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 \\=^))

[Logician]

How To Use - Conditionals Help

After you installed the hack:

Basic Usage:

If you want to display an announcement to ALL users, simply login to Admin CP/Choose VB Settings/Dynamic Forum Announcements and enter your announcement as a plain text into the box. You can use smilies and all other bbcode in your announcements. This text will be dragged to your forum home regardless of whoever the page visitor is. You can use the poup box if you want to display the annnoucement as popup and the other box if in a table in forum home.

Advanced Usage:
You can use "conditionals" to set announcements displayed if a certain condition applies. If you are using my WebTemplates Hack , you should be already familiar with the term "conditional". In Webtemplates conditionals could be used to put different texts/HTML codes which will be parsed if certain condition appied in your non-vb pages. It's the same concept and their usage is same. Here is its format:

[[(your conditional)]] Your Announcement [[/(your conditional)]]

Conditional Rules:

• Conditionals are covered inside [[ ]] tags
• Conditional itself is in paranthesis ( )
• Announcements are written in between the conditional tags
• Opening and closing conditional are exactly same except closing conditional has a / right before (
• If you are trying to check if a X equals to Y use DOUBLE equation mark not single. eg. Correct: X==Y Incorrect:X=Y
• You can design as many conditional as you like. If more than 1 condition applies at the same time, the conditional which is above (=higher priority) is parsed.
• If you write a plain text without a conditional together with other conditionals, this text is considered "default announcement" and displayed if no conditions applies.

Some examples will help you understand the rules better. Here are some conditionals and the announcement texts which explains what that conditional do:

* [[($bbuserinfo[userid]==32)]] Show this announcement if page visitor's user id is 32 [[/($bbuserinfo[userid]==32)]]

* [[($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==5)]] Show this announcement if page visitor's usergroupid is 5 (=if he is a Super Mod) [[/($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==5)]]

* [[($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==1)]] Show this announcement if page visitor is a guest [[/($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==1)]]

* [[($bbuserinfo[userid]>1)]] Show this announcement if page visitor is NOT a guest [[/($bbuserinfo[userid]>1)]]

* [[($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==5 OR $bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==6 OR $bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==7)]] Show this announcement if page visitor's a Super Mod OR a Mod OR an Admin [[/($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==5 OR $bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==6 OR $bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==7)]]

* [[($bbuserinfo[posts]<10)]] Show this announcement if page visitor has less than 10 posts [[/($bbuserinfo[posts]<10)]]

* [[($bbuserinfo[posts]==1)]] Show this announcement if page visitor has just 1 posts [[/($bbuserinfo[posts]==1)]]

* [[($bbuserinfo[lastvisit] and $bbuserinfo[lastvisit]<strtotime(-30 days))]]Show this announcement if page visitor has not visited your board for 30 days[[/($bbuserinfo[lastvisit] and $bbuserinfo[lastvisit]<strtotime(-30 days))]]

* [[($bbuserinfo[joindate]>strtotime("-2 weeks") AND $bbuserinfo[joindate]<strtotime("-4 weeks"))]]Show this announcement if page visitor registered in a date between 2 weeks to 4 weeks from now[[/($bbuserinfo[joindate]>strtotime("-2 weeks") AND $bbuserinfo[joindate]<strtotime("-4 weeks"))]]

You can use conditionals together too. Here is an example:
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
[[($bbuserinfo[userid]==32)]] Announcement 1 [[/($bbuserinfo[userid]==32)]]
[[($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==3)]] Announcement 2 [[/($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==3)]]
Announcement 3
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
If you set this text as your announcement, the hack will:
Show Announcement 1, if user's userid = 32
Show Announcement 2, if user's usergroupid = 3 (=email confirmation waiting members)
show Announcement 3, For ALL other users

What if user 32 is also from user groupid 3? He will be displayed Announcement 1 because even if he matches both conditional 1 and conditional 2, conditional 1 (which is above) has a higher priority.

Hope this document helps you to understand the term conditional. Needless to say my hack's conditional syntax is different than vb3's default conditional syntax and this is because I use my syntax for a long time (before vb3 was up).

If you need more help to design a "conditional", before asking me please read this document carefully for a few times, try to form it by yourself and if they all fail, ask in the hack's thread giving details about exactly what conditional you tried to form and what text (format) have you tried (and failed). You are welcomed to ask them in thread but my apologies in advance if I'm too busy to answer all questions. Thank you.

[Logician]

[reserved for future use like FAQ]....

[TyleR]

heyyy, nice to see this ported to 3.5

[high]* TyleR clicks install[/high]

[Feckie (Roger)]

Nice One Thanks

[David_R]

Originally Posted by Feckie (Roger)

Nice One Thanks

hey Logician, thanks for updating the hack. just one question, does the 3.5 version carries any improvements over 3.x version ?

thanks.

[Logician]

Originally Posted by David_R

hey Logician, thanks for updating the hack. just one question, does the 3.5 version carries any improvements over 3.x version ?

It is mostly same but there a few improvements:

1- You can set up the frequency of popup announcement. Eg. you can make it popup in every 12 hours for the same user instead of every visit. (See admin cp screenshot above)

2- I get rid of the complainted "green" color Popup window and make it inherit your vb style with a cool red border.

3- It does not require any PHP hacking and can be installed through your admin cp as a pluggin.

4- Unlike vb3.x version, I don't support "header" version of it in which the announcement is displayed in all forum pages, not only forum home. It caused some minor bugs in post cached enabled forums so I only support forumhome announcement version which is stable

[TTG]

Great hack and could be very useful, I do however have one problem

I have a flash header on my forum and the popup announcements are hidden behind the flash .. is there any way of placing the popup announcements to show lower within the forum ?

[Logician]

Originally Posted by TTG

Great hack and could be very useful, I do however have one problem

I have a flash header on my forum and the popup announcements are hidden behind the flash .. is there any way of placing the popup announcements to show lower within the forum ?

Sure.. You can edit template 'dfh_announcement_popup'. The location of popup announcement is fixed there in the line:

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; left: 50px; right: 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;"> 


[Sovereign]

Yay awesome! Been wanting this.