Daily Game - Posts a new flash game to your vBulletin every day
 

Daily Game posts a new flash game to your vBulletin once per day in a new thread. Daily Game will help your vBulletin by:

• Starting up conversations on slow days
• Increasing retention since users are playing on your forum
• Help you get links and improve SEO (flash games get a lot of links!)
• Make you money! Use your own ad code to display an ad while the flash game is loading. These pre-roll ads get very high eCPM!

Install time: 5 minutes
Installation difficulty: Easy
Demo: http://www.playedonline.com/forum/showthread.php?t=40

Updated to version 1.5 : No manual template modifications and title and content customization

Updated to version 2.1 : simple_xml support is no longer required, enabled bbcodes on the game thread, support for switched off boards.

Installation instructions

1. Upload add_daily_game.php to the vBulletin root directory
2. Import the product XML file (Plugins & Products -> Manage Products - > [Add/Import Product])
3. Configure the Daily Game settings under vBulletin Options -> vBulletin Options -> Daily Game:
   • Set ?Enabled? to Yes
   • Visit www.playedonline.com/register_vbulletin to register (input your forum's url and your email) and get a shared key for authentication.
   • Configure which userid will post the daily games (input 0 for guest)
   • Choose a forum for Daily Game
   • Customise the title (useful for non-English forums) or leave blank for default
   • Enable or disable description and instructions
   • Paste ad code (e.g. AdSense) to show a pre-roll ad before the game starts (optional, leave empty to show no ads)
   • Click the Test link you got in the registration e-mail to post a test daily game (you can delete the test post after you verify that it works)
   • You're done! A daily game will be posted on your forum every day at 3am EST.
4. Optional : if you switch off your vBulletin from time to time you can make sure the games are posted even if the board is off by making those small changes:
   • Add the following code to /includes/functions.php
     
     PHP Code:

     ---

     function endswith($string, $test) {
    $strlen = strlen($string);
    $testlen = strlen($test);
    if ($testlen > $strlen) return false;
    return substr_compare($string, $test, -$testlen) === 0;
} 


     ---

   • In global.php find the line
     
     PHP Code:

     ---

     if (!$vbulletin->options['bbactive'] AND THIS_SCRIPT != 'login') 


     ---

     and replace with
     
     PHP Code:

     ---

     if (!$vbulletin->options['bbactive'] AND THIS_SCRIPT != 'login' AND !endswith($_SERVER["SCRIPT_NAME"], '/add_daily_game.php')) 


     ---

Tagged. Looks promising.
Will wait on feedback though first :)

Looks real nice - any chance for a vB 4 release for this one?

Installed, can't wait for my first game.

Looks very good.

However one question, where do all those ads come from? Can I put my own ads or are they coming from the actual sponsor of the game?

Yes, soon.

In the demo link the first ad that you see before the game loads is up to you to configure. You can put a 300x250 ad code there or you can leave it blank and the game will load straight away with no delay.

The second ad that you see is part of the game itself. Some flash game developers put ads in their games to make money - that's just the price of free content. Both ads together run about 30 seconds and the game loads in the background while they display so normally they don't add any actual wait time for the user.

Interesting, Might give this a go. Thanks.

Could someone who tried the plugin give some feedback?

i have it installed but haven't gotten a daily game yet, which is my fault. I registered on your site but forgot to put "/forums"at the end of my link, so the daily game will not appear.

should I re-register or can you edit that yourself (on your site)?

Re-registering would work but I just fixed it for you so there's no need. You can click the test link from the confirmation e-mail to make sure it works now.