We're (support) starting to see the same thing that happened in the 5 to 6 series upgrades happen again. People using hacks that add profile fields and now they're stuck when they try to upgrade to 6.1. Same thing may happen when we add a couple of fields in 6.2 if your hacks are not planned properly.

Hack writers please do your folks a favor, don't use any fields below 50. Or perhaps put them in a seperate file. That way we can add fields and not mess up the hacks.

FYI I anticipate putting a field removal script in the member area soon. Hopefully Monday if time permits but definately before the final release of 6.1. I just have to update it from 5.x->6.0 to 6.x->6.1.

If I recall correctly at one time there was an effort going to coordinate added fields amoung all the various hacks. What ever happened to that?

Of course, it didn't help that UBB doesn't output an error message in regards to the extra profile fields when access forum summary when it's not generated (there's no tracer output) However, CC knows about it and has told me that an error message will appear in the next 6.1 beta series.

Regarding one vars_data file .. Leshrac developed some routines but they were never widely distributed and thus never adopted.

qasic

Correct and correct.

I just try to post my little notices when I see trends happen. I'm hoping they can help you folks identify potential problems and write hacks that are less troublesome to upgrade. Some of these hacks are awesome but make it hard for someone to upgrade the base UBB underneath it. That's why the suggestion of starting at field 50 or a second file. Then someone could slip a new UBB version in with no problem.

i thought most hack authors knew to use fields over 55. cause i remember Allen said a while ago you guys wanted to use 50 or so fields in the future. i guess some didnt know.

Yup. That's why I posted.

We're working on it in the developers forum, and there's already an article in the Hackers Knowledgebase about not using profile fileds under 50...

Didn't see this thread

We'll post it in the 6.1.0 finished modifications forum when we open it after 6.1.0 is released.

We do have 2 modifications that have unofficially gotten their stamp on profile field numbers:

Calendar: #55 (for birthdays)
One by Dark Templar (sorry mind is blank on it right now): #54

We're reserving everything <51 for official UBB™ use. Modifications adding profile fields will need to let us know what field they would like to use so we can reserve it for them.

54 is the Custom Status part of the star/status hack

Also, I will be using numbers 56 and 57 for "DT's Extra", which is a hack that is hard to explain but easy to understand. I'll try to explain it ^_^.

Here at UBBDev, people add "| Something: Something else" in their location field, so it has an extra set of description type things below the user's posts. For example, I have
"Devising new UBB Hacks: Yes!!!" on mine. DT's Extra gives you two boxes in the profile, entitled 'custom display category' and 'custom display item'. By filling out those two boxes, it will automagically put the two things down there, and it blends in properly with the other stuff (Doing it manually here results in everything being bold, instead of just the item; DT's Extra fixes it )

It's at about 90% functionality, and will be released the day of UBB 6.1.0 Gold. (or whatever the official name is for it ^_^).

But I digress. We really ought to keep a database of what hacks use what profile fields.