Drafts and Standard Replies

The Drafts and Standard Replies mod is a combined mod that allows you to edit and save drafts for new topics, new posts, private messages and emails. And it allows you to work with standard replies, standard paragraphs, text snippets, code snippets and so on.

The function works by creating a new drafts box in your private message area, where the drafts are saved. There you can edit them, delete them, or re-open them for posting, mailing etc.

It also adds a "Standard reply" checkbox to the options list below the posting area.

Those drafts that are also marked as a standard reply, will be shown in a list box in your bbcode toolbar. You can select and insert the standard replies into the post, private message or email that you are composing.

Saving a draft
Next to the Preview and Submit buttons you will find a Save draft button. You can only save new messages as drafts. If you edit an existing private message or post on the forum, you cannot save that as draft since it is already posted.

Drafts folder
Drafts are all saved to a new folder called Drafts in the private message area. They show the "recipient", which can be a person in the case of a private message or email, but also a forum in case of a new topic, or a topic, in case of a new post, reply or quote. Or there may be no recipient at all.

Editing a draft
If you open a draft for editing, it opens where it was saved, i.e. as new topic in the correct forum, new post in the correct topic, as private message or email.

Posting a draft
You can save a draft as draft again, or post, send or email it.

Deleting drafts
You can delete drafts from the drafts box by marking them and pressing the delete button.

Automatic deleting of drafts
If you post (send, email) a normal draft, it is no longer considered a draft, and will be removed from your drafts folder.

Standard replies

Creating standard replies
On the options panel you will find a new checkbox "Standard reply". Check it and save the message as draft in order to create a draft standard reply message.

Editing standard replies
You can edit standard replies from the Drafts folder. Save it as draft again in order to update its contents.

Posting standard replies
You can post, send or mail a standard reply. If you do that, the draft standard reply will not be updated, nor deleted.

Saving a standard reply as plain draft again
If you clear the "Standard reply" checkbox and save a standard reply as draft again, it becomes a normal draft. It will be removed from your standard replies listbox. If you open it again and post or send it, it will be removed from your drafts folder since it is by now a normal draft that has been finalised by posting it.

Using the standard replies listbox
Once you have one or more standard replies in your drafts folder, you will also find a standard replies listbox in your posting screen. You can now select and insert one or more standard replies from there into your post. The standard reply is inserted at the current cursor position and highlighted,. So if you make a mistake, you can easily remove it again with the delete key.

Standard replies tech info
If you have a couple of dozen standard replies, some of which may be extensive posts, then that can be quite a lot of text. So in order to minimise bandwidth and download time, the standard replies are packaged into a javascript include file. This will be sent to your computer only once, and used repeatedly from then on. Until you delete or alter a standard reply of coure. That way you get both rapid insertion of multiple text blocks, as well as minimum time to open the posting screen.

Deleting standard replies
You can delete standard replies in the drafts folder only.

Options

The mod is standard available for use by all registered users, or for mods and admins only.

Custom enhancement of this mod could be the installation of an Administrator Control Panel selector to select and change this mode when necessary. This would not delete existing drafts or standard replies, but would disable access to the drafts folder, the standard replies list and the save as draft button etc.

Notes

eXtreme Hide hidden codes in a draft posts, that hide hidden sections in quoted posts that the poster is not allowed to see, will remain hidden within the draft post. When the draft or standard reply is finally posted, the hidden code is decoded again and the hidden section is inserted.

Design & development (C) Merlin's Software * www.pimpmyforum.nl * MOD is available for phpBB2