Featured Soop Websites: MadMums Parenting Portal is an on-line community for parents of all ages, offers advice on all aspects of parenting and pregnancy. Features include Members Photo Galleries, Pregnancy Calculator, Baby Names Database with over 28,000 search-able names with meaning, and origins, friendly chat rooms and not forgetting we are home to the Madmums Cartoon by the upcoming Scottish illustrator Lynie Taylor. Membership is free and all are welcome.

Soop Software Version:  Soop FC (very modified)

Installed Modifications: Madmums is running several Soop 3rd Pary Add-ons as well as many custom modifications:

• Horizontal Menu - Float with on/off switch, moded to Hooded’s Float Menu Hack, there are details of this on Soop.
  
  
  
  
•  Integrations of FlashChat into Soop, Passing the members name to the chat application was relatively easy as the application could retrieve the UN from a querystring, the real problem was stopping anyone logging in by bypassing Soop which could be easily done by placing a username of their choice in the link to launch chat, the application also threw anyone entering without username, to a login screen which did not require a password, meaning in effect anyone could be anyone they wanted. So I settled on writing the username to a cookie from within the Soop Chat function from where the user launched the chat. This value was then checked against the username in the querystring by the chat, if the values fail to match the client is redirected away. I should just mention that the chat application uses PHP something that I have limited experience of, so there well may be a better way of doing it. I had to also edit the actual FlashChat swf to prevent the user being given the option to log directly back in to chat via the login screen with any user name they chose to use, if they were timed out of chat. Admins of the Soop site automatically inherit chat admin status on entry to chat.
  
  
  
   
   
• Chatterbox - what can I say, I’m still completely stunned that this mod has become so popular, it started of as a small fun project that grew and grew, I must give credit to Kokopelli who was great to work with in developing Chatterbox further, just a pity it seems he has now been kidnapped by Aliens.
  
•  Banners, Banners and more Banners - nothing to special here but for those that want an example of how you can use multiple zones in mod box take a look at the left hand column, also for those that want to see how you can put multiple banners into one html banner take a look at the affiliates shopping page.
  
•  Users online - functions_stats.asp I modified it sometime ago to show robots online by name and shared that mod with the Soop Community. I have took it a few steps further on Madmums and increased the active user array to include groups which means I am now able to show Admins and Moderators online by name, I’ve never released this as a Mod as I feel it would be impractical as it took some hard coding to some important key Soop files.
  
  
  
   
• Avatars on Active_Users.asp
  
  
  
   
• Rips Donation Meter – I made a few changes to suit my own needs (hope he does not mind) I needed to show decimal places in currency and used SetLocale(2057) to convert the currency to £ from $ as we are on a US server. I also added percentages to the actual meter itself and changed it so it changes colour when it is at 100%.
  
  
  
   
• Radio Player -  I’m not convinced it is legal hence the reason I have not yet shared, lol Try it and see, you will find it in column 1. Basically allows the visitor choose a live radio feed which plays in the radio stations player, rather than launching the clients media player.
  
  
  
   
• Modded the recent posts module to show page numbers (which is shared) and also topic icons (latest addition), the page numbers are great and IMHO as it gives the visitor a real graphical view of the size of the thread and being able to navigate directly to a specific page, especially the last page as most people I have spoke to did not know that clicking the right_arrow.gif already did that in the standard Soop module, there for it was a feature that was rarely used. I’ve also added a link to the latest posts RSS feed and a couple of ’add to my feed type services’ links, this was mainly for SEO.
  
  
  
  
•  Google Guest Map/ Members Map Uses the google map API (still in beta) to allow member to mark their location and leave a comment to be seen by other visitors. I’m still working on this and I used something similar on a none Soop site recently which has awakened my interest a little in it.
  
  
  
  
•  Very simply ‘link to us’ mod, with links to a page where users can select one of several banners, nothing to shout about here all very straight forward.
  
  
  
  
•  Added Captcha to Quicktools in an attempt to cut down exploit attempts from form hijacking bots that seem to be infesting the web, I’ve shared this Q who is releasing something with Quicktools 2.
  
  
  
  
•  Baby Names Database, 28,000 + search-able names with origins and meaning, not much use for anyone else but great for Madmums and no I’m not sharing lol. Though if you want a similar service for your own Soop or site you can go to the Madmums Banners Page, there are details and code to enable you to put a search box on your own site.
  
  
  
  
•  Pregnancy Calculator, uses a hidden DIV to expand information including images, once again of no interest to Soop, lol.
  
  
  
  
•  Birthday mod, shows upcoming members birthdays for the month, I have shared this and it is on Soop.
  *I’ve expanded this mod so that it now sends an auto ’Happy Birthday Email’ to anyone who’s birthday it is. I’ve not released this on Soop as I am still testing it at the moment.
  
  
  
  
•  Madmums Sponsors, I wanted a way to show the members that have sponsored the site, this is how I did it.
  
  
  

•  Images in posts are replaced with  to none registered/not logged in visitors, to help protect privacy; I did provide the details of this HACK on Soop as it was pretty straight forward to do.
  
•  Only the first post on each thread page shows to guests, however the whole thread still shows to robots and crawlers that are defined in functions_common.asp which is great for SEO and encourages lurkers to register. Obviously you would not use this method to secure a forum with sensitive or private information as anyone with the with the right software and knowledge could easily fake USER_AGENT and there for all they would have to do to view a post in full is masquerade as at robot, this HACK is to purely encourage Mr/Mrs Jo Average web visitor to register.
  
  
  
  
•  HTTP_REFERER in active_users.asp though to be honest you have to catch them in the list as they enter the site before browse to far and the Server Variable updates, it’s simple and a little rough but it only shows to admin and it’s still useful sometimes to see who has come from where.
  
  
  
  
•  I’ve changed the registration process. Being a parenting forum we had to place a lot of emphasis on privacy for obvious reasons, I was sick and tired of working so hard to get visitors to the site to only discover that most gave up and never visited again because they never received the activations email. The reasons for them not receiving the email I’ve put down to a number of reasons, ever stricter email spam filters, user typing errors when entering their email address on registration, occasionally the email server having a bad day but at the end of the day regardless of who is at fault it is the same end result which is that the community suffers as it loses a potential member who will have just moved on to one of the other 400 million parenting/mother/baby type forum/communities there are on the web.
   
  So I changed the process - now a user registers (with an email address) and they are sent a verify your email address mail, the user is active immediately upon registrations but is placed in a restricted none ladder group called ’Email Not Verified’ while in this group they have restricted access to certain features on the site, for example on Madmums I’ve set it up so that they can not enter chat, view the members galleries, view images in posts or view members profiles. Once they click the verify their email address link they are automatically moved to the first ladder group. The difference is over the old activation system is they can access their profile and check their email address is entered correctly, they can communicate with the other members of the community and ask for support about the subject if required, they can post and take part in discussions as normal members, they are reminded at every turn that they need to verify their email address, they can also resend the validation email from a button on ’functions_welcomeuser.asp’.
  
  
  
  

There are lots little tweaks like showing an alternative blank thumbnail images to guests in ND mod boxes and Tooltips.

 Installed Soop Skins: Madmums currently has 3 custom skins called Blush, Grape and Retro