Block Discarded Stories Module v. 0.2

Description of Block Discarded Stories module:

Updated to v.0.2 on Jan. 5th 2009

This module has two main features:

1. If you have users who keep re-submitting stories that other users have buried off the site, this module will block those stories from being submitted again. Note that this only applies to "buried" stories, not stories discarded by other means.

2. [New feature for v.0.2] Website owners pay "SEO professionals" to improve their sites' ranking in the search engines. These "SEO professionals" submit links to as many sites as they can, and report all the new links back to the site owners. Until now, discarded stories have still been accessible via their direct url, so webmasters just assumed the links were accepted. However, with this module, they'll be treated to this message instead:

Quote

Sorry, but you are trying to access a story that has either been deleted by the site administrator or voted off by other users.

Instructions:
1. Upload the block_discarded folder to your modules folder. Install it from Module Management in Admin. Next time someone tries to submit something that has been buried, it will be blocked.
2. [For v.0.2]To hide discarded stories, there's one edit you need to make to /story.php:

Note: This change isn't necessary in SWCMS 2.0+

Find:

Code:

$vars = '';
check_actions('story_top', $vars);

Change it to this:

Code:

$vars = array('globals' => $globals);
check_actions('story_top', $vars);

For some reason, this forum converts characters even when using the code tags. The => should be =>

Technical Notes:

To block buried stories, the module checks if the link's status is "discard" and if the link's "reports" are more than zero.
Note that if you delete discarded stories from the Story Management page, this module will become ineffective on those stories.
If you need to access discarded stories for any reason, just disable the module, do whatever you need to do, then enable it again.