Board Optimization - Welcome headers - Improve community registration rates

Attention vB 3.7 users: Please see the 3.7 version of this add-on.

The out of the box vBulletin style does not have a robust method of informing users about their current activity status or user level. As a result, guests entering on a page other than the homepage (which is most often the case) have no idea what a forum is about or that they may need to register. Additionally, there are no visible status indicators, making it confusing for unconfirmed, unapproved or new members to know what to do or where to begin.

To help solve these problems, the welcome headers plugin creates a 5-part set of conditionals to better introduce members to your community while pushing them to register, activate or post. The default templates are just that, default ? I highly encourage you to tweak the language and functions to meet the needs of your actual community environment.

Modifications/ Instructions:
Template edits: 2
Plugins: 1 (adds 1 template and several settings)

This template hack should take under 5 minutes to implement and customize.

What?s new in 4.2
The 4.2 version of this addon functions in the same way as previous versions but with modifications to the backend code. The addon is now designed to independently review conditional statements to make it easier to add new messages. If you are upgrading from a previous version and have changed the template welcome_headers, this version will revert your changes. There is no new functionality in this upgrade and it is optional.

Install Instructions:
Full install instructions can be found in the attached file. This addon requires adding a plugin and modifying one template.

Customizing the content / messages
To customize which messages appear or what they say, go to vBulletin options, select the "Welcome Header System" group and configure the options as desired. Each phase can be modified by adding translation text.

Details on how it all works:
Step One: Turning lurkers into Members
For most forums, upwards of 50% of traffic comes through search engines or deep links to threads, profiles and categories. Out of the box, vBulletin only displays a welcome message on the forum-homepage, meaning someone who enters through any other page does not have the benefit of seeing an explanation of the site or welcome message. The guest welcome header is used to explain the purpose of your site, sell users on the benefits of joining the community and push them to proactively register.

Step Two: Making Users Confirm their Account
Many vBulletin sites require email confirmation prior to being able to post or access an account. However, activation emails are often misdirected to spam folders, ignored or simply deleted, leaving unconfirmed users with little access rights and no explanation as to what is wrong with their account. The unconfirmed welcome header is used to inform unconfirmed members of their account status and to direct them to automatically resend their activation email, or to contact the webmaster for support.

Step Three: Get non-posting users to post
Another chronic problem faced by many forums is insuring users post after registering. Many new visitors register in order to access certain features with the intent of posting, but never do so. The never posted welcome header is used to encourage users to post for their first time and should ideally be linked directly to an introductions or new member forum to help users "break the ice".

Step Four: Getting inactive users to become more active
Many members start out as lurkers, register, post once or twice and then go back to being lurkers. Often time these members are not actively thinking about participating in topics or are still shy about interacting. The inactivity welcome header reminds members to make a post after a predetermined amount of time as specified by the forum administrator.

Step Five: General Announcements
Unfortunately the standard announcements are often overlooked or never even seen by members who use the "new posts feature". As a result, urgent notices may be missed by users causing problems and high volumes of support requests. The global announcement welcome header creates a message shown to all members who do not fall into the other welcome header groups (guest, unconfirmed, never posted, inactive). Whether it be a scheduled outage/ upgrade, an important request or the need to display an advertisement in a prominent spot, global announcements allow an administrator to effectively and quickly display messages in a way that is certain to be read.

Optional: One-View Messages
Some forums find that users grow tired of seeing the messages thus there is an option to show the welcome messages only once per browser session as determined by using a cookie.

Optional: Custom Messages
Welcome Headers addresses 5 common needs, your forum probably has more. I highly encourage you to add messages based on profile fields, user states and other criteria that may impact your users.

The results:
At first glance this system may seem a bit superfluous, however, the numbers rarely lie, nor does the feedback. On ScubaBoard.Com, the site the system was originally tested on, posting rates increased by over 100%; new user registration rates by over 60%; user activity by 50% and the welcome/ intro & greets forum has exploded over 400%. If you browse through the pages of this thread you will find even more real life testimonials and experiences from the thousands of people using the system.

vbSEO Add-ons
Some forums have found that after adding welcome headers, the welcome message shows up in their search descriptions. To address this issue, user's at vbSEO have recommended turning the guest welcome header into an image -- this way there's no duplicate content for the bots to spider. To learn more click here. My recommendation is that you test this option if you are allowing bots to spider your front-end pages.

Limited Guest Viewing compatibility
The Welcome Headers System is designed to work with the Limited Guest Viewing without any conflict. To insure that welcome header messages do not show up at the same time as the limited guest viewing message, please be sure you are running welcome headers version 4.1.3 or greater and have enabled the suppression option.

Support
Please post any enhancement or technical questions you may have and I will do my best to respond in a timely manner. Please note: I can not guarantee an immediate response and am unable to assist with integrating this addon with other addons or with HTML related questions.

Updates
4.2.1 - Fixed bug with global message
4.2.0 - Changed template conditionals to simplify customizations
4.1.9 - Added ability to disable messages if using Limited Guest Viewing system
4.1.3 - Added support for Limited Guest Viewing system

[smoknz28]

Very nice mod....thank you for sharing.

[EricC]

When posting the new code in the navbar, I get the following error:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ']', expecting T_STRING or T_VARIABLE or T_NUM_STRING in /home/eazy0000/public_html/forums/includes/adminfunctions_template.php(3596) : eval()'d code on line 376

It there anyone that could walk me through this hack in setting it up, or better yet going in my in my CPs and doing it for me? Sorry, I'm new to hacks and vB in general. Please PM me if you can help.

Thanks,
Eric

[Ted S]

It sounds like you are either using the wrong version of the hack for your version of vbulletin or you have modified a template in a way which is producing invalid code. The only thing you should be adding to your navbar template for this hack is the variable $welcomeheaders. Try saving the template without making any changes and see if it produces an error.

[newbuck]

Works Great...thx

[Kohhal]

Installed again after a few months absence, great hack

[BadgerDog]

I'm running Welcome Headers v4.2.2....

I'm also running "Limited Guest Viewing" v1.0.6

Within "Welcome Headers" under the AdminCP options, I have set

Limited Guest Viewing Surpression
Disable welcome headers if limited guest viewing system is on? YES

In spite of that, the custom "Welcome Headers" message I've set appears for un-registered users and once my threshold for reading threads/posts of 5 (my setting), it still continues to appear, but I also get the "Limited Guest Viewing" start to appear underneath it.

I thought that with the supression option turned ON, the "Welcome Headers" message would be superceded by the "Limited Guest Viewing" message when the post count was reached?

It looks odd to see BOTH messages displaying concurrently.

Any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks ...

Regards,
Badger

[Ted S]

When suppression is enabled the welcome headers won't appear on any showthread pages. Either your hack versions are not upgraded to the latest versions or there is some other code conflicting with the plugins.

if($vbulletin->options['lgvon'] AND !$vbulletin->options['wlhlgv'] AND (THIS_SCRIPT == 'showthread' OR THIS_SCRIPT == 'showpost' OR THIS_SCRIPT == 'printthread') ) {
    } else {
     eval('$welcomeheaders = "' . fetch_template('welcome_headers') . '";');
    }

What this code does is checks if LGV is on, and if so, if WH Supression is off and if so, if the script is showthread, printthread or showpost. If anything is changing any of these variables or the page names it won't work properly.

[BadgerDog]

Thanks Ted....

I appreciate the response, even though this mod is listed as "unsupported" ... :up:

I'm just an old Fortran programmer, so please bear with me...

I checked for conflicting variable names that might be conflicting using search. Only found this:

vBulletin Settings Phrases Containing 'lgvon'

setting_lgvon_desc ........ Standard Phrase This option allows you to enable or disable the Guest Limited Viewing System.
setting_lgvon_title ........ Standard Phrase Enable Limited Guest Viewing

Even though both versions numbers (as mentioned previously) were showing current in the "Installed Products" display, I completely re-installed (overwrote) both mods, "Welcome Headers v4.2.2" and "Limited Guest Viewing" v1.0.6. I made sure that variables were patched into the templates as per the instructions. I do not use VBSEO.

I then enabled the "Limited Guest Viewing" v1.0.6 and logged out, reading 5 posts as an un-registered user. My custom "Welcome Headers v4.2.2" message showed fine during the first 5 (my limit set in "Limited Guest Viewing"), however, as soon as I read the 6th post, my custom "Limited Guest Viewing" v1.0.6 message showed up below my "Welcome Headers v4.2.2" message, which continued to be displayed concurrently.

In any event, there must be something conflicting someplace, but my v3.67pl vBulletin is not a complicated installtion, so I have no idea what's happening.

"Welcome Headers" is what's important for me and since it works fine on its own, I think I'll just un-install "Limited Guest Viewing" and go from here.

Thanks for your coding and support... again, much appreciated.

If you ever want to check out what could be the problem, let me know and I'll provide you with full Admin access to view the templates, plugins etc.

Thanks

Regards,
Badger

[BadgerDog]

Now I'm really confused.

I thought I'd take another look at this before I uninstalled the Limited Guest Viewing mod, so as a test, I wanted to see what happened if I turned the Limited Guest Viewing Surpression option OFF, even though I have that mod installed.

If I have the Limited Guest Viewing Surpression option ON, then my custom Welcome Headers message appears on ALL pages, including the Forum Home and also Show Thread pages. As I said in previous posts, once the guest's preset number of posts he's allowed to read is reached, the extra warning starts to appear below the Welcome Headers message on ALL pages.

If I have the Limited Guest Viewing Surpression option OFF, then my custom Welcome Headers message only appears on Forum Home page. However, when the "guest" advisory message appears, it only appears on the Show Thread pages.

Any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong, or perhaps I don't understand what these switches are supposed to be dong?

Thanks ...

Regards,
Badger

[Ted S]

Limited guest viewing only impacts showthread and showpost pages. Welcome headers impacts every page unless limited guest viewing is installed, enabled and suppression is on.