Professional Support Document

Smiley packs, a new feature that has been included in E-Blah 3, allows you to install extra smiley codes by simply applying a pack.  The following tutorial will show you how to install and use smiley packs.

First, you need to download a smiley pack (which can be found on the eblah.com downloads page, or by independent members on the eblah.com forum or elsewhere).  After you download and extract the smiley pack, you should notice two directories ‘Mods’ and ‘BlahImages’.  Everything in the ‘Mods’ folder should be uploaded to your root directory (the directory with Blah.pl in it).  Everything in the BlahImages folder (which should be a ‘Smilie’ directory), should be uploaded to your BlahImages directory (or equivalent).  After you have done that, you can logout of your FTP utility and login to your forum.

After logging into your forum, go to your Admin center by clicking the image on your forums menu.  Next, click on ‘Extra Smiley Code’, then find the ‘Smiley Pack’ section at the bottom of the page.

To activate a smiley pack, click ‘Install’.  To deactivate a smiley pack, click ‘Deactivate’.

Please note that when you install a pack and remove images, the pack will still show as ‘Installed’ (even if all the images in the pack were removed from the ‘Extra Smiley Code’ page).  This is because once you install a pack; it is marked as ‘Installed’, and will not be marked as removed unless removed from the ‘Smiley Pack’ section.



Note: As of this posting, Smiley Packs are not avalible to the public, as they are currently only in the Alpha 3 (unreleased) version.

Hey Justin - Just wondering if this is available yet.  I downloaded the packs before I read the note at the bottom and was confused why the instructions, ability to download, but not functional.  Thanks!

You need to install the latest ALPHA for them to work.



- Justin

Quoted from admin, posted April 10, 2003, 4:38pm at here

You need to install the latest ALPHA for them to work.



- Justin

Hi Justin,

I am using V2.9. Can I add the smileys using the Admin panel instead?

Nope, only version 3 can.

Quoted from admin, posted April 14, 2003, 3:53pm at here

Nope, only version 3 can.

We couldn't? I thought in the Admin panel, there is an option call "add smiley?"

Can we upload out extra smilies into the smilies folder and specify the code for each additional smilies I upload? That panel seems to allow us to do so.

Yes you can just add them that way ... did you write the highlight table cell script yourself??? Any chance you'd wanna share it?? That's some real nice work you've done on your site... Looking forword to IT Bytes...

Version 3.0 allows you to install the smiley packs without all the work of typing it in and saving them.  Version 3 is downloadable (the Alpha), from the Downloads page (under the "Alphas" section).



- Justin

Quoted from tsopranolcn, posted April 16, 2003, 3:52pm at here

Yes you can just add them that way ... did you write the highlight table cell script yourself??? Any chance you'd wanna share it?? That's some real nice work you've done on your site... Looking forword to IT Bytes...

Hehe... Thanks,

Got the idea of table highlighting from Dynamic Drive: http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex11/highlighttable.htm

Add the script in my template file and modified the boardindex.pl file as required by the script.

Alot of hand coding involved as I am not familiar with mods. Alot of trials and error before everything is right and I get what I desire!

Thanks Daniel!! I've been messing around with the same script from dynamicdrive but haven't been as successful as you have with it. I can get the tables to change colors on mouseover but they don't change back on mouseout... Did you need do any editing to the script itself???

Quoted from tsopranolcn, posted April 18, 2003, 6:08pm at here

Thanks Daniel!! I've been messing around with the same script from dynamicdrive but haven't been as successful as you have with it. I can get the tables to change colors on mouseover but they don't change back on mouseout... Did you need do any editing to the script itself???

I took some time to figure that out too! I did not modify the DHTML at all.

You need to use onMouseout to get the cell to change back to the original color:

Code onMouseover="changeto(event, 'NEW COLOR')" onMouseout="changeback(event, 'ORIGINAL COLOR')"

NEW COLORis the color which you want the cell to change to.
ORIGINAL COLOR is the color your cell originally is.


You need to add this to the cells which you do not want to change color when you Mouseover them:

Code <td bgcolor="$color{'win'}" align="center" valign="top" id="ignore">

Add id="ignore" to the cells which you do not want the effect

I have also cleanup the table coding in the Boardindex.pl as nested tables dun seems to work well with this DHTML.

Hope this helps. Let me know if there are still difficulties.

Quoted from admin, posted April 16, 2003, 8:38pm at here

Version 3.0 allows you to install the smiley packs without all the work of typing it in and saving them.  Version 3 is downloadable (the Alpha), from the Downloads page (under the "Alphas" section).



- Justin

Thanks Justin,

Is there any difference between alpha and beta release? Is it safe for us to use alpha release?

Thanks for the help with the code again...

And Alphas should be safe to use but I'd recommend you do a full backup before updating so if you have a problem you can re-install the earlier version...

Just rename the directorys you are replacing before upgrading ... and keep them until the next beta release.    There is no new file writing routines, so it should be clean. 



- Justin

Quoted from admin, posted April 21, 2003, 6:12pm at here

Just rename the directorys you are replacing before upgrading ... and keep them until the next beta release.    There is no new file writing routines, so it should be clean. 



- Justin

Justin,

I am more comfortable in using Beta software than Alphas.
Cannot wait for beta to be release so I hard code and modified the code in the posting file to include more smileys...

Trying hard to keep track of all the changes so that future upgrading will be easier!