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 \\=^))

[CongTuDepTrai]

I have 2 question

is this work with forumID? because i wanna se annoucement for each forumID, not only on FORUMHOME

can we setup different announcement for different forumID?

[kira]

Many many thanks for this awesome and extremely integral addon. Used this in vb2 and am delighted to continue now that I'm finally moving to vb 3.5.4. Thank you again, Logician!

[dcpaq2xx]

Originally Posted by silurius

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

Group,

Is it possible that Logicians mod here can take the place of and or out do Ted's mod?

Id like to know if I should be using both mods or just this one or using only Ted's mod?

Can someone help shed some light on this for me, I am undecided on what I should do.

Alot of this has to do with where do i like the announcements being displayed, such as in above or below the nav bar such as in the header or just above the forums.

Thanks

Doug

[dcpaq2xx]

Logician,

How about adding a radio button or something within the admin control panel to disable the default Vbulletin "first_visit_message" phrase to keep us from having to manually edit or delete any code?

Would you be willing to do this for us? or me?

Also Id like to make a suggestion to have more boxes added to the acp so we can seperate things according to categories or something, instead of everything being all in one box.

Thanks

Doug

[dcpaq2xx]

Is there a way that I can add my conditional messages like below but also be able to seperate each message with a line and what the message does without it showing up on the forums?

------------Begin Welcome Guest-----------
[[($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==1)]]Message would be here.[[/($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==1)]]
--------------End Welcome Guest-----------

For some reason the Begin and End Welcome Guest and lines show up, how can I do this and have them not show up.

Thanks

Doug

[dcpaq2xx]

Group,

What would the IF command be for a user who has NEVER made a post?

What would the IF command be for a user who has registered but has not had their email address confirmed yet?

What would the IF command be for a user who hasnt made a post within a certain period of time?

I ask these as I didnt see these covered in the examples by Logician.

Thanks

Doug

[d8tabyte]

I seen this hack with a fade in box that contained quick registration, how would I go about this?

I saw it on http://www.talkinto.com/forums/index.php? and I really like the idea - I have seen the code pasted here earlier for a fade box, but I am not sure if that is a separate hack or what....

anyone?

[d8tabyte]

Anyone? It seems they don't have the fade in on that site any more.. - but the code that matches is here in this post - https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...ade#post851299

Any ideas?

[NemoTech]

Okay I have this working on forumdisplay. I'd like to have announcement on 3 different forums. $forumid == (5, 208, 12). I can go into my template(FORUMDISPLAY) and make adjustments in there. But ideally I'd like to make changes from the "dynamic announcements options".

I am wondering can I do something like this...
[[($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==6)] and ($forumid=='80')]
MY ANNOUNCEMENTS!!!!
[[/($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==6)] and /($forumid=='80')]

If I can get this working, I'll be able to have multiple announcements - different announcements for different forums!!! - Which would be ideal!!!

[NemoTech]

<if condition="(in_array($forumid, array(2,4)))">
annoucement
</if>

Multiple forums.