NPC Profiles

[Brian]

Anna-Bo, I'd have no idea what the issue is without a link to the forum.

Were you following the steps in this post?

support.proboards.com/post/6834223

[Anna-Bo]

Sept 24, 2017 9:40:29 GMT -8 Brian said:

Anna-Bo , I'd have no idea what the issue is without a link to the forum.

Were you following the steps in this post?

support.proboards.com/post/6834223

Thank you! Sorry for the late reply, I had set aside the NPC thing, but I will check if this works first.

[Anna-Bo]

No.. tried it on my regular Forum.... but nothing....
I added the new fields to the HMTL first then in the Javascript... maybe it is that? But it shouldn't be....

I looked to see how it was in the mini-profile to see that the account that posted the NPC couldn't select a NPC.... it was just the normal day.

Hopefully you can see what I did wrong!
Thank you!


Edit: Got it.... typed everything by hand, that worked!

[Zartan]

Sorry if this has been covered, but is it possible to make a profile for the NPC's?  When you click on the NPC to view their profile, it always brings mine up. Can that be changed?

[Brian]

Jan 19, 2018 13:23:43 GMT -8 Zartan said:

Sorry if this has been covered, but is it possible to make a profile for the NPC's?  When you click on the NPC to view their profile, it always brings mine up. Can that be changed?

It should be bringing the NPC's profile up in place of your own.

Can you provide a link to the forum this is happening on?

[Zartan]

Jan 29, 2018 9:12:48 GMT -8 Brian said:

Jan 19, 2018 13:23:43 GMT -8 Zartan said:

Sorry if this has been covered, but is it possible to make a profile for the NPC's?  When you click on the NPC to view their profile, it always brings mine up. Can that be changed?

It should be bringing the NPC's profile up in place of your own.

Can you provide a link to the forum this is happening on?

Sure: deathwatchvets.boards.net/thread/19/introduce?page=1&scrollTo=63  The 4th post by "Der Geist" is my NPC. When you click on it, it goes to my Admin profile.

[Brian]

Jan 29, 2018 12:50:40 GMT -8 Zartan said:

Jan 29, 2018 9:12:48 GMT -8 Brian said:

It should be bringing the NPC's profile up in place of your own.

Can you provide a link to the forum this is happening on?

Sure: deathwatchvets.boards.net/thread/19/introduce?page=1&scrollTo=63  The 4th post by "Der Geist" is my NPC. When you click on it, it goes to my Admin profile.

This appears to be due to the username containing a space. Unlike the NPC's display name the username should be formatted just like the username of a member: all lowercase with only alphanumeric characters and no spaces or symbols. This is so that it can serve as a unique permanent identifier for your NPC while the NPC's display name can be changed at will.

[ObeyTheFist]

Hello!

I am unsure if this was ever answered... but is it possible to ping an NPC with the @ tag? It certainly doesn't seem to work for me and I was wondering if it's possible at all.

I have one NPC on my new forum so far (it's still being worked on) and I've love for members to be able to tag him so that my staff and I don't have to read every post to see if someone wanted to talk directly to the NPC.

[Zartan]

Jan 29, 2018 13:54:02 GMT -8 Brian said:

Jan 29, 2018 12:50:40 GMT -8 Zartan said:

Sure: deathwatchvets.boards.net/thread/19/introduce?page=1&scrollTo=63  The 4th post by "Der Geist" is my NPC. When you click on it, it goes to my Admin profile.

This appears to be due to the username containing a space. Unlike the NPC's display name the username should be formatted just like the username of a member: all lowercase with only alphanumeric characters and no spaces or symbols. This is so that it can serve as a unique permanent identifier for your NPC while the NPC's display name can be changed at will.

And that worked perfectly.  Thank you so much.

[Brian]

Jan 30, 2018 2:22:05 GMT -8 ObeyTheFist said:

Hello!

I am unsure if this was ever answered... but is it possible to ping an NPC with the @ tag? It certainly doesn't seem to work for me and I was wondering if it's possible at all.

I have one NPC on my new forum so far (it's still being worked on) and I've love for members to be able to tag him so that my staff and I don't have to read every post to see if someone wanted to talk directly to the NPC.

Yes, but it will only tag whichever user posted as that NPC rather than everyone who has access to that NPC.

If you're viewing a thread or you're on the posting page and you hold Alt and click on an NPC's display name your post should be populated with a tag that looks something like this:

@username:npcname

This will tag that user's username like normal, but their display name will be changed to that of the NPC in your post. You can manipulate pretty much any tag to work like this by adding a colon after @username and specifying an NPC username (not display name).

I unfortunately can't change how tagging works on the forum so this is pretty much the closest available solution for what you're looking to do.

[ObeyTheFist]

Jan 30, 2018 9:03:56 GMT -8 Brian said:

Yes, but it will only tag whichever user posted as that NPC rather than everyone who has access to that NPC.

If you're viewing a thread or you're on the posting page and you hold Alt and click on an NPC's display name your post should be populated with a tag that looks something like this:

@username:npcname

This will tag that user's username like normal, but their display name will be changed to that of the NPC in your post. You can manipulate pretty much any tag to work like this by adding a colon after @username and specifying an NPC username (not display name).

I unfortunately can't change how tagging works on the forum so this is pretty much the closest available solution for what you're looking to do.

Thank you for the answer. I will admit I am a little disappointed as I didn't want members to know who was posting as the NPC, but I appreciate the reply. I'll have to give the whole thing a little more thought.

[Brian]

Jan 30, 2018 19:51:11 GMT -8 ObeyTheFist said:

Thank you for the answer. I will admit I am a little disappointed as I didn't want members to know who was posting as the NPC, but I appreciate the reply. I'll have to give the whole thing a little more thought.

A plugin cannot completely hide who created a post as it's only changing the page after it's already been sent to the user. The plugin transforms the original post using Javascript which is processed entirely client-side (only server-side things get processed before being sent to the user's browser). For that reason my plugin operates on the basis that the author of the post is allowed to be visible.

[gehno]

Jan 31, 2018 8:57:36 GMT -8 Brian said:

Jan 30, 2018 19:51:11 GMT -8 ObeyTheFist said:

Thank you for the answer. I will admit I am a little disappointed as I didn't want members to know who was posting as the NPC, but I appreciate the reply. I'll have to give the whole thing a little more thought.

A plugin cannot completely hide who created a post as it's only changing the page after it's already been sent to the user. The plugin transforms the original post using Javascript which is processed entirely client-side (only server-side things get processed before being sent to the user's browser). For that reason my plugin operates on the basis that the author of the post is allowed to be visible.

I had the same question, and that kind of blows. In an RP forum certain aspects, like anonymity, are key. Do you know of any way around this? I love the fact that we can create npc's but not that it shows the author. Especially with the theme i have, it extends the length of a short post by the length of the mini-profile. 
:/

[Brian]

Feb 2, 2018 20:36:30 GMT -8 gehno said:

Jan 31, 2018 8:57:36 GMT -8 Brian said:

A plugin cannot completely hide who created a post as it's only changing the page after it's already been sent to the user. The plugin transforms the original post using Javascript which is processed entirely client-side (only server-side things get processed before being sent to the user's browser). For that reason my plugin operates on the basis that the author of the post is allowed to be visible.

I had the same question, and that kind of blows. In an RP forum certain aspects, like anonymity, are key. Do you know of any way around this? I love the fact that we can create npc's but not that it shows the author. Especially with the theme i have, it extends the length of a short post by the length of the mini-profile. 
:/

There is absolutely no way around this through the plugin itself. No matter what changes I make to the coding of the plugin it doesn't change the fact that by design plugins only affect the page after it's been loaded. There is no server-side code whatsoever being executed by the plugin to alter the contents of the page before it's sent from the server. Even if the plugin were to hide absolutely every trace of the author's identity from the page after it's been loaded that information is still visible in the page's source (right-click > View Source) which cannot be altered. In addition, if a user disables Javascript in their browser the NPC Profiles plugin doesn't run at all. Plugins also don't run on the mobile version of the forum so viewing a post on a mobile device would also reveal the author.

Plugins are built in the Plugins > Build page of the admin area which offers three types of components:
- HTML
- CSS
- Javascript

These are all client-side languages that your browser uses to render the elements on the page (HTML), their appearance (CSS), and how your actions on the page can affect their structure (Javascript). Your browser is what interprets the code and is entirely responsible for making the plugin function. The NPC Profiles plugin operates entirely through the use of Javascript. It performs the following set of steps on the page after it's already been loaded:

1. Add the NPC icon to the PBN bar.
2(a). If viewing a board/thread list, look through every thread on the page and change the Created By/Last Post authors if the opening post or latest post has an NPC username saved to it.
2(b). If viewing a thread add the NPC button to every post on the page, then go through each individual post and change the mini-profiles of any that have an NPC username saved to them.
2(c). If viewing a profile with /npc/username at the end of the URL erase the profile's HTML and replace it with the HTML specified in the plugin.
2(d). If viewing the member list add an option to view a list of NPCs, or if the current URL is /members/npc remove the member list and change it to the NPC list.
3. Update any of the placeholder elements on the page (outlined in the third post of this support thread).

If plugins functioned using server-side languages (PHP, Perl, etc.) they could be used to modify the contents of the page as it's being built by the server before it's sent to the user, but as it stands the above is how all plugins function on ProBoards. That's why I hardly ever create plugins that remove or restrict functionality on forums. They're only hiding content that's already been loaded on the page and is still technically accessible despite the changes made by the plugin. Plugins can't actually restrict any features that already existed on the forum without the use of the plugin. Those that do are technically useless as anyone who knows how to get around them can do so with relative ease.

The only workaround I can suggest is making NPC posts using a completely faceless alternate account. As long as a regular user can't see that the email address or IP address matches your actual account (which they shouldn't be able to see unless they're staff or your privacy settings in your profile allow your email address to be publicly visible) they have no way of knowing that the account the NPC post is attributed to belongs to you.

[rainbowanemone]

Hello c: I was curious is there a way to remove this;



I tried searching through the thread but didn't really find an answer unless I overlooked it sorry.