Hiding Child Board information on Home Page

Started by Dave En Velo, February 10, 2019, 07:59:33 PM

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Dave En Velo

My Child Board Names are rather long and there are a lot of them and they make the Home Page display cluttered.  My users would rather select a Board and go to the list of Child Boards.  I cannot see a configuration option and assume this is probably a straightforward change to a PHP file somewhere but it is beyond me.  Can someone suggest where I might start?  I am using SMF 2.0.15.  Thanks.


Dave En Velo

I agree the mod recommended by br360 does exactly what I want.  I had disregarded it since it is marked as being for versions up to 2.0.4 and has not been updated since June 2013.

However, I decided to take the offered advice with the following results:

1. I tried to install the mod on my vanilla 2.0.15 and it was bounced "Sorry, but this modification does not appear to be compatible with the selected version."
2. I went to advanced on mod installation, reverted to 2.0.4 and tried again.  This time I got stuck at "FTP Information Required" because a couple of file permissions were read only.  I made manual changes to the file permissions and it appeared to work.  The mod is doing exactly what I want, allowing me to turn off the display of Child Boards on the Home page in a flexible manner.

Unfortunately this leaves me with a reverted SMF setup at 2.0.4.  The revert process advised me to install a security update that also failed on read only file permissions.  When I reset the file permissions it failed again with the message:
QuoteError in Package Installation
At least one error was encountered during a test installation of this package. It is strongly recommended that you do not continue with installation unless you know what you are doing, ...
Well I am reasonably certain I don't know what I am doing.  I do not understand what revert has done to my setup.  Am I really back at version 2.0.4?  If I am why would the security mod for 2.0.4 not work?

Luckily I have done all this work on a Bitnami test image of SMF in the cloud and so can discard it with no loss because it does not seem sensible to run version 2.0.4 live without security mods, or even to run any version of SMF prior to 2.0.15.

To achieve what I want I need an update to the Remove Child Boards mod that will run under 2.0.15.  The mod, Remove_Child_Boards_2.3.4.zip, can be found at
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=2864   

Researching mods a bit more I came across another mod that might be doing the same thing and appears to be compatible with 2.0.15.  ChildboardsOnlyV2.zip at https://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1745  Whilst this mod installs without reverting it has not been updated since June 2009 and so it is not surprising that it installs with errors and does not work.

To conclude, as br360 pointed out, the functionality of Remove Child Boards in mod 2864 is exactly what I want.  Unfortunately it needs updating for 2.0.15.  It appears to be about 100 lines of code in the zip file but beyond my skill level.  Any thoughts on how I might start?

Thanks

PS. The two attachments show what I am trying to achieve and were created with mod 2864.  The before image has child board information on the home page the after does not.

Arantor

It doesn't leave you at a reverted version at all. It leaves you at the package manager saying "when a plugin wants to install, pretend I'm version 2.0.4 when I look up what instructions to install as"

drewactual

yeah, 'revert' is a bad description... what it did was 'emulate' 2.0.15 as 2.0.4 so it could be translated to what a 2.0.4 would have expected... it's really no different than using a current version of MSWord to open a .doc file as opposed to a .docx...

Dave En Velo

Thanks Arantor & drewactual for your help, timely and just what I needed.  I have just gone back to another vanilla instance of 2.0.15 and applied mod "Remove Child Boards".  As before it installs clean if I emulate 2.0.4 and manually alter a couple of file permissions to execute (Admin.php & ManageSettings.php in Sources) as requested by the install process.

I will need to do a bit more testing prior to live running but it's looking good.

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