Subaccounts

[elf_fu]

Hello, this looks like a very interesting mod. Could you please port it back to SMF 1.1.18? Thank you

I don't think the original mod author has been working on this for--years. I am not sure, but unless they pick it up again or give permission to let someone else take over it, I don't think it'll happen.

[Ahadawan]

Has anyone been able to assign the permissions for regular members so that you (the regular member) can create a Subaccount through your main account but just like (one of the options for registration of) regular members, the Administrator has to accept/activate the account in the Administrator panel before the user can fully use the Subaccount?

Edit:

I'm also curious about mod-related bugs and what not, does anyone use this mod on a larger site and what type of problems could arise due to the mod? I would of course test it out on a test site before I use it live, but a test-site has its limits. What about deleting a member which has a subaccount linked to it? Is that safe? Some information from someone with experience of running the mod on a large site would be nice. It is a rather larger mod after all.

[elf_fu]

Has anyone been able to assign the permissions for regular members so that you (the regular member) can create a Subaccount through your main account but just like (one of the options for registration of) regular members, the Administrator has to accept/activate the account in the Administrator panel before the user can fully use the Subaccount?

Edit:

I'm also curious about mod-related bugs and what not, does anyone use this mod on a larger site and what type of problems could arise due to the mod? I would of course test it out on a test site before I use it live, but a test-site has its limits. What about deleting a member which has a subaccount linked to it? Is that safe? Some information from someone with experience of running the mod on a large site would be nice. It is a rather larger mod after all.

I am currently using this mod on my site. We have roughly 200+ accounts.

Positives:

   
• If you are a role playing website, or an RPG type forum, this mod is excellent in saving your members the hassle of creating new emails for other accounts.
• Ease of access to accounts: delete, create, merge and handle subaccounts all from one place: profile
• The ability to create a staff account and share it with staff
• The drop down menus for ease of switching: both at the top of the forum and IN posts themselves
• Administration can view which subaccounts belong to which parent account--in case of bad behavior from members etc

Cons:

   
• Mod creator appears no longer active and has not given permission for anyone else to pick it up and work on it
• Profile loop that additional editing is required to fix (Parent account's profile copies to all subaccounts)
• Inability to show subaccounts on the member list without sharing who the parent account is. Some of my members immensely value their privacy and consider their alts, or subaccounts and knowing who plays what character, part of that privacy.
• Confusing Group Permissions set up - Can accidentally grant members the ability to see and MANAGE other peoples sub accounts. There are permissions in group permissions list at top and bottom--they are misleadingly labelled

I have not yet deleted a parent account yet. I would assume, however, the best case scenario for this mod would be to find the subaccounts, delete them first, and then remove the parent account.

I am sorry I couldn't answer all of your questions, and hope that somewhat helped!

[FireDitto]

If you delete a parent account, the Sub-Accounts end up floating around in the wilds. They are there, and you can click on them -- if you stumble across them. But you can't reassign them and you can't access them properly. The only way I could come across fixing it was to delete the subaccount that had its parent deleted.

I don't advise deleting a parents with subs still assigned, unless you plan on deleting them too.

[Ahadawan]

Thank you both for the replies, especially elf_fu for the pros and cons list. 

I'm also wondering about when you post a topic from one account and then later go into the post and edit it to belong to another user, it seems it doesn't get transferred over as the topic-starter when you look in the "action=profile;area=showposts;sa=topics;" but it seems to work for the "action=profile;area=showposts;sa=message". Since the new member is the owner of the first post now, it should be listed in both and be removed from the first but as i mention that seems not to be the case? I minor flaw i guess? Makes me wonder what happens when you Start a topic from another user, does it then add both to the account chosen in the list, or does it split them up like when you edit the first post in an existing thread.

Have you guys seen any problem with this?

[elf_fu]

Thank you both for the replies, especially elf_fu for the pros and cons list. 

I'm also wondering about when you post a topic from one account and then later go into the post and edit it to belong to another user, it seems it doesn't get transferred over as the topic-starter when you look in the "action=profile;area=showposts;sa=topics;" but it seems to work for the "action=profile;area=showposts;sa=message". Since the new member is the owner of the first post now, it should be listed in both and be removed from the first but as i mention that seems not to be the case? I minor flaw i guess? Makes me wonder what happens when you Start a topic from another user, does it then add both to the account chosen in the list, or does it split them up like when you edit the first post in an existing thread.

Have you guys seen any problem with this?

I haven't accidentally posted with the wrong account/had a member post with the wrong account and ask for it to be corrected yet (if I understand what you mean), so I haven't run into this problem yet.  I will keep and eye out. FireDitto, I believe, has a much larger board and has been running subaccounts on theirs longer than I--they might be able to answer this one better than I!

[Caltan]

You can reassign an orphaned subaccount by editing the parent_id field in the members table.  Kind of a pain, but at least it doesn't leave the thing in limbo.

Makes me wonder what happens when you Start a topic from another user, does it then add both to the account chosen in the list, or does it split them up like when you edit the first post in an existing thread.

I don't think this is a serious problem, but then my RPs have all characters/subaccounts public, so misattribution doesn't really bother me so I haven't looked into it much.

[FireDitto]

Have you tried going into;

Maintenance -> Forum Maintenance -> Run the various options.

I haven't tested, but I would assume that would put the topics back under the correct member's name.

[Teh Lizzeh]

I'm not sure if anyone can help with this but my subaccounts keep moving? It's just me and one other member for now that I know of we both have multiple sub accounts but our most recent keep moving on the profile of the parent account. So say there's five subaccounts, Bob, Mary, John, Anne, George, and they were made in that order they should be staying in that order. But instead sometimes it shows up as Bob, George, Mary, John, Anne. If that makes any sense?

[Ahadawan]

I'll have to try the method with maintenance next time I see it. The user ended up posting it from the correct user instead and we deleted the first.


What do you guys think about 2.1 and forward?
For every new update (2.0.5 to 2.0.6 etc) we get one step further from the version Subaccounts was last supported. One of my sites still run 1.1.19 and has a lot of modifications. Now we're creating a new site and have been modding the site quite a bit the last month and added subaccounts as well as custom fields etc to the new site. Now we're considering what's gonna happen in the future. A couple of years (?) from now I assume 2.0.x is gonna be in the state 1.1.19 is now, with 2.1.x as the stable version and perhaps a second version on the way.

[Caltan]

I did a test install of subaccounts on the 2.1 github alpha, and it works just fine even though it mostly needed to be installed by hand (there are a lot of indent changes and other stuff that barfs up the package manager). 

Honestly, as long as it continues to work, I'll continue testing and patching; it would be NICE if I could just click and be done but I certainly have no trouble doing edits on my own, especially since the subaccounts are so important to how I run my RPs.

[Asusrev]

I tested in 2.0.6, run perfectly. Other topics are also good, with some restructuring.

[arogers073]

I have it running on 2.0.6 without any problems until lately. Recently it has been giving me 'session verification failed' errors when I try to switch accounts. It usually works on the second time and it's not all the time however these errors don't show up in my error log. Is there anything I can do to fix this?

[ariescapes]

Has anyone managed to be able to put the Subaccount Avatar on the Manage Subaccount pageview?

I have

Code Select Expand

<li class="name windowbg2"><a href="', $account['href'], '">', $account['name'], '</a><br>
                  ', $context['account']['avatar']['image'], '</li>';

Which shows nothing. It isn't broken code, it just isn't calling anything.

and

Code Select Expand

<li class="name windowbg2"><a href="', $account['href'], '">', $account['name'], '</a><br>
                  ', $context['member']['avatar']['image'], '</li>';


This calls the member avatar, not the subaccount avatar. It doesn't seem to like $account or $subaccounts either.

[Caltan]

You have to add it to the array in order to pull it into the template.

First, open Sources/SubAccount.php and find this:

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                // Setup the array
                foreach ($loaded_ids as $id)
                {
                        if (loadMemberContext($id))
                        {
                                $context['subaccounts'][] = array(

After that, add:

Code Select Expand

                                        'avatar' => $memberContext[$id]['avatar']['image'],

Then go into Themes/default/SubAccount.template.php and you can do this:

Code Select Expand

<li class="name windowbg2"><a href="', $account['href'], '">', $account['name'], '</a><br>
                  ', $account['avatar'], '</li>';

You'll need to tweak the .subaccount li css so it doesn't clip in the hidden overflow, but I don't know how big your avs are.  Or you can put in css for .subaccount li.name img to resize it.

[ariescapes]

You are my new best friend. thank you!!

[Ahadawan]

I removed a SubAccount (just deleted it) without splitting it from the user, now I can see it in ?action=admin;area=subaccounts but other than that it's just gone. I wanted to remove it completely, how can I fix the remaining links and avoid this in the future?

I can see it in the smf_Subaccounts table in phpMyAdmin, only the parent value and the value of the user I removed, can I safely remove that line? Are there any other edits I should do?

[Janden]

How would I get the subaccounts to show in the memberslist as their own entry, rather than as a child of the parent entry?

[MoreAWhyMan]

I don't suppose anyone could let me know how I could get this mod to work with 2.0.7? I'm pretty darn new at all this so any help would be appreciated.

[Caltan]

Janden: restore the original versions of themes/default/Memberlist.template.php and Sources/Memberlist.php and make sure you have "show on member list" checked on the SubAccount settings page.

MoreAWhyMan: you need to click "advanced" on the Package Manager screen and emulate 2.0RC3.  Then it will mostly install on its own, but you'll probably need to add the dropdown to the index.template.php for whatever theme you're using.