vBulletin PM Reader | VCL Developer

vBulletin PM Reader

Posted on March 13th, 2009 Ali Keshavarz 27 comments

vBulletin PM Reader

Many online forums use vBulletin as their forum engine. For each forum user, vBulletin provides a limited inbox for private messages. It also lets users to download their inbox as a single XML file.

vBulletin PM Reader is a free utility for managing your private messages in different vBulletin forums locally. It imports XML files generated by vBulletin, parses all the messages, and stores them in a local database.

I developed vBulletin PM Reader for personal use. I used to receive many private messages from users in some of the forums I was a member, but my Inbox folder could have had only 50 messages. I was looking for a way to keep track of all the messages I receive; therefore, I created vBulletin PM Reader. Later on, I thought there might be other people who have the same problem, so I published vBulletin PM Reader here.

Features:
- vBulletin PM Reader is a Freeware and does NOT install any Ad ware or Spyware.
- BBCodes are supported for formatting text. Supported tags are: [B],[U],[I],[URL],[CODE],[IMG],[RIGHT],[CENTER],[LEFT],[RTL],[COLOR],[SIZE],[QUOTE].
- Smilies are supported in messages. Users can have different smilies set for different forums.
- vBulletin PM Reader can search for any particular message in its database. Search filter could be a combination of folder name, sender or receiver name, date/time, or message subject.
- vBulletin PM Reader lets user to have different database files to store messages from different online forums.
- Messages are stored according to their folder name and they could be sorted by their date, subject, sender or receiver’s name.
- Duplicated messages are recognized automatically and could be reconciled by user.
- Unwanted messages could be deleted from database.
- Each message could be exported to a HTML file.
- Right-to-Left reading is supported in preview pane.
Considerations:
- vBulletin PM Reader needs Microsoft Jet Engine as database provider. MS Jet Engine is installed by MS Windows and MS Office installation packages, but if you are using an old version of Windows (e.g. Win95 or Win98), you should download and install MS Jet Engine from Microsoft website before using this software.
- Formatting text in QUOTE and CODE blocks might be added to the software in later releases.
- Supporting Similes might be added to the software in later releases.
- Two sample XML files will be installed in the installation path.
Versions:
- 1.0.1.41 : (2008/06/05) (Current Version)
- Fixed bug caused by IE7
- Message navigation buttons are added to toolbar.
- Some minor bugs and memory leaks are fixed.
- 1.0.0.37 : (2007/03/15)
- BBCode Text formatting are supported now.
- Smilies support is added for each data file.
- XML Importer code is optimized.
- Exported files are text-formatted.
- Some minor bugs and memory leaks are fixed.
- 0.9.2.22 : (2006/12/05)
- Toolbars and menu customization is added.
- 0.9.2.21 : (2006/11/25)
- The first released Beta version.
System Requirements:
- Windows 98, Me, 2000, XP.
- 1.30 MB free space on hard disk.
- Memory usages is depended on database size, but the minimum consumption is 12.5 MB.
Download:

Download vBulletin PM Reader
Share and Enjoy:
Freeware Freeware, Products, vBulletin, vBulletin PM Reader
24 responses to “vBulletin PM Reader”
- Artgeo April 13th, 2009 at 11:51
  
  Good piece, for a long time searched, but in unicode does not read, only question marks: (
  
  Reply
- Ali Keshavarz April 13th, 2009 at 15:14
  
  Yes, you are right. Unicode is not supported.
  
  Actually I started working on a Unicode enabled version a few months ago, but there are some bugs to be fixed to make it working properly.
  
  It’s been a few months that I haven’t had time to work on it anymore. I will get back to it as soon as I find some free time.
  
  Regards
  
  Reply
- Artgeo April 13th, 2009 at 16:10
  
  Thanks for a prompt reply:) I’m looking forward
  
  Reply
- Linuxser April 15th, 2009 at 04:35
  
  This is the best you could find to manage your PM’s. I was needing a tool to manage my 5K pm inbox as admin of forex-tsd.com. A place with more than 100k members. As you know vBulletin lacks about a good search tool to manage your pm’s and vBulletin PM Reader is the one you need. I hope you don’t mind if I post on the forum to promote this tool.
  
  Reply
- Ali Keshavarz April 15th, 2009 at 16:16
  
  Linuxser,
  Thank you for your nice comment. I’m glad that this tool is useful for you.
  
  Also, thanks for promoting vBulletin PM Reader in your forum.
  
  Regards
  
  Reply
- TeCNoYoTTa June 24th, 2009 at 16:55
  
  thanks ….but download link is broken
  
  Reply
- Loren Petrich June 26th, 2009 at 00:11
  
  I’m thinking of writing a MacOS-X version of your vBulletin PM reader, using OSX Cocoa API’s. I hope that you don’t feel that you have a copyright on the concept, though I might call it my “vBulletin PM Viewer”.
  
  Reply
- Loren Petrich June 27th, 2009 at 14:14
  
  I ended up writing a Python/TK version first.
  
  http://homepage.mac.com/lpetrich/VBPMViewer/VBPMViewer.py
  
  You can give it filenames on the command line, or else do File > Open. I have both single and multi versions, because Windows Python/TK’s multi-file open is broken.
  
  You double-click on a filename (top left), then on a folder name (bottom left), then on a PM name (center) to see it (right). I don’t have any rendering.
  
  Its resizing is rather broken — some problem with TK?
  
  Reply
- R1Lover July 27th, 2009 at 08:24
  
  Great app, I own many boards and keep old pm’s has been tough, this is perfect for me. I also posted on several of my sites for all the members to use as well.
  
  Thank you
  
  Reply
- Loren Petrich July 28th, 2009 at 06:46
  
  I now have a home page for my PM-viewer efforts:
  
  My Private-Message Viewer – http://homepage.mac.com/lpetrich/PMViewer/PMViewer.html
  
  I wish to announce my first OSX-native version. It does not do searching or BBCode rendering, but it does open and save an import and export and display reasonably.
  
  Reply
- Ali Keshavarz July 28th, 2009 at 12:08
  
  @R1Lover: Thank you!
  
  @Loren: Good job! unfortunately I don’t have Mac to test your app.
  
  Good Luck
  
  Reply
- Mehdi October 18th, 2009 at 11:02
  
  this is so funny,your forum activity is mostlu in persian forums(which happens to be a UTF-8 forum)and yet u didnt make it for utf8?
  
  try harder,did you try to encode it and send it ?
  that way encoding it wouldnt be a problem.
  i mean encode it the way frontpage does, do you know what i mean ?
  remember the encoding of persian words it’s like this :
  سلام
  to :
  سلام
  it’s just a simple replace function !
  
  Reply
- Korni October 28th, 2009 at 01:19
  
  Love that tool!
  
  At the moment you able to search for the title, the recipient and the sender!
  
  A search functionality to search for a text inside the messages would be great!
  
  Reply
- Ali Keshavarz October 28th, 2009 at 01:23
  
  Thank you, Korni! I will consider your suggestion for the next version.
  
  Reply
- Alan_SP January 7th, 2010 at 15:45
  
  Hey, it’s a great program and I’m one of those who wants UTF-8 support too.
  
  I know about your not having time to finish it, just wanted to say thank you. At the moment I manually change UTF-8 to windows-1250 encoding in XML file and I’d advised users on my forum to do that.
  
  Hope you’d finish it asap. Great job you’ve done, thank you!
  
  Reply
- Jay January 27th, 2010 at 02:47
  
  Hello. I am very thankful for what you have written, thanks! I would like to add another vote to add functionality to search the message itself as well. (Vs. just the title.) This would be VERY helpful. Thanks! And/or the source and maybe I could give it a go.
  
  Reply
- Smiley Face Clip Art February 2nd, 2010 at 23:36
  
  who invented this?
  
  Reply
- Mohammad Shams March 28th, 2010 at 15:07
  
  Hi Ali.
  
  This tool is useful, thank you.
  thats great idea to publish it as an open source tool.
  
  Reply
- مهران May 8th, 2010 at 19:57
  
  سلام . یک پیشنهاد دارم . اینطور که من متوجه شدم برنامه ی شما لیست پیام ها رو از طریق فایل اکس ام الی که از پنل دریافت میشه استخراح میکنه . میشه این امکان رو اضافه کرد که کاربر/مدیر به طور مستقیم پس از وارد کردن “نام کاربری” و “پسورد” به پنل مدیریت در ویبولتن متصل بشه و آنلاین پیغام ها رو دریافت کنه .
  
  Reply
3 Trackbacks / Pingbacks
- vBulletin PM reader for Mac | VCL Developer October 22nd, 2009 at 09:32
  
  [...] luck, Loren & thank you for mentioning my vBulletin PM reader in your software. Share and [...]
- vBulletin PM Reader - tooor.de - Tickettausch, Fantreffen, Blogs October 29th, 2009 at 00:00
  
  [...] [...]
- Frage an hoefti: Pn-Download - Lovetalk.de January 9th, 2010 at 14:27
  
  [...] [...]
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