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 \\=^))

[istvan]

doesnt work ->
[[($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==10)]]testmessage[[/($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==10)]]

does work ->
testmessage

so i cant get an message to show for usergroups... Is it so that it only checks on primarygroups?

[istvan]

Originally Posted by istvan

doesnt work ->
[[($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==10)]]testmessage[[/($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==10)]]

does work ->
testmessage



so i cant get an message to show for usergroups... Is it so that it only checks on primarygroups?

/bump

[tqvn2004]

For those who have problem with closing the announcement popup, do the following:

Edit FORUMHOME template, find: (if you have more than 1 template set apply this to all sets)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
$dfh_announcement_headercode
</head>
<body>
$dfh_announcement_popup
$header
$navbar
$dfh_announcement
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Replace by:

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
</head>
<body>
$dfh_announcement_headercode
$dfh_announcement_popup
$header
$navbar
$dfh_announcement
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

This should do the trick!

===============================================

@Logician: I think it better to embed the announcement popup's closing script in the "dfh_announcement_popup" template, for example:

<script>function clearpopupannouncement(id) {document.getElementById(id).style.display = 'none';}</script>

<DIV ID="ANNLAYER" STYLE="background-color: red; position: absolute; margin-left:5; margin-right:5; margin-top:5; margin-bottom:0; top: 50px; bottom: 50px; padding: 10px; overflow: auto; border-color: 000000; border-style: solid; border-top-width: 2px; border-right-width: 3px; border-bottom-width: 3px; border-left-width: 2px;">

<table cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" border="0" class="tborder" width="100%" height="100%" align="center"><tr><td>
    <table cellpadding="$stylevar[cellpadding]" cellspacing="$stylevar[cellspacing]" border="0" width="100%" height="100%">
     <tr height="100%">
	     <td class="panelsurround" align="center" height="100%"> 
       <div class="panel"><div align="$stylevar[left]">

$dfh_announcement_popuptopaste

<br /><br />

<input type="button" onclick="clearpopupannouncement('ANNLAYER')" name="clear" value="$vbphrase[closeannouncement]" class="button">
<br />

</div></div>
	</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td></tr></table>
</div>

By this you dont have to define and calling other template, "dfh_announcement_headercode"

PS: Actually you can put 3 templates into one

[Bulent Tekcan]

The anouncment screen very BIG Firefox and IE7,it is very bad view.

Any fix for that ?

Thanks

[Bubble #5]

Originally Posted by paul41598

What if I want two popups?

I think that's its only drawback

[Bulent Tekcan]

Originally Posted by Bulent Tekcan

The anouncment screen very BIG Firefox and IE7,it is very bad view.

Any fix for that ?

Thanks

Any idea for this problem ?

[Cooleyvol]

OK, I'm not understanding the time settings.
I've done the change so that you can set it to minutes.

When I set any variable >0, the box doesnt show up.

If I set negative integers, it does.

What is the setting for 15 minutes?

-0.25?

[Logician]

Originally Posted by Cooleyvol

OK, I'm not understanding the time settings.
I've done the change so that you can set it to minutes.

When I set any variable >0, the box doesnt show up.

If I set negative integers, it does.

What is the setting for 15 minutes?

-0.25?

Numbers should be positive.

The box normally shows up but it does not show up for you because you visited the board in the last 15 minutes (while setting this setting). Log out and wait for 20 minutes, then revisit the board and you'll see that it will show up.

[Logician]

Originally Posted by Bulent Tekcan

The anouncment screen very BIG Firefox and IE7,it is very bad view.

Any fix for that ?

Thanks

Sorry HTML is not my strong point but if you have a design related problem in popup announcement, you can edit template "dfh_announcement_popup" and play with the setting of the DIV style here:

PHP Code:

<DIV ID="ANNLAYER" STYLE="background-color: red; position: absolute; margin-left:5; margin-right:5; margin-top:5; margin-bottom:0; top: 50px; bottom: 50px; padding: 10px; overflow: auto; border-color: 000000; border-style: solid; border-top-width: 2px; border-right-width: 3px; border-bottom-width: 3px; border-left-width: 2px;"> 


[Cooleyvol]

Originally Posted by Logician

Numbers should be positive.

The box normally shows up but it does not show up for you because you visited the board in the last 15 minutes (while setting this setting). Log out and wait for 20 minutes, then revisit the board and you'll see that it will show up.

So the setting for 15 minutes is '15?

If that's the case, how many times does it show during that 15 minutes. Am I correct in thinking that with a setting of '15' that the box will show up for userX for 15 minutes after his first visit to the forums following my setting up of the popup?

If that is incorrect, how can I set it to show up only one time per user OR to show up for the 15 minutes following their first visit? I don't want it to continue popping up for UserX for more than 15 minutes past his first visit after I set it up.