XF 1.4 Buncha miscellaneous newbie questions

[seebs]

• Can I change the timeout before I have to reenter my password to approve users or do admin stuff?
• Is there anything that allows something like markdown for post editing? I much prefer markdown to either manual bbcode or rich text editors.
• Is there an obvious way to toggle whether smileys are enabled or not per-post, per-user, or something like that? Some users want them and some don't. (My immediate hack solution of "just delete them all in the control panel" has made the old ASCII users happy, but not necessarily everyone else.)
• I have a flash-blocking addon in my browser. When I go to the main page of my site I see a little flash icon thing. How do I find out what's trying to display a flash thing and remove it?
• What happens to my forum if/when I forget to renew my subscription to xenforo? (I am... pretty forgetful, to put it mildly.)
• For that matter, what happens in the unhappy event that xenforo folds and stops being in business?
• Do I need to do anything special or fancy for database backups, or should normal database backup stuff be reasonably safe?
• I wanted HTML in my title. I've cheated by putting that HTML in the administrator title, and making the other administrator use a personal title, but is there a better way to do this?
• Edited to add: The "add a smiley" thing wants an image URL. It doesn't appear to do image upload or anything, though. Is there a canonical place to store images?
• And another: Is there a way to set "notify on approval" off by default rather than having to do it manually every time? Or just not even require email addresses?

 

[seebs]

So I spent some time studying the "notify user if action taken" thing in user approval. And it turns out that it's set based on the presence of spamDetails. But that's done in a... thing. The thing looks like a template, but it's not a template that's in the editable template list. It appears to be found in install/data/admin_templates.xml, but so far as I can tell, this only applies if you ask to "rebuild xenforo", and if you do that, it first redownloads the original version of the site and then applies that. So I don't seem to be able to change that behavior.

 

[Jeremy]

You can edit admin / email templates in debug mode

 

[Mike]

Can I change the timeout before I have to reenter my password to approve users or do admin stuff?

It's not configurable. It is 1 hour of inactivity in the control panel.

Is there anything that allows something like markdown for post editing? I much prefer markdown to either manual bbcode or rich text editors.

That would require custom development, but you're pretty much fighting against an app that's designed around BB code.

Is there an obvious way to toggle whether smileys are enabled or not per-post, per-user, or something like that?

There's no per user option to control that.

I have a flash-blocking addon in my browser. When I go to the main page of my site I see a little flash icon thing. How do I find out what's trying to display a flash thing and remove it?

It would likely be the Flash blocker that would need to indicate what/where the Flash is. The only thing Flash is used for is to help with file uploading (the "upload a file" button).

What happens to my forum if/when I forget to renew my subscription to xenforo? (I am... pretty forgetful, to put it mildly.)

Nothing. You just can't get access to updates/ticket support.

For that matter, what happens in the unhappy event that xenforo folds and stops being in business?

Roughly the same as the previous response then I assume.

Do I need to do anything special or fancy for database backups, or should normal database backup stuff be reasonably safe?

I'm not sure what you mean by "normal" DB backups, but something like mysqldump will be fine. Do backup the files though as well.

I wanted HTML in my title. I've cheated by putting that HTML in the administrator title, and making the other administrator use a personal title, but is there a better way to do this?

Custom user titles don't support HTML, so that is roughly the way to do it.

Edited to add: The "add a smiley" thing wants an image URL. It doesn't appear to do image upload or anything, though. Is there a canonical place to store images?

It's really your choice where you put them. I probably wouldn't put your custom smilies in the default location to ensure that you don't accidentally overwrite them when upgrading.

And another: Is there a way to set "notify on approval" off by default rather than having to do it manually every time? Or just not even require email addresses?

As noted, this isn't something that's configurable. It's determined in the code. While you can edit the templates in debug mode, that's more of a developer option so I wouldn't recommend doing that.

 

[seebs]

Thanks!

Is there a way to not ask for birthdays? I want to have the age requirement, but I'd rather just ask people to confirm they're 13-or-over rather than asking for details. (A lot of the forum is abuse survivors, they are understandably very concerned about revealing details. I've already totally disabled email so they can put anything they want as an email address.)

Hmm. It does appear the flash thing is an attachment uploader.

 

[Paul B]

Date of birth requirement can be unchecked in the options.

 

[seebs]

Date of birth requirement can be unchecked in the options.

Yes, but then it doesn't do the "require that you're 13" thing, I think? I want to keep the legally-mandated part, but not ask about specific days. Like "are you 13 or older" would be fine.

 

[Mike]

If you want to do an age check, we only do that by collecting a birthday.

 

[Paul B]

You could create a custom user field checkbox.

 

[seebs]

Hmm. I might do that and drop the birthday field. For now I've just altered the template to tell people they're allowed to put in nonsense if they want.

As to the markdown thing: I'd be fine with something that pretty much converted-to-bbcode on submit, probably, I just find it a lot more convenient for initial entry. It's a lot more convenient to write "*foo*" than to write "foo" or mess with the GUI elements. (And ctrl-i sorta works, I guess, but I'm not as used to it and I tend to think in punctuation more than in control-keys.