About This File
ACM is no longer being updated. It evolved into its own software package, independent of SMF, called Vesta, formerly Gaia, and I am working on maintaining and developing Vesta, not ACM. Whatever you get when you download ACM is what you get. The SMF coterie has fixes for bugs and mishaps for you, I will try to continue supporting it, but beyond this I will not be updating it or adding new features, if it stops working then it stops working, I'm not rewriting anything or fixing any bugs, I don't have the time to maintain both ACM and Vesta, and Vesta wins.
This modification will make quite a few changes to your SMF installation to enable management of characters. This works more in favour of role-plays than SlammedDime's SubAccounts mod, intended to better streamline and simplify the use of subaccounts on SMF. This mod also comes with a conversion tool, which will transfer subaccounts over to characters. The screencaps are all from a live board using it, to demonstrate vaguely what it looks like in use, not just testing setup.
Features:
- Create and manage characters from user account. Never switch accounts again. Ever. For anything.
- Edit and delete override functions for staff; edit and delete characters across your site.
- Optional character approval queue, new characters can be set to not be available for use until approved by an admin.
- Edit a character as many times as you like, until you're done, and then tick Complete to ship it to the staff for vetting.
- Permission-based character approval override, for those times when you're approving yourself anyway, and it's tedious.
- Approve or reject characters, rejection simply sends them back into the in-progress status.
- Set up a character biography however you like, right in the character management screens. Fields can be text inputs, large text areas, select boxes, or image uploads (!!!).
- Biography fields can be arranged to your liking. Set display position numbers, which it will order by for display in character management and profiles.
- Decide whether a field displays beside the avatar in profiles, or under it, if you're using the auto-field list, up to you.
- Character groups can be given their own badges and colours. Anywhere a character name link appears, it will be coloured. Badges can be uploaded directly in the ACP.
- Characters have their own title, blurb, and signature (at this time, character signatures appear even if signatures are turned off, but will not display in threads if it is off).
- Posting selector drop-downs in quick reply and on posting screens.
- Posts go to the character, and swapping between poster will transfer that post in and out of post counts as required.
- Separate character count, apart from the member count, for display in board stats.
- Allow unlimited characters, or put a soft cap, or hard cap, on character numbers. (Hard cap does not have an override; if you set a hard cap, mean it).
- Freely edit any post made by a character that you own.
- Characters display online/offline status markers, all of them will say they're online if their player is.
- Characters will have post groups, based on their post count, if such are set up; not the permissions, but the title.
- Basically, characters look virtually indistinguishable from regular accounts, despite not being an account.
- Literally automatic thread tracker. Threads that a character posts to will automatically be added to their thread tracker.
- Tracked threads can be removed, if added by accident (mis-post...), or notes added to the entry, for thread summaries and notes.
- Semantically speaking, templates can be restructured to display different poster info based on whether it's a character or not.
Some Notes:
- You can use BBCode in basically everything in this mod that's a large text area. Yep, bio fields, too.
- The SubAccount converter is hidden. Visit admin;area=characters;sa=convert to access it.
- The SubAccount converter is not supported officially. There are too many ways that it can go sour and lose data. Take backups. Pray. Unless I'm doing it for you, I will not be helping with conversion problems.
- If it makes you feel better, it's converted two boards over for me flawlessly.
- Some other mods may conflict with this one. I do know already, it will conflict with most Avatar On Board Index-type mods.
- Anything that goes through a different means to post topics and posts to the board besides the posting screen, will not be capable of flagging for character display, so that's a thing, too.
- Several other features are planned in future, those will come in versions 1.0.1 and 1.0.2, I don't have a time-line for that as of now.
- Some things are not pretty, and may be later. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I could've done the templates better, but, here we are. C'est la vie.
- By default, this mod will be made to support SMF 2.1 when it reaches RC. It was originally built on 2.1 Beta 3, I just back-ported it because 2.1 RC is a ways away.
- If you are afraid of doing so yourself, I will install this mod for you, and or run the SubAccount converter, for a fee. I will need access to your files and database.
If you have any suggestions for, or comments about, this mod, keep them to the comment section here. If you need help with it, post on the board. If you get an error doing anything, I need what you were doing, or trying to do, where in the mod you were (URL is great), and the exact error you got, copy-pasta it for me.
(Yay, my first public mod release, yay...)
What's New in Version 2.0 See changelog
Released
This version (2.0) only works on 2.1 Beta 3 at this time. SMF 2.0.15 back-porting is on-going. We also had a nice name rebrand. Because reasons, really.
- Updated the biography system. Bios are now comprised of tabs, sections, and fields, and come default in a tabbed arrangement with section header separators.
- Entire database system has been altered. ACM 1.0 and ACM 2.0 can actually run side-by-side.
- ACM 1.0 => ACM 2.0 upgrader added as the database structure is different in 2.0. No promise it works. None. The converter from SubAccounts is also still there. (sa=upgrade, sa=convert)
- Departments and Ranks have made a come-back. Departments are children of Alliances, Ranks are standalone.
- Character journals! Your members can now keep personal logs, diaries, or whatever, which show in a central location in profile.
- Speaking of profile, IT LOOKS A LOT BETTER. It is now tabbed and mobile responsive.
- NPC management and controls have been added; you can allow groups to post with their own NPCs, or any NPC, via permissions.
- 2.1's installation comes with alerts, these will send to admins (anyone with the administrate characters permission) when a new character is awaiting approval, and to users when one of their pending characters is approved or rejected.
- Character creation is also now tabbed and spiffiprettier. Much cleaner. Very improve.
- Image upload fields gather for a pow-wow in an Images tab, too, so it doesn't matter where you place them.
- Auto-list controls; create a new auto-list, set a name, page URL, type up page information, and then attach it to any bio field in the system. You now have an automatic claim list that updates when users fill it in and the character is accepted.
- Thread in-character dating and topic description functions are built in. The SMF 2.0 version will not have descriptions, but will have in-character dates. If dates are on, journals order by that, not posted time.
- Character manifest list. Tabbed; all characters are arranged by alliance (these are tab level), then departments (sections) and rank is displayed. Also lists creation and last post dates.
- There's also a rank tab, for a full list of all ranks, their descriptions, and badges.
- Basically all the templates have been redone. It's much prettier this time around.
- It does operate on PHP 7+.
- Character names have been split into first, middle, and last. There's a setting in the ACP now that will change the order names are in (First Last, Last First, or Last, First).
- There's also a giant Welcome Screen in the ACP that'll tell you what does what. c= Only shows on the first time you access the ACM ACP sections and never shows again, but you can manually relocate it by sa=welcome.
9-7: Fixed some oopsies in the version 2 installer.
