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This plugin is meant to make adding, editing and managing forum sideboxes much easier. It is even [extensible](https://github.com/WildcardSearch/Advanced-Sidebox/wiki/Extensibility) so that other plugins can add a new box type for admin to choose from and developers can create single file modules that automatically integrate (without using hooks).
The plugin builds from the original Nayar sidebox but with quite a change in interface. As shown below you can now use a modular approach to adding, removing and editing sideboxes. Also, instead of one or two custom boxes, the admin can create as many sideboxes as desired, with custom content- on either side or both. Also featured in the above image, the plugin creates a tab in the plugins menu of ACP to house the sidebox management functions. This made several of the original settings unnecessary and so they were removed.
The Who's Online Box originally featured a list of online members name links, but has been changed to avatar links. To control their display, two new settings were added in ACP. One to control how many avatars to display per row and another to manage the maximum amount of rows. Functionality is installed to automatically size the avatars based up these variables and the width of the sidebox. If the maximum number of images is reached, the last will be replaced by a 'See all . . .' image linking to WOL. Users who have been marked as invisible will be shown to staff with a red border.
The latest threads box now uses `gotounread` jump link arrows  and allows longer, two-line titles.
Admin may deactivate sideboxes for specific theme(s) and users can individually disable sideboxes as well.
In the original plugin there was much wasted execution. For example, if the admin set Show On Index to 'No', as the user browses the forum every visit to index.php will still execute all the template building code borrowed from portal.php. Many checks are now made to prevent execution of code unnecessarily. If there are no boxes added, settings are off for the script, the user has disabled sideboxes or the theme currently being used is on the list to EXCLUDE then none of the portal.php code will be processed.
My [forum](http://www.rantcentralforums.com/index.php) has used this plugin for over a year, although it has been in various stages of development at different times and I don't always use the latest version. It seems stable and has shown only small issues that I have tried to fix as I've noticed.
Learn about extending Advanced Sideboxes here: Extensibility
I make no guarantees of support but I will always try.
Please report any problems found at the GitHub repository for this project.
Feel free to add advice, feedback. Help and advice is welcome. :)