Dynamic Announcements: Programmable Forum Home Announcement/Message with conditionals

(This hacks works with both 3.5.x and 3.6.x)

This hack allows you to post powerful dynamic announcements (changing according to different conditions) on forum home page. It differs from vbulletin's default announcements in 2 ways:

• The announcement is displayed in forum home page, not inside thread view. So visitors will read them on home page without clicking any links.
• The Hack's announcements are not static: ie. they can be powerfully programmed to display different texts according to different conditions.

For instance you can tell "why they should register" if visitor is a guest, but if he is a member with 0 posts, you can tell him why he should start posting etc.! All in one announcement! Everybody will see the relevant text according to his status. (This is the hack everybody keeps asking in the TheAdminZone.com whose using the hack for members with 0 and 1 posts.)


This version of the hack is for vbulletin 3.5.x and 3.6.x (vb 3.0.x version is here and vb 2.x version is here. 3.5 version is coded as a plugin so you can install it WITHOUT modifying vb PHP files. It is easily installed in 2 steps through your admin cp.

Basic Usage of This Hack: You can set a text in your Admin CP and it's displayed in forum home to all users. Alternatively if you want, you can set another text as a popup announcement and it is displayed to all as a pop up announcement (it can't be killed with popup killers software!)

Advanced Usage : With conditionals you can set different texts/notifications/messages/announcements and they will be displayed if your pre-configured condition applies. This allows you to create powerful announcements/private messages/texts which address their receipt only if a certain condition is met. Some examples:

You can set to show an announcement in forum home IF:

1. user is X
2. user's usergroup is Y
3. user has X posts or has more than Y posts but less than Z posts
4. his last visit time was X days ago
5. today is X, hour is between Y and Z, day is wednesday, month is Y, week is month's 2nd week, today is user's birthday
6. etc.

Here is a Screenshot from a general table announcement.
Here is a Screenshot from a popup announcement.

Some Features:

• Coded as a vbulletin pluggin. Can be installed easily without hacking PHP files.
• It's Admin CP integrated
• Smiley, BBCode, HTML, IMG tags are supported in announcements.
• You can address your users with their usernames inside announcements (Use $bbuserinfo[username] variable)
• Announcements are displayed directly in Forum Home so users are forced to read them.
• The Conditionals help you to design powerful and ever changing announcements/private messages/forum home notifications.
• Poupup announcement can not be killed by popup killer software

Hacks of Hack:
* For CMPS Integration see here
* French Translation by Allan : https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=143
* Nested Conditionals by dc3dreamer : https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=175
* Hack Annoucement appears in all vb pages:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...498#post911498



IMPORTANT FOR 3.x USERS:
If you were already using this hack in 3.0.x, remember to do 2 things:
BEFORE YOU INSTALL THIS HACK : Follow this instructions to remove the remnants of 3.0.x hack.
AFTER YOU INSTALL THIS HACK : Go to your admin cp / styles, find these 3 styles:
dfh_announcement
dfh_announcement_headercode
dfh_announcement_popup
and REVERT THEM so that your new templates that comes with 3.5 version will apply.

About vb4.x version:

I didn't consider porting this hack to vb4 because vbulletin has now a VERY SIMILAR feature in vb4 called "NOTICES". You can find it under your admin cp/Notices submenu/Notice Manager. It is not as powerful as this hack as this hack allows you to use any kind of conditional to produce your announcement but it is more user friendly because you don't need to deal with conditional syntax, you simply build your announcement (notice) with menus
If you install the hack, click INSTALL, thank you..

Logician \\=^))

[jayhawk785]

This is a great hack. Quick question, how would you do one for the ucash table?

[Dan]

Originally Posted by jayhawk785

This is a great hack. Quick question, how would you do one for the ucash table?

Just a quick question is there a way to make it show it only shows the announcement so many times to a certain usergroup? Like I want all my registered members to only see the announcement once.

Thanks!

[silurius]

What are the big differences between this and the Welcome headers hack?

[tbroush]

I can get the Forum Home Table Announcement to appear but I can't get the pop-up announcement to work!

I'm having the same issue however only in IE the popup works fine in Firefox, plus I have the time set at 12 hours and if I comeback to the site after couple hours I still see the announcement, this is happening on both browsers.

[tbroush]

Originally Posted by kushtiUK

I have tried this by following all your instructions but it does not show on my main page - has anyone else found this problem?

Make sure that you move the right plugin.

1. in the Plugin System -> Plugin Manager
move Dynamic Forum Home Announcement Hack by Logician from forumhome_complete to Global_start hook location.

There is another one that is attached to the cache_templates if you move this one is not going to work, I already did it by mistake.

[Brandon Sheley]

Originally Posted by folkish

I'd like to know the answer to this as well.

Installed, btw. Great hack.

here is the answer. for those who want to move the popup
on the first page

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....93&postcount=9

[high]* Brandon Sheley installs
[/high]

great hack, thank you

[OzgurcaN]

arkadaşlar bu konuyu türkçe [ TURKİSH ] Anlatabilecek birisi yokmu sevaba girersiniz valla.

[slank]

cheers - installs

[tbroush]

How can we add a time limit for the regular announcement?

[Brandon Sheley]

what is the condition to make it say the users name ..
like here it would be

Hello Loco Macheen pls post more

i seen it was set in the default, but i've edited it..ty