https://www.totse.com/community/showthread.php?t=2058590
Ok folks,

First of all to moderators: There are absolutely no "hacking" methods involved here. I want to make it clear I have not exploited any aspect of the TOTSE vBulletin system.

Now, Tonight I'mma show you all how to enable PM's on TOTSE. I am sure 99% of people are going to request Pix or it Didn't Happen, so here you go:

http://i22.tinypic.com/21m8axj.gif

Right. Now let's get into the meat of this thread. Private messages are managed through http://www.totse.com/community/private.php. If you click that link now you will probably get a message along the lines of "Private messages have been disabled on Community Forums".

So, firstly what we want to do is actually set your profile to accept PM's. This is a surprisingly simple task, although it's useless by itself unless you can get someone else to PM you afterward.

Click this link:

http://www.totse.com/community/private.php?do=downloadpm&dowhat=xml

What that does is attempt to download all your private messages to an offline document. The cool thing is that it sets your account status to enable PM's automatically if you attempt it with PM's disabled.

When you click the link you will just get a standard error. It doesn't matter. One thing to note is you MUST NOT visit private.php again until you've followed the proceeding steps or you will have to start from scratch (it will reset your status)

Now step two is a bit more tricky. Now you have to break the Javascript to basically make the system fall back on basic PHP-based processing rather than client-side stuff. What this means is you need to work out your user-ID. This is simple - just click your name in a thread and your ID will be in the URL bar.
As an example, my profile link is this: http://www.totse.com/community/member.php?u=171513 so my user ID is the number at the end - 171513 . Once you have worked out your ID, you need to add it to this URL:

http://www.totse.com/community/private.php?do=sendpm&recipient=######

But do NOT go to the link once you've added your number. Copy it into a text document for a second.

What you have to do now is open up two pages / tabs. In one, load up your TOTSE profile options page. By that I mean this page:

http://www.totse.com/community/profile.php?do=editprofile

Now, you have to add " " without quotes to the end of your "Home Page URL" box. This is just a HTML character for a space, and serves to trip the HTML-escaping class that tidies up your input. You need to do this to give yourself some extra time. It takes a lot longer for vBulletin to process HTML, which is what you need. Even though it might seem fast at the front end, it actually takes quite a bit of CPU power at the server end.

Now you have your profile options page in one window / tab, and a blank window as well. Paste the link you made before with your member ID on the end into the blank window. This is the tricky part. You have to click "Save changes" on your profile options page, then while that is loading press Go or hit enter or whatever on the other window. Basically you want them both to load at the same time. Trust me - this is not easy.

To test whether you have enabled PM's, click your "edit profile" link again (http://www.totse.com/community/profile.php?do=editprofile). If you have been successful, all your previous stuff (interests, homepage etc) will be blank. If this is the case, then go to http://www.totse.com/community/private.php and you will end up in your inbox and the private messaging options will load up on the left.

If your profile information didn't disappear, do NOT go to private.php or else you will have to start from the beginning. Just keep trying to reload both pages at the same time, it will take a few shots, and make sure you include the   each time.

Now the cool thing about this is that even if you just set your profile up to receive PM's (the first step) then all you have to do is get someone to send you a PM, and it will all become enabled for you. The downside is that if a user hasn't bothered to do this, then they won't be able to receive any PM's you send to them. So, spread the word and get people enabling their accounts!

This has been a really long thread, but I put a lot of time into working out a way to enable PM's so I hope some of you will follow through. Send me a message once you get it working :D

Do we allow this?
I'm deleting the thread for time being, damage control in case it's harmful to the server processing power.

Meh, I can't see it really being an issue, as it seems to take a bit of effort to get the pages to load simultaneously.

I attempted it a half dozen times or so, and can't get them to sync up.

It would be trivial to write a script that does this, but I don't think too many people would go through with it.

It's quite an interesting feat, though. I haven't seen anything about it on the innertubes.

Props to bobsled for that.

Props to bobsled for that.

Indeed.

This bobsled person seems to have alot of knowledge and respect for totse.
That's cool.

Had he posted this in SG, or anywhere else really, would he have been infracted for sharing this possibly damaging info with the masses?


The PM function in itself I dont care about, but it would suck if someone managed to use a script as they did with Reputation comments. Would this be possible?

Jeff wants PMs turned off, he said so himself. I would soft-delete any threads with mention of how to do it until Jeff can do something about it. I'll post this in the "Jeff!" thread.

Repeat offenders should be dealt with accordingly.

Edit: I know bobsled (not personally, but decently so online). I just sent him an email telling him not to share that information or to repost the thread. I'm pretty sure he won't.

Fair enough it's not allowed, but props to bobsled!

Jeff wants PMs turned off, he said so himself. I would soft-delete any threads with mention of how to do it until Jeff can do something about it. I'll post this in the "Jeff!" thread.



Well considering we can't hard delete...

*Snicker*

Nevermind, I just found out from bobsled that it's a hoax. He copied and pasted the images together. I was able to verify this. So I wouldn't edit it out anymore since we know it's not a problem for totse. It's just a misleading post.

I now agree with this:

props to bobsled!
:D

Haha, well done to him regardless.

Haha. Nicely done of him.

giggle :)

So, should we ressurect the hoax post?

Ha ha! Well that explains that.

I was actually coming here to post that I thought it was a hoax because I still couldn't find anything about it online, and I tried again to sync it up on a MUCH slower connection last night, but to no avail.

Well played, bobsled. Well played.

Of course, now I feel like an idiot for not catching the shoop. Look at the image, and check out where the date of the message is under the Messages: 1 thing, and you can see that the solid black line is broken. You can also see some extraneous whiteness around the PM Folder Go button.

Hehehehehe...Got everyone worked up with it...Well done!