPEG => JPEG
PNG => JPEG
GIF => JPEG

Imagemagick
JPEG => JPEG
PNG => JPEG
GIF => JPEG
BMP => JPEG
TIFF => JPEG
PSD (N/A)*
PDF (N/A)*

*PSD and PDF image types are not resized as you would want to retain their current setting.]]> Show Forum Link in Menu This option allows you to add an extra forum link to the navigation menu on every page. This may be useful if you have non forum products installed. Always use Forum URL as Base Path Bounce Email Address
If this field is left empty, the previously-specified 'Webmaster Email' address will be used automatically.

This email is used when using an SMTP server, or when the "Enable -f Parameter" email for sendmail is switched on.]]> COPPA Registration System Cookie Check
This will stop users from trying to register with an age older than 13. Users can still circumvent this check by manually removing the cookie.]]> CMS Name Forum Name will be used instead.]]> Log Emails to a File
C:\logs\vbulletin.log

Or on a *nix server it might be something like:

/home/yoursite/logs/vbulletin.log

This option should only be enabled to troubleshoot email issues. Your server performance can decrease while this option is enabled.]]> Cache Lifespan By default, content generated by external.php will be cached for one hour. This setting alleviates the problem of abusive users repeatedly requesting updates from external.php. Some RSS applications do not respect the 60 minute refresh request that vBulletin sends with the information. Maximum External Records
Changing this value will not increase or decrease the amount of records that are returned by default. This option simply gives your users the ability to request more records if they desire by adding &tackon=X to their RSS feeds.]]> Forum Leaders Cache This sets the number of minutes that the forum leaders page is cached for. Caching this page can significantly improve its performance if you have a large number of users and usergroups. Setting the value to 0 will disable the cache. Friendly URLs
  • Standard URLs:
    showthread.php?t=12345

  • Basic Friendly URLs:
    showthread.php?1234-Thread-Title

  • Advanced Friendly URLs:
    showthread.php/1234-Thread-Title

  • Mod Rewrite Friendly URLs:
    threads/1234-Thread-Title

    • Note: In order to use the Mod Rewrite Friendly URLs the appropriate rewrite rules must be defined for your server.]]>         Maximum Messages Per-Page
    Note: This number must be at least 1.]]>         Default Messages Per-Page
    Note: This number must be at least 1.]]>         Human Verified Actions Require Human Verification on Configured Actions to pass the Human Verification test when performing the selected actions.

    If you select the "Post" action, the Quick Reply editor will be disabled when viewing threads.]]>         Session IP Octet Length Check Maximum Videos Per Post/Signature Set this to the maximum number of videos you wish to allow per post and signature. For the purposes of this count, the post and any signature the user has are counted together. Set this to 0 to disable the videos count. Disable Content Caching Some content is cached to speed up page load times. Disabling content caching forces content to be fetched directly and not from the cache. This should only be done for trouble shooting purposes. Paid Subscription Email Notification An email will be sent to this email address when a paid subscription is purchased or reversed. Allowed BB Code Tags in Picture Comments
    By default, Basic (B, I, U), Color and Link (URL, EMAIL, THREAD, POST) tags are enabled.]]>         Enable Picture Comments
    If you would like to enable this system, set this option to 'Yes'.]]>         Maximum Picture Comments Per-Page
    Note: This number must be at least 1.]]>         Moderate Picture Comments
    If you would prefer to specify which usergroups have their picture comments moderated, do this through the usergroup manager instead.]]>         Default Picture Comments Per-Page
    Note: This number must be at least 1.]]>         WMODE Setting
    For more information about the wmode options go to wmode options]]>         Throttle Check Period This is the period of time of which throttle checking is performed. The amount of messages that a user can send within this period is defined by their Message Throttle Quantity usergroup permission. If this is set to 0 then private messages will not be throttled. Auto-Save Content Post Edit History
    Edits will not be logged if an 'edited by' notice is not displayed or updated. This occurs in the following situations:
    • The editing user is in a group that does not show edited by notices and no reason for editing is specified.
    • The post is edited quickly enough after being posted to trigger the Time to Wait Before Starting to Display 'Last Edited by...' option.
    ]]>         Allow Users to Edit Profile Privacy
    If enabled and the user has the 'Can Edit Profile Privacy' permission, the user can choose to hide blocks from their ignored users; unregistered users; users who are not on their contact list; and users who are not on their friends list.

    Note: When enabled, the 'Profile Privacy' link on the User Control Panel allows users to customize their profile page in this way.]]>         Number of Albums to display in the Users Profile Redirect Domain Whitelist For advanced domain configuration only! These are domain names that point to your forum in addition to the main Forum URL configured in vBulletin settings. These domains will be considered safe and allowed as redirection targets by the vBulletin software. This option should remain blank in most installations. Disable Redirect Domain Checking Use Remote YUI
    These services are available for free from both Yahoo! and Google. If enabled the files will be served from their servers.

    Only the Google service supports SSL hosting.]]>         Standard URL Routing Variable
    Ensure that this is not set to a variable used elsewhere by vBulletin, such as do, t, p or pp.]]>         Post Reporting Email Post Reporting Discussion Forum The Post Reporting system can automatically create a discussion thread for each reported post. When a post is reported multiple times, new posts will be added to the discussion thread. Post Reporting User If you enable this setting, Post Reporting discussion threads will be created under the set username. Otherwise the posts will be made under the name of the user reporting the post. Rss Enclosures (Podcasting) Maximum Discussions Per-Page
    Note: This number must be at least 1.]]>         Default Discussions Per-Page
    Note: This number must be at least 1.]]>         Allowed BB Code Tags in Group Messages Use this option to specify which (if any) BB code tags your visitors may use when composing group messages. By default, Basic (B, I, U), Color and Link (URL, EMAIL, THREAD, POST) tags are enabled. Allow Owners to Delete Group if Empty
    Setting this to yes can allow users to clean up unpopular groups, but it can also create a loophole. An owner may be able to kick out all the members of a group and then delete it, thereby getting around the delete group permission.]]>         Allow Join-to-View Groups
    If you do not want group owners to be able to do this, disable this option.]]>         Allow Groups Owners to Force New Group Messages into Moderation Queue Manage Own Groups' Content usergroup permission will be able to create or edit their groups settings to force all new messages into the moderation queue with this setting enabled.

    If they do this, messages will not appear to normal board users until approved by the group owner or other board staff member.]]>         Category Cloud Size
    Note: This number must be at least 1.]]>         Enable Group Image Icons

    Note: Group Image Icons are always limited to 200px by 200px and thumbnails are limited to 80px by 80px.]]>         Allow Group Owners to Limit New Discussions to Themselves Maximum Groups Per-Page
    Note: This number must be at least 1.]]>         Group Name Maximum Length
    If a user enters a name longer than this limit, an error will be generated and the name will be rejected.]]>         Number of Newest Groups to Display
    Note: This number must be at least 1.]]>         Default Groups Per-Page
    Note: This number must be at least 1.]]>         Show Forum Button Use SkypeWeb Graphics No will cause the Skype™ icon (used in the im_skype template) to be loaded from the local webserver. This can be useful as the SkypeWeb server has proven to be a little flakey at present.

    If set to Yes, the icon will be loaded from the SkypeWeb server and will show the Skype™ online-status of the user in question.

    Additionally, SkypeWeb offers the ability to display online status in non-English languages. This ability can be used on the 'Send message using Skype to user' page, to show whether or not the selected user is logged-in to Skype and available.

    In order for this to work, this option must be set to Use Language-Specific SkypeWeb Graphics and the Language Code specified for vBulletin languages must be one of the following:
    • En
    • De
    • fr
    • it
    • pl
    • Ja
    • Pt
    • Pt/br
    • Se
    • zh
    • Cn
    • Zh/cn
    • hk
    • tw
    • Zh/tw
    These language codes are not case-sensitive, and you may use a dash instead of a slash if you wish (pt-br instead of Pt/br).]]>         Enable Social Bookmarking Social Bookmark Manager.

    If you find that no social bookmarking links are being displayed in a thread, check the permissions for guests in that thread. The links will only be shown in guest-viewable threads.]]>         Enabled User Profile Features
    Groups
    Enables or Disables the "Groups" feature Board Wide
    Albums
    Enables or Disables the "User Albums" feature within Board Wide
    Friends
    Enables or Disables the "Friends" feature Board Wide (Does not disable contacts and the ignore list feature)
    Visitor Tracking
    Enables or Disables the "Visitor Tracking" for User's Profiles
    Visitor Messaging
    Disables "Visitor Messaging" for User's Profiles
    ]]>         Thread Tag Banned Words
    If the word the user has chosen as their tag is found in either list, its use will be disallowed and the user will receive an error message stating that they can not use that word.]]>         Tag Cloud: Cache Time Time, in minutes, to keep the tag cloud data cached for. A value of 0 will disable the caching. Tag Cloud: Number of Levels
    If you wish to increase this value above 5, you will need to edit the search_forums template and add additional CSS rules at the top.]]>         Enable Search Tag Cloud here because it is based on the amount of searches done for a particular tag instead of the number of times the tag is used.]]> Search Tag Cloud: History (Days)
    0 will keep data around permanently.]]>         Tag Cloud: Number of Tags The maximum number of tags that will be displayed in the tag cloud. A higher number provides more information to a user but may appear to be more cluttered. Tag Cloud: Usage History (Days) here. Any tags added outside this range will not be taken into account for the tag cloud.

    The tag cloud can serve as a list of what's popular on your site. You can use this option to prevent what was popular earlier from skewing against what's popular now.]]>         Tag Cloud: Build Usergroup
    Choosing 'Live Permission Check' will prevent the tag cloud from being cached, but it will respect the permissions of the browsing user.

    'No Permission Check' will skip the permission checking entirely. This is equivalent to picking a usergroup that has permissions to view all forums.]]>         Tag Separators
    Simply place a space between each separator. For example, "| &" would mean that tags would be separated by a comma (,), pipe (|), or ampersand (&). Separators may be multiple characters, if desired.

    If you wish to include a space as a separator or within a separator, you must wrap the separator in { and }. For example, to make space a separator, you would use "{ }". To put a space within a separator, you would use something like "{| |}"; this would mean that to separate tags you would have to use "| |".

    Note that adding separators may make previous tags unusable. For example, if you had a tag "American cars" and added space as a separator, users that try to add that tag will add two tags, "American" and "cars".

    When adding separators to this list, you may wish to modify the contents of two phrases to respect the additional separators:
    • separate_tags_using_comma
    • tag_no_comma
    ]]>         Thread Tag Allowed Words
    If it is found, all other checks are bypassed and the word will be allowed, regardless of censorship, word length etc.]]>         Tag Minimum Length The minimum number of characters in a tag name. This can be between 1 and 100. Thumb Color #000000 (black) to #FFFFFF (white).]]> Terms of Service URL User Infraction Discussion Forum The User Infraction system can automatically create a discussion thread for each infraction. The thread will be updated if the infraction is reversed. Require Infraction Message Allowed Fonts The list of allowed fonts for profile style customizations. Put each font on its own line. Allowed Padding The list of allowed padding sizes for profile style customizations. Put each padding size on its own line. Encode Mail as UTF-8 Forum Component URL This feature requires that the "Always use Forum URL as Base Path" be set to yes.

    This will override the main Forum URL setting for forum pages to allow the forum pages to be accessed from a different directory than the rest of vBulletin. This value can either be an absolute URL in which case it fully overrides the Forum URL or it can be a relative URL, in which case it is appended to Forum URL.

    For example, if vBulletin is located at http://example.com/vbulletin then entering a value of "forum" will result in the forum being located at http://example.com/vbulletin/forum. A value of "http://www.example.com/forum" will result in the forum being located at http://www.example.com/forum. All vBulletin URLs must have the same host name.

    In addition to setting the Forum Component URL, you will need to take the following steps in order for the forum to work in the new location.

    1. If you are locating the forum in a directory other than a direct subdirectory of the vBulletin directory (http://example.com/vbulletin/forum in the above example), edit forum/vb_dir.php in the do_not_upload directory of your download package to set the vBulletin install directory. Instructions are given in that file.
    2. Upload the forum files directory from the do_not_upload to the directory you want the forum to be located in. If you want the forum to be in http://example.com/vbulletin/myforum, create a subdirectory in your vBulletin directory called myforum and upload the forum files there.
    3. If you are using rewrite friendly URLs, you will need to copy the .htaccess file from do_not_upload/rewrite/apache2/forum to the stub directory before uploading.
    4. If you are using a different domain, such as forum.example.com versus www.example.com then you will need a crossdomain.xml file for the asset manager flash upload. Create a file called "crossdomain.xml" and place it in your forum subdirectory with the following contents modified to suit your domain.
      <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <cross-domain-policy xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://www.adobe.com/xml/schemas/PolicyFile.xsd"> <allow-access-from domain="*.example.com"/> <site-control permitted-cross-domain-policies="master-only"/> <allow-http-request-headers-from domain="*.example.com" headers="*" secure="true"/> </cross-domain-policy>

    If the cookie path option is set for the site, it needs to be general enough to include all vBulletin URLs. For example, if vBulletin is located at www.host.com/mysite/vbulletin but the forum is located at www.mysite.com/mysite/forum then a cookie path of "mysite" will work, but a cookie path of "mysite/vbulletin" will not work because the cookies will not be sent to pages in the mysite/forum directory.

    ]]>         Allowed BB Code Tags in Visitor Messages
    By default, Basic (B, I, U), Color and Link (URL, EMAIL, THREAD, POST) tags are enabled.]]>         Welcome Private Message If you enable this setting, the user will be sent a private message after registration. Note if you enable Verify Email Address in Registration below, the user must verify their address before a private message will be sent. If you have Moderate New Members enabled above, the private message will be sent when the user is approved. Enable Group Messages If you select this option, members of each group will be able to post messages in the group. Users who are not part of the group will still be able to read the messages. vBulletin Anti-Spam Key
    If the data is identified as spam, it will be marked for moderation to allow for verification by moderators. You should give your moderators the 'Can Moderate' permission to allow for this.]]>         vBulletin Active
    Note that admins will still be able to use vBulletin while it is turned off, but they will see a notice on the top and bottom of the screen that says the site is offline.]]>         Spam Scanning Post Threshold 0 will scan all posts.]]> Reason For Turning vBulletin Off When vBulletin is turned off, this message will be displayed for users who try to load a page. Forum Name This is the title of your forum. This title appears in the title bar of every forum page and other places. Forum URL
    http://www.example.com
    http://www.example.com/forum

    Examples of incorrect URLs:

    http://www.example.com/ (should not have final slash)
    http://www.example.com/forum/index.php (should not have final slash or index.php)]]>         Homepage Name Show Home Link options to display this link in the navigation menu and breadcrumb.]]> Homepage URL Contact Us Link
    mailto:admin@example.com

    If you use the built-in contact form, you can specify predefined subjects below in "Contact Us Options".]]>         Contact Us Verification Contact Us page.

    If you decide to allow this access for guests then you may wish to enable image verification to prevent bots from using the form. This will prevent possible spam in your inbox. The image verification will only be used for guests who use the form.]]>         Contact Us Options
    Each subject must be placed one per line, meaning that you need to enter a carriage return between subject (press <Enter>). If you wish to direct the email from a subject to a particular user, you can either specify the user's userid on the forum or their email address. You do this by placing the item in brackets at the start of the subject.

    Example:

    {1} Site Feedback
    {example@example.com} Help
    Registration

    Feedback sent to the first option "Site Feedback" would be directed to the email address of Userid #1. Feedback sent to the second option "Help" would be directed to the email address "example@example.com". Feedback sent to the third option "Registration" would be directed to the Webmaster's email address.]]>         Use Image Lightbox The lightbox allows the load of a large image attachment within the browser window without changing the current layout of the page, this can be triggered by a combination of the Click and Hover event. <![CDATA[Webmaster's Email]]> This is the email address of the webmaster. It will be used as the From address for certain emails sent by the system. Privacy Statement URL Copyright Text Company Name User Registration Options) this will be displayed.]]> Company Fax User Registration Options) then this fax number will be displayed as an option to allow people to send you faxed parental authorization.

    If you need a fax number, you may wish to look at eFax who provide internet-based faxing services.]]>         Company Address User Registration Options) then this address will be displayed as an option for those wishing to send their parental authorizations via snail mail.]]> Meta Keywords
    All keywords you enter here will be put in the keywords meta tag in the header of every page. Separate keywords or phrases with a single comma and no space.]]>         Meta Description
    Enter a short description of your site here and it will be placed in the meta description tag in the header of every page. Most engines will accept a maximum of 255 characters for the description.]]>         Use Quick Navigation Menu The Quick Navigation menu appears by default on most pages and provides a quick jump to any of the forums on your forum as well as several other places (search, private messaging, etc.). While it can have a marginal impact on performance, typically you will only want to disable this if you have an extremely large number of forums as it will generate a large amount of HTML in that case, which will increase the size of pages and bandwidth usage. Number of Pages Visible in Page Navigator On thread and forum pages, as well as private messaging lists and other places, if there are multiple page number links to be displayed, this setting determines how many are shown on either side of the page currently being viewed. Setting this to 0 will cause all page links to be displayed. Relative jumps for Page Navigator On thread and forum pages, as well as private messaging lists and other places, if there are multiple page number links to be displayed, this option selects what pages can be jumped to relative to the current one. For example, by adding 10 to the list, links will appear for current page -10 and current page +10. Separate each number with a space. Enable Access Masks Access masks allow you to enable or disable access to a particular forum for individual user(s). To use them, you must enable this option. This option also affects whether or not users will be able to see forums they do not have access to on forumhome and forumdisplay. (If this is off, they will see them in forum listings but not be able to enter them. If this is on, they will not see them at all.) Show Instant Messaging Program Icons Add Template Name in HTML Comments When modifying templates, it is often helpful to have this setting enabled so you can view the source of a page to determine what template(s) control it. In the course of normal usage, however, you will usually want this disabled as it will increase your page sizes and therefore bandwidth usage. <![CDATA[Use Login "Strikes" System]]> Enable Forum Leaders this page.

    You can control which groups are displayed on this page in your Usergroup Manager. Edit the usergroup in question and set the Viewable on Show Groups option. It is recommended you don't enable this option for large groups like the Registered Users group.]]>         Post Referrer Whitelist For example, if you have multiple sites that tie into this forum, or if you have vB-integrated hacks that POST data externally, then you may want to put those referrers on the whitelist. Thread/Forum Read Marking Type
  • Inactivity/Cookie Based - once a user has been inactive for a certain amount of time (the value of the session timeout option) all threads and forums are considered read. Individual threads are marked as read within a session via cookies.

    This option is how all versions of vBulletin before 3.5 functioned.

  • Database (no automatic forum marking) - this option uses the database to store thread and forum read times. This allows accurate read markers to be kept indefinitely. However, in order for a forum to be marked read when all threads are read, the user must view the list of threads for that forum.

    This option is more space and processor intensive than inactivity-based marking.

  • Database (automatic forum marking) - this option is the same as a previous option, but forums are automatically marked as read when the last new thread is read.

    This is the most usable option for end users, but most processor intensive.
    • ]]>         Disable AJAX Features
    Due to the nature of AJAX, some functions may not work fully with non-Latin languages without additional modules, such as IconV. For example, AJAX-based quick reply may work correctly on the board, but thread subscription emails do not display correctly. If something like this occurs for you, you should select "Disable Problematic AJAX Features".]]>         Enable Inline Moderation Authentication Inline moderation actions will require a user to authenticate again prior to being performed. The timeout is based on the admin control panel timeout, or one hour if that option is disabled. Database Read Marking Limit
    This setting allows you to force unread markers to switch to "read" after a so many days. This would be the amount of time after which the user probably has no interest in reading that thread and therefore does not need to know that it contains unread posts.]]>         Enable Thread Tagging Wikipedia for more information on the ideas behind tagging.

    This option is a global switch. If you choose no, tagging will be disabled globally. Existing tag information will not be displayed. If you choose yes, you may choose who can tag threads in the usergroup permissions section.]]>         Datestamp Display Option
    Set this to Normal and set the Format For Date and Format For Time options below to show the full date and time.

    Set this to Yesterday/Today and for dates which fall into those two periods, the words will be shown, otherwise the full date and time will be shown.

    Set this to Detailed to show "friendly" times such as "1 Minute Ago", "2 Hours Ago", or "3 Weeks Ago".]]>         Tag Maximum Length
    A tag name may contain any character except a comma. Tags with censored words are not allowed.]]>         Maximum Tags Applied by Thread Starter Maximum Tags per Thread The maximum total tags per thread. No users may add more tags than this to an individual thread. 0 disables this. Maximum Tags Applied by Other Users Force Tags to be Lower Case Default Time Zone Offset
    Note that vB3 gets your server's time zone from PHP. If you need to change your server's time zone, then you need to change your server configuration. You should contact your host for help with this.]]>         Enable Daylight Savings If the time zone for the Default Time Zone Offset is currently in Daylight Savings time, set this to Yes. Remember, this only affects guests and those not logged in. Registered, logged-in users can set their own DST options in their User CP. Format For Date date function formatting options.

    Some examples:
    m-d-y becomes 04-25-98 (Standard short US format)
    F jS, Y becomes April 25th, 1998 (Standard long US format)
    d-m-Y becomes 25-04-98 (Standard short European format)
    jS F Y becomes 25th April 1998 (Standard long European format)]]>         Format For Time date function formatting options.

    Some examples:
    h:i A becomes 11:15 PM
    H:i becomes 23:15]]>         Format For Registration Date date function formatting options. (Usually you only want to show the month, day, and year, or even just month and year.)]]> Format For Birthdays with Year Specified date function formatting options. You should not enter any time formatting options.]]> Format For Birthdays with Year Unspecified date function formatting options. You should not enter any time formatting options, and you should not enter any year code.]]> Log Date Format here.]]> Session Timeout
    If you use "Inactivity Based" read marking (see General Settings), then an expired session also means that all unread markers will be turned off for posts made before the session expired.

    In any case, the user will be removed from the "Currently Active Users" list when their session expires.]]>         Path to Save Cookies
    If you want your forum cookie to work in every directory on your site, then use "/" for the path (no quotes). This means your forum cookie will work at "yoursite.com/forum", "yoursite.com/contact", and any other directory. You might need your forum cookie to work in any directory if you have external scripts that tie into vBulletin, like portals or other external pages.

    If you want your forum cookie to work in a single directory (your forum directory), then use "/forum/" (insert the name of your forum directory). The path should always start and end with a "/".]]>         Cookie Domain
    For example, leaving this setting blank will allow your forum cookies to operate on any domain on your site. If you have multiple domains parked on your site, then a forum cookie can be recorded for any of those domains depending on which domain is used to login to your forum.

    You can use a value of ".yoursite.com" (no quotes, using your domain name) to allow your forum cookies to operate anywhere within that specific domain. That includes "yoursite.com", and "*.yoursite.com" (where * is any subdomain).

    You can use a value of "subdomain.yoursite.com" (no quotes, using your domain and any subdomain) to allow your forum cookies to operate on that specific domain and subdomain.]]>         GZIP HTML Output
    The client's browser must support GZIP for this to work. If the browser does not support GZIP, then the uncompressed page will be sent instead.

    If you are using mod_gzip on your server, then you are already compressing outgoing pages and there is no need to enable this option.]]>         GZIP Compression Level
    The valid numbers are 0 (none) through 9 (maximum). Most people use level 1 compression because it offers the greatest compression per unit of work for the server. Higher numbers have diminishing returns.]]>         Add Standard HTTP Headers Some IIS servers may need this turned on; for most web servers, it will cause the server to not function correctly. This sends HTTP 200 OK headers if turned on. Add No-Cache HTTP Headers If you enable this option, no-cache HTTP headers will be added to each page. These cause full page data to be re-requested from the server every time the user gets a page, which will increase bandwidth; it may additionally cause an increase in server load as it will cause more pages to be served. Remove Redirection Message Pages
    Some pages still require the redirect screens to avoid potential issues with cookies. These will be shown regardless of this setting.]]>         Public phpinfo() Display Enabled Cached Posts Lifespan
    This option determines how long posts are stored. While a post is cached, it will take approximately twice as much storage space since it is essentially being stored twice. If you have a busy site, and threads typically don't last very long, you can probably set this to a lower value such as 10 days. If you have a slower site, and threads typically last longer, 20 to 30 days might be a better choice. If you have the disc space, you can set this to a higher value for better performance.]]>         Update Thread Views Immediately If you enable this option, the thread view counter for a thread will be updated in realtime as threads are viewed. Otherwise, they will be stored and updated every hour (by default) en masse. We recommend disabling this option for larger or busier forums as updating them in realtime can have a performance impact. Update Attachment Views Immediately If you enable this option, the attachment view counter for an attachment will be updated in realtime as attachments are viewed. Otherwise, they will be stored and updated every hour (by default) en masse. We recommend disabling this option for larger or busier forums as updating them in realtime can have a performance impact. Number of Emails to Send Per Batch vBulletin has a mail queue that prevents bottlenecks when sending large numbers of emails (for example, when a new post is added to a thread that has a lot of subscriptions to it). By default, 10 emails are sent from the queue at a time. If you have a more powerful server, you can probably safely increase this number, but we do not recommend going too high on this regardless. *NIX Server Load Limit Image Processing Library
    The first is GD, which is bundled with PHP 4.3.0 and later and often available with earlier releases. The GD v2+ library is preferable to the v1+ library so always choose v2 if you're given the opportunity by your host. GD supports the following file types: GIF, JPEG, and PNG.

    The second supported library is ImageMagick v6 by ImageMagick Studio LLC. ImageMagick is an executable binary that must be installed at the server level to be called by PHP. Only the identify and convert binaries from ImageMagick are required by vBulletin. ImageMagick supports the following file types: GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, and PSD. ImageMagick also has better support for handling animated GIF.]]>         Image Verification Library dynamic image verification image.

    The first is GD, which is bundled with PHP 4.3.0. The GD v2+ library is required along with having PHP compiled with freetype2 support. Having PHP compiled with freetype1 will sometimes result in the font not displaying.

    The second supported library is ImageMagick v6 by ImageMagick Studio LLC. ImageMagick is an executable binary that must be installed at the server level to be called by PHP. Only the identify and convert binaries from ImageMagick are required by vBulletin. Imagemagick must be compiled with Freetype support in order to display the proper image verification.

    It is suggested that you provide your own background images and true type fonts to make your image verification unique. Background images should be 201x61 pixels. Fonts should be True Type fonts. Place the files in the proper directory beneath the images/regimage folders. The name of the files do not matter as long as images end in .jpg, .png, or .gif and fonts end in .ttf.]]>         ImageMagick Binary Path Path to the ImageMagick 6 binaries (convert and identify). Example: Unix: /usr/local/bin/ Windows: C:\imagemagick\ Image Verification Options The difficulty of the image verification image can be controlled with these settings. The more options that are enabled, the more difficult it will be for your users to identify the text. Enabling a setting will cause that option to be applied to each character. Safe Mode Upload Enabled phpinfo page and searching for Safe Mode. You may also need to set this if you have open_basedir restrictions in place which prevent you from using the default tmp location.]]> Safe Mode Temporary Directory This folder will act as a temporary location for uploads before they are moved to the database. Do *not* include the final slash at the end.]]> Duplicate Search Index Information on Thread Copy? It is not strictly necessary to index a copied thread since the original thread is already indexed. However, you may wish to index copied threads for the sake of completeness. Use Mailqueue System <![CDATA[Enable "-f" Parameter]]> Default Language This setting is the default language for your forum, of all the language(s) you have installed. This language will be used for guests, and for members who have not explicitly set a language in their preferences. Default Style You can set the Default Style for your forum from the styles you have created or added in the Styles and Templates section. All guests, and members who have not explicitly set a style choice in their preferences, will be shown this style. Allow Users to Change Styles Location of clear.gif Store CSS Stylesheets as Files? If this is enabled, you can store the CSS for your pages as files which will reduce the size of pages (since the CSS file can be cached locally and referred to from each page, instead of having all the CSS information within each page). If you enable this, you must create a directory named vbulletin_css in the clientscript folder of your vBulletin installation and the web server must have permission to create, write, and remove files from that directory. (Normally this is accomplished by CHMODing the directory 777.) External CSS URL To serve your css from an external url, enter the path here. Make sure you include the trailing slash, e.g. http://my.css-server.com/pathtocss/ Use DHTML Popup Menus?
    Not all browsers support popup menus. vBulletin automatically detects the client browser and disables popup menus when appropriate.]]>         Use Legacy (Vertical) Postbit Template Enable Email Features? This setting must be enabled for email functions. This includes activation emails, post notification emails, etc. Allow Users to Email Other Members If you disable this setting, users will not be able to contact other members via email through the forum. Even if you enable this setting, you can disable the display of actual email addresses by enable Use Secure Email Sending below. Use Secure Email Sending Email Flood Check This is the number of seconds that must elapse between emails that a user can send to other members. This is primarily to prevent a user from easily spamming members. Set it to 0 to disable this option. SMTP Email this page.

    You can enable this option so you can specify your own mail server info below. This allows your forum to send emails through a mail server other than the one specified in your PHP configuration.]]>         SMTP Host
    Use "localhost" (no quotes) if the mail server is on the local machine.]]>         SMTP Port SMTP servers usually serve from port 25. If the SMTP host uses a different port, then you can specify that here. SMTP Username Some SMTP servers require authentication. In this field you can specify a username with which to authenticate. SMTP Password If your SMTP server requires authentication, then you need to specify a username and password with which to authenticate. This field contains the SMTP password. SMTP Secure Connection Censorship Enabled You can censor words on your forum anywhere they appear in message titles or bodies. To turn on the censor, set this option to Yes. Character to Replace Censored Words Censored Words
    Sentence:
    Dogs and cats fight when it's raining.
    Censor List:
    {dog} cat rain
    Censor Result:
    Dogs and ***s fight when it's ****ing.
    Censor List:
    dog {cat} {rain}
    Censor Result:
    ***s and cats fight when it's raining.

    Do *not* use quotation marks or the results may be unexpected or it may cause errors. Make sure you are using curly brackets {} and not parentheses () when specifying exact words. Also note that you cannot censor phrases here because spaces are used as delimiters.]]>         Blank Character Stripper
    You may enter character codes in two ways:
    1. The character code number only. If this number is between 0 and 255, it is treated as a raw character code. Anytime a byte with that value appears, it will be changed. If this number is greater than 255, it is treated as if it was preceded by a "u".
    2. "u" followed by a character code, such as "u8204". This forces the character code to be treated as a Unicode code point. In this case, &#8204; and the UTF-8 representation for this character will be stripped out.
    Some double-byte character sets may have their display broken by using this setting. If this happens, you should remove the contents of this setting.]]>         Allow New User Registrations You can temporarily or permanently prevent new users from registering by disabling this setting. Use COPPA Registration System this page.]]> Moderate New Members Send Welcome Email If you enable this setting, the user will be sent an email after registration. Note if you enable Verify Email Address in Registration below, the user must verify their address before an email will be sent. If you have Moderate New Members enabled above, this setting will have no effect as the user will be sent an email once validated regardless of this setting. Email Address to Notify About New Members If you would like one or more people to be notified when a new user registers, enter their email address(es), separated by spaces, in this field. Allow Multiple Registration Per User vBulletin will, by default, stop people from signing up for multiple accounts by checking for a vB cookie on their machine; if one is found, they will not be able to sign up again. If you wish for users to be allowed to have multiple accounts, disable this setting. Keep in mind that a user can log out and remove all vB cookies for your site and then reregister if they wish. Verify Email Address in Registration Require Unique Email Addresses By default, vBulletin requires a unique email address for each user. If you disable this setting, multiple users will be allowed to have the same email address. Minimum Username Length This setting is the minimum number of characters that a username must be to be valid. Maximum Username Length This setting is the maximum number of characters that a username may be to be valid. Illegal User Names This setting is the usernames, or parts of usernames, that you do not wish users to be able to register, separated by spaces. If you enter John, for example, no one will be able to register John, but the name Johnathan will also be disallowed. Username Regular Expression
    (Do not start or end the expression with an escape character)

    Examples:

    ^[A-Z]+$ - Characters from A-Z only
    ^[A-Z ]+$ - Characters from A-Z including space
    ^[A-Z0-9 ]+$ - Alphanumeric characters including space
    ^((?!&#\d+;)[\x20-\x7E])+$ - ASCII characters from 32-127

    See PHP.net for more information on regular expressions.]]>         User Referrer referrerid=XXX
    on the end (where XXX is the userid of the referring user) and if a person registers after following such a link, the user will be credited with a referral.]]>         Default Registration Options Select the default setting you want for each option on the registration form. Username Reuse Delay
    For example, if you change "Mike" to "Michael", no one would be able to register with the name "Mike" for 365 days (by default).]]>         Group Message Moderation Require Date of Birth When this option is enabled, users will be required to enter a valid date of birth when registering. Any users without a birthday will be required to enter one when modifying their profile. A valid birth year is from 1902 to the current year. Once a date of birth has been entered, the user will not be allowed to change it. User Title Maximum Characters This setting is the maximum number of characters a user may enter for a custom title. Censored Words
    To censor a word even if it appears as part of another word, for example 'dog' as part of 'dogma', simply enter the word. If you wish to be more selective, and only censor the word if it appears as a whole word by itself, you can enclose it with curly braces, like so:
    {dog}

    Following are some examples. This is the sentence they will be matched against:
    Dogs and cats fight when it's raining.
    Censor list: {dog} cat rain
    Censor result: Dogs and ***s fight when it's ****ing.
    Censor list: dog {cat} {rain}
    Censor result: ***s and cats fight when it's raining.

    Do *not* use quotation marks or the results may be unexpected or it may cause errors. Additionally be certain you are using curly brackets {} and not parentheses () when specifying exact words.]]>         Number of friends to display in the small friends block Exempt Moderators From Censor Friends Per Page on Full Friends List
    Note: This number must be at least 1.]]>         Maximum Visitors to Show on Profile Page Set an upper limit for the number of recent visitors to show. Recent visitor records are cleaned out on a regular basis, so keep this to a reasonably small number. Somewhere between 5 to 30 is ideal. Signature Soft-Linebreak Character Limit
    A line of text without a hard linebreak may wrap when displayed in a browser and actually appear as two lines. This option controls how many characters (other than linebreaks) that are allowed before the text counts as multiple lines.]]>         Allow BB Code in Non Forum Specific Areas Allow Smilies in Non Forum Specific Areas If you enable this setting, users can type such text as :) and :( and they will be converted into smilie images in non forum specific areas. Otherwise, the text will be displayed as text. This setting is not used anywhere in vBulletin itself, but may be used by addons/plugins. <![CDATA[Allow [IMG] Code in Non Forum Specific Areas]]> <![CDATA[Allow [VIDEO] Code in Non Forum Specific Areas]]> Allow HTML in Non Forum Specific Areas strongly recommended that you do not enable this setting. It will allow users to use HTML in non forum specific areas, which could be used maliciously. This setting is not used anywhere in vBulletin itself, but may be used by addons/plugins.]]> <![CDATA[Allow Users to 'Ignore' Moderators]]> If you enable this setting, users will be able to add Moderators and Administrators to their ignore lists. Avatars Enabled Avatar Manager. You can enable/disable custom avatars in Usergroups > Usergroup Manager.]]> Avatars Per-Page
    Note: This number must be at least 1.]]>         Profile Pictures Enabled If you enable this option, users will be able to use profile pictures, which are small images (usually larger than avatars) that users can upload to their profile pages. You can set this per-usergroup with the Can Upload Profile Pictures setting in Usergroup Manager. Enable User Reputation System This enables or disables the user reputation system. Reputation Undefined
    For example, if your lowest reputation is -300, any user with a reputation of -301 or smaller will have this description.]]>         Default Reputation
    If you change this value then you may want to rebuild your reputations to give existing users to same base reputation level.]]>         Number of Reputation Ratings to Display This is how many of the most recent ratings that a user has received to show them in their User CP. <![CDATA[Administrator's Reputation Power]]> This setting is the number of reputation points that an administrator gives or takes with each reputation click. Set this option to 0 to have administrators follow the same rules as all other users. Register Date Factor For every X number of days that a user has been registered, they are given one more point of reputation-altering power. Post Count Factor For every X number of posts that a user makes, they will gain one more point of reputation-altering power. Reputation Point Factor For every X points of reputation that a user gets, they gain one more point of reputation-altering power. Minimum Post Count Minimum Reputation Count Daily Reputation Clicks Limit This is the number of reputation clicks that a user may give over any 24 hour period. Administrators are exempt from this limit. Reputation User Spread This setting is the number of different users that a person must give reputation to before they can hit the same person again. Administrators are exempt from this limit. Allow BB Code in User Notes If this is enabled, user notes can contain BB code and it will be parsed. Allow Smilies in User Notes If this is enabled, smilies will be parsed in User Notes. <![CDATA[Allow [IMG] Code in User Notes]]> <![CDATA[Allow [VIDEO] Code in User Notes]]> Allow HTML in User Notes strongly not recommended!)]]> Members List Enabled Minimum Posts
    This can be used to prevent new registrations from being listed.]]>         Member List Field Options member list page.]]> Members Per Page
    Note: This number must be between 1 and 100.]]>         Allow Advanced Searches If you enable this option, users will be able to perform advanced searches on the Member List. Show Last Post on Profile Page Enable Banning Options If you enable this option, the following ban settings will apply. Banned IP Addresses Enter any IP addresses you wish to ban in this box, separated by spaces. You can enter a full IP address, or any partial IP address. vBulletin starts at the beginning of an IP address and matches out. You should be very careful when banning IP addresses, especially partials, as you will in all likelihood hit at least one innocent person for every one who is a legitimate banning target, if you even manage to hit a legitimate target at all. Banned Email Addresses
    You can use a partial email by entering the @ symbol followed by the domain name: @example.com. You can opt to disallow current users from keeping banned email addresses below.]]>         Aggressive Email Banning
    If you do not enable this option, emails will only be banned if the entry is matched at the end of the email address. For example:
    Enabled: Banning "example" bans example@something.com and something@example.com.
    Disabled: Banning "example" effectively bans nothing. If you wish to ban something@example.com, you must enter "example.com".]]>         Allow User to Keep Banned Email Addresses You can disallow users from keeping an email address after you ban it by enabling this option. If you do so, the next time any users affected by the email ban attempt to modify their profile they will be prompted to enter a different address. Global Ignore This setting allows you to set certain users as being globally ignored. Their posts etc. are not seen by any users except themselves. This gives them the illusion that they are still functioning members of the forum when in reality nobody is seeing their posts. Enter a list of userids separated by spaces. Enabled Built-in BB Codes
    Disabling a BB code will prevent it from working anywhere on the forum, including signatures, private messages, user notes etc.]]>         <![CDATA[Maximum [CODE] Lines]]> Code is displayed as pre-formatted text which does not wrap when it reaches the edges of the table. By placing the code within a scroll box we avoid the situation where the pre-formatted text stretches the forum layout. This setting allows you to specify the maximum height of the scroll box before a scroll bar is displayed. Quick Edit Multi-Quote Quote Limit
    It should be noted that this will not restrict the number of quotes that can be added to a post, potentially a user could enter the Quote tags manually.]]>         Multi-Quote Enabled
    Since this feature allows users to respond to multiple posts at once, any posts made using this feature will not fit into a threaded hierarchy so beware!]]>         Quick Reply Enabled but this has the expense of making Threaded/Hybrid view not very useful, as the system has no way of knowing which post a user is replying to and will simply add it at the end; threaded/hybrid views will become nonsensical.]]> Minimum Characters Per Post This setting is the minimum number of characters a user must put in a post before it is allowed to go through. Set this to 0 to disable it. <![CDATA[Ignore Words in [QUOTE] Tags for Min Chars Check]]> Maximum Characters Per Thread/Post Title Thread and post titles will be limited to this number of characters. Please choose a value larger than 0 and less than 251. Automatically Quote Post / Thread Title Maximum Characters Per Post Set this option to the maximum number of characters you wish to allow in one post. If you set this to 0 it will disable the maximum character check. Maximum Images Per Post/Signature Set this to the maximum number of images you wish to allow per post and signature. For the purposes of this count, the post and any signature the user has are counted together. Set this to 0 to disable the images count. <![CDATA[Prevent 'SHOUTING']]> If you set this to 0, this function will be disabled.
    For some international forums with different character sets this setting may cause issues, and in that case should be disabled.]]>         <![CDATA[Allow Dynamic URL for [IMG] Tags]]> Minimum Time Between Posts If you enter a number other than 0 (which will disable this function) here, it will cause a user to be forced to wait at least this many seconds between posts. It can prevent a user from attempting to flood your forum with new posts, through either manual or automatic means. Administrators and moderators are always exempt from floodcheck. Time Limit on Editing of Thread Title This setting is the number of minutes in which a user may edit the title of a thread that he starts, and have it apply to the thread listing screen (forumdisplay). After this time period, the change will only apply to the title shown in the first post of the thread. (Administrators and moderators with permission may always edit the title of the thread as shown on forumdisplay through the Edit Thread function.) Time Limit on Adding a Poll to a Thread Time Limit on Editing of Posts This is the time in minutes after the post was posted. If a user posted a post at 1:00 PM and this setting is set to 5, then that user will not be able to edit that post after 1:05 PM. <![CDATA[Time to Wait Before Starting to Display 'Edited by...']]> Edited by xxx message being appended at the bottom of an edited message.]]> Log IP Addresses If this setting is set to Do Not Log IP, no IPs will be logged when messages are posted. If set to Display, But Require Admin or Mod, then the IP will be logged and an administrator or moderator with permission can view it. Display Publicly will show the IP on the post itself for all to see. Enable Clickable Message Formatting Controls
    The full editor option controls all areas other than quick reply and quick edit.]]>         Smiliebox Total Smilies Enter the total number of smilies you wish to be shown in the clickable smiliebox before the user must click to see more. If you would like to hide the clickable smiliebox for all users, set this to 0. Smiliebox Smilies Per Row If the clickable smiliebox is enabled, enter the number of smilies that should be shown per row here. WYSIWYG Smilie Menu Total Smilies
    Set this value to 0 if you would like to hide the popup smilie menu completely.]]>         Limit Space Taken Up By Attachments (Total)
    1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte
    1048576 bytes = 1 megabyte

    The total file-size of all attachments cannot exceed this number.]]>         Attachments Per Post
    vBulletin allows users to attach multiple files to a single post. This setting defines the maximum number of files that a user may attach to one post.]]>         Attachment Inputs
    For example, if a user wants to attach 5 files to their post (assuming you allow at least 5 attachments per post) and you only allow 3 files to be uploaded at a time (this setting), then the user will need to select and upload 3 of the 5 files first and then select and upload the last 2 files after the first 3 are done.]]>         Attachment URL Inputs
    "URL attachments" are copied to your server at post time, similar to custom avatars.]]>         Allow Deletion of Attachments Beyond Edit Time Limit here (Time Limit on Editing of Posts).]]> Allow Deletion of Attachments in Closed Threads here (Time Limit on Editing of Posts).]]> Allow Duplicate Attached Images View Attached Images Inline
    Enabling this option makes for convenient viewing of attached images but also increases the load time of threads with lots of attached images, increases bandwidth usage, and increases server resource usage when a user loads a thread with lots of attached images.]]>         Enable Thumbnails
    Enabling thumbnails is useful in conserving bandwidth on forums where attachments are displayed inline and in preventing large (dimensions) attached images from stretching the forum layout.

    The border and dimensions options require either the GD2 or ImageMagick image processing libraries. These options will not add anything if you are using the GD1 library.

    If you are enabling this option and have existing image attachments on your forums, you will need to rebuild your thumbnails to generate thumbnails for those existing attachments.]]>         Thumbnail Size
    If you are changing this value and have existing image attachments on your forums, you will need to rebuild your thumbnails to update those existing attachments.]]>         Thumbnail Quality Thumbnails Per Row
    This setting can be used to appropriately fit thumbnails to your forum layout.]]>         Maximum Poll Options This setting limits the number of choices a user can put in a poll. Poll Option Length When typing the text for a poll option, the number of characters in the input field cannot exceed this number. Update Thread Last Post on Poll Vote Required Thread Rating Votes to Show Rating
    Thread ratings are relatively inaccurate with just a few votes. This setting can be used to delay the results until enough votes have been cast to give a more accurate rating.]]>         Allow Thread Rating Vote Changes Enabling this option allows users to rate a thread and then change that rating later. Search Engine Enabled Searching is a very useful feature but it can be quite server intensive on busy forums. If you are concerned about server load you can disable this feature. Minimum Time Between Searches This setting can be used to limit the number of searches any one user can perform within a certain time period. This is useful in preventing the search feature from taking too many server resources on busy forums. Search Index Minimum Word Length
    For example, if this is set to 4 then users can't search for 3 letter words. You can reduce the size of your database by increasing this number and re-indexing here.]]>         Search Index Maximum Word Length Words to be Included Despite Character Limit Use this setting to include special words in the search index that are outside the range of word lengths to be indexed. Search Results Posts Per Page
    Note: This number must be at least 1.]]>         Maximum Search Results to Return For example, if this is set to 200 and a search finds 300 results then only the first 200 matches will be displayed. Allow Search Wild Cards Enabling this option allows users to use wildcards (an asterisk *) in their searches. The asterisk respresents any number and combination of characters in the part of the search word in which it is used. Automatic Similar Thread Search here.

    If you are concerned about server load you can disable this feature.]]>         Words to be excluded from search includes/searchwords.php file.]]> Script Name for Forum Home Page You can use this setting to change the name of your forum index file so that you can put another index file in its place. The replacement index file might be a forum intro page or a portal of some kind. There are many possible applications. Display Logged in Users?
    There are 4 options:

    Yes, Alphabetical to all visitors - This option will show an alphabetized list of users to guests and members.
    Yes, Random to all visitors - This option will show a random order list of users to guests and members.
    Yes, Alphabetical to members only - This option will show an alphabetized list of users to members only.
    Yes, Random to members only - This option will show a random order list of users to members only.]]>         <![CDATA[Display Today's Birthdays?]]> Display Calendar Events? This setting can be used to limit the number of upcoming events that are displayed on your forum homepage.