Miscellaneous Hacks - Activity Modification

This is the vB3.7/vB3.8 version of this modification.

Description
This hack adds an activity metric for users to your forum; this metric takes into account a variable number of weeks. Also provided is a Junior/Normal/Senior member system based on this metric, and a longevity metric (user registered time as a percent of the amount of time the first user has been registered).

Visiting each day and posting the configured amount of times per day for the configured number of weeks will yeild 100% activity. Posts are checked individually for each day, so days cannot be skipped then spammed up afterwards. The weight of visiting for the day relative to posting is configurable. Weeks are weighted so the most recent has a bigger impact on the activity percent than the most distant.

When a user logs in with activity above the configured threshold, they are promoted from Junior Member to Member. When they log in with the configured amount of time as Member, they are promoted to Senior Member. You can configure the mod to also add secondary usergroups when these promotions happen.

Complexity
This modification requires 1 XML import, uploading of images, and the addition of some CSS, depending on what options you choose

Technical
This hack adds 1 query to showthread for each user who posts in that page (or only 1 for the logged in user by configuration). In addition, the first time a member's post or profile is accessed during a day (GMT), 3 queries are performed to find that user's activity. By configuration, 1 query may be added to each page load to find the logged in user's "activity today". By configuration, 1 query may be added to each member profile view to find that member's "activity today".

Upgradability
This modification will import your settings and data from the 3.0/hack version
This modification will import your settings and data from the 3.5/3.6 mod version

Frequently Asked Questions

• I don't see the Activity Settings section or Activity Maintenance link on the AdminCP navbar
  You're probably seeing a cached (old) copy of the navbar. Try pressing Ctrl-F5 in IE or FF, or whatever your browser requires to force it to load the current version of the page.
• I installed this mod and nothing shows up
  First, go to AdminCP|Activity Settings|Display and make sure the dropdown settings are not set to None. If they aren't set to none, the most likely cause is using an old style which does not have template hooks; verify this by creating a new style without a parent and checking to see if the mod displays on it (the images probably won't load, though). If the mod displays on the default style but not your normal one, you need to add template hooks, otherwise post here for help.
• I installed this mod using the Download/Upload Plugin page and there was an error/it doesn't seem to work
  To install this mod, you need to use the Add/Import Product link on the Manage Products page
• I just installed and everyone's activity seems low
  1. Part of the activity calculation is what days users visited on. This information isn't collected before the mod is installed, so no user can have 100% activity untill you've been running the mod for the full period of time you have it set to monitor
  2. Please realize that there is no "roll over" for activity; if you have it set to look at 4 posts per day, your users must post 4 posts on each individual day to obtain 100%.
• I founded this forum, but I don't have 100% longevity
  Somehow a user's join date has been set before yours. When you install, the mod looks for the earliest join date to use to find longevity, but you can change the baseline date. To change the "Start of board" time, go to Maintenance>Activity Maintenance>Set Start of Board, enter your user number in the text field, then click Set Start of Board
• Why don't the images don't show up?/Why does the postcount have 's's in front of it?
  Be sure to upload one of the activity directories from activityimages.zip to the misc directory for each of your styles. To find a style's misc directory, goto the Style Manager, then from the dropdown next to the style, choose Stylevars. The setting Miscellaneous Images Folder contains the path to that style's misc directory, where you need to upload the activity directory
• Can I use activity for promotions?
  The project to build a full-blown promotion hack for use with this mod has been cancelled, after losing all of my work, however a much simpler system that adds secondary groups based on two thresholds has been added to the main hack.
• Can you make X number get split up into digits?
  I understand where you're coming from with this one, but I just can't figure out a way to work this that would be simple to use.
• The tooltips don't wrap and get cut off with FireFox
  The same thing happens to other vB tooltips (the thumbnail ones, for example). If you know a way to add line breaks to FF tooltips without scripting, please let me know.

Change log

Note: To upgrade, with the old version still installed, go to the Add/Import Product link on the Manage Products page, select the XML file for the new version, choose Yes for overwrite, then click Import.

Update 3.03 release

• Fixed a PHP error that some people were having

Update 3.01 release

• Fixed a PHP warning that did not break anything. It should no longer be added to your error logs.

Update 3.00 release
No changes

Update 3.00 beta 3

• Fixed template to use correct forumhome location
• Separated text-version stat block into its own template
• Moved settings into their own navigation group on the left (refresh AdminCP page after upgrading)
• Added new customization reference page to install zip

Update 3.00 beta 2

• Fixed a bug which prevented the postbit display option from working
• Fixed a bug where the Top Activity link could be in the navbar without the Top Activity page being enabled
• Fixed a bug where certain users have postcount of 'n/a' in Top Activity
• Added diagnostic screen
• Set minimum forum version

Version 3 (3.00 beta 1) vs Version 2 (2.80)

• Added template hook and DOM based styling; manual template modification no longer needed
• Split the options page into four options pages
• Added many options to control the style of the mod
• Added "Countdown to 100%" feature in the Top Activity page
• All new profile page display for vB3.7

Support

Please click the install link if you install this hack
I will support this hack in this thread on about a weekly basis.

[hawspipe]

Hi,
I really like this mod, however, I can't get the "Top Activity Page" to display or show the link anywhere. Do you have ideas on where I can start to figure out what is going on?

[WetWired]

It's disabled by default. Have you turned it on in the Top Activity settings?

[hawspipe]

Yes, I've double checked all of the setting, tried re-installing and still can't get it to show up.

[WetWired]

Is it just the link that's not showing, or does viewing index.php?do=activitystat not work either?

If you could go to AdminCP>Maintenance>Activity Maintenance and post the results of the configuration diagnostic, that would give me a better picture of what might be going on.

[hawspipe]

Yes, I tried accessing it via index.php?do=activitystat and all it does it take me back to the home page.

Versions
vBulletin version: 3.7.2
Activity mod version: 3.00

Settings
Activity today: Yes Yes Yes
Postbit style: Alternate location
Profile style: Both
Ranktext: Yes
Top activity: Yes Yes

Template hooks
Style p1 p2 p3 pl1 pl2 pl3 u1 u2 n
MASTER STYLE Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y
--Default Style Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y N

[WetWired]

Well, the link isn't showing because your navbar template doesn't have the template hook for it. The link is added to $template_hook[navbar_buttons_left]. Assuming your navbar changes are just new/rearanged links, you should revert your navbar and redo your changes, being carefull not to remove any template hooks, since this will affect other mods you might install, too.

As for the page itself, that situation is most odd. The only thing I can think of is that some other mod is changing $_REQUEST['do'] or also uses the forumhome_start plugin and is returning. I suggest turning off all other mods and see if the problem persists. If not, turn them on one by one untill the problem comes back; the one you just turned on when it stops working is probably the problem.
Depending on the cause, you may be able to work arround the problem by going to Plugins&Products>Plugin Manager, finding the Activity Modification forumhome_start plugin, editing it and setting the execution order to 1.

[john102774]

Great hack! Thank you.

I'm running, VB3.7.2 PL2

[john102774]

Originally Posted by butch3r

Open template "activity_navbar" and replace it with

		<td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="forum.php?$session[sessionurl]do=activitystat">$vbphrase[WWU002_stats_short]</a></td>

Thank you!

[meissenation]

I saw in a previous post someone brought this up and it was somewhat disregarded -- but this should not be ignored. My PHP Error log is swollen from the amount of errors this modification is creating.

PHP Warning:  Call-time pass-by-reference has been deprecated; If you would like to pass it by reference, modify the declaration of WWU002promoteUser().  If you would like to enable call-time pass-by-reference, you can set allow_call_time_pass_reference to true in your INI file in global.php(405) : eval()'d code on line 542

My first error of this occurred when it was installed on August 20, 2008 at 9:04am. In my log file, it's line 7659. Scroll massive amounts down and my last entry in the PHP Error log currently is at 517423 -- 99.999% of the errors between 7659 and 517423 is this same Call-time pass-by-reference error message. In only 5 days, this error has created over 500,000 lines of errors -- or 100,000 per day. Please fix or advise what to do to fix the error because 100,000 error lines per day is just rediculous and unnecessary.

[WetWired]

How was it disregarded? I indicated that I found and corrected the error for the next version, I just didn't feel that it was important enough to release a version with only that change. Since there haven't been any other issues, I guess I'll make a release with just that...