Add-On Releases - vBExperience

vBExperience 3.8 (aka xPerience)

Created by Marius Czyz aka Phalynx.

Winner of the "Mod of the Month"-Award (March 2008) on vBulletin.org.


Description
vBExperience is your feature packaged solution for motivation and satisfying your users. vBExperience is an advanced Level/Promotion and Activity System with Shop, Awards and Activities. It will calculate an activity and experience score for every user based on their activites on the forum. Now your users will see how their level is increasing by participating on your forum.

This mod was developed by me because I was never satisfied with the post count. Communities are not only defined by post count, they need much more parameters: Are the postings the user creates helpful? Are his threads frequently read? Does the user participate on the community by posting pictures, attachments, leaving visitor messages, tagging threads? All this can be answered with this mod.

Comments, suggestions, translations, bugs, etc... are very welcome! Support is only given to people who have clicked Mark as Installed.


Compatibility
This mod will work with vBulletin 3.7.x and 3.8.x. For vBulletin 3.6 you will need vBExperience 3.7



Demo:
http://www.insideearth.net/xperience.php?langid=5

Demo Profile:
http://www.insideearth.net/member.php?u=1&langid=5

Demo Rankings:
http://www.insideearth.net/xperience.php?langid=5

Demo Awards:
http://www.insidesupcom.de/xperience...wards&langid=1

Demo Promotions:
http://www.insidesupcom.de/xperience...=shop&langid=1

Demo Shop:
http://www.insideearth.net/xperience...=shop&langid=5

Demo Stats:
http://www.insideearth.net/xperience...stats&langid=5

Demo Earn Points:
http://www.insideearth.net/xperience...=earn&langid=5

Other Demo Site:
http://www.insidesupcom.de/xperience.php?langid=1


There are mainly four things visible for the users: The users score, his level, his next level up in %/points and his activity in %.


Calculation of the score
Taken into calculation are these things:
Threads
- Created threads
- Thread views of own threads
- Thread replies of own threads
- Thread votes of own threads
- Thread tags
- Replies to own threads
- Sticky threads
- Socialgroup Discussions (Discussions, Posts)

Posts
- Created posts
- Views on attachments

User
- Days since registration
- Average posts per Day (for users who are on forum for at least seven days)
- Referrals
- Received infractions
- Reputation / Use of reputation system
- Visitor messages on profiles
- Members of own social groups
- Albumpictures
- Friends
- Completing Profile

Misc
- Calendar entries


Additionally there is support for 3rd party addons (some are already installed):
- vB Tournaments and Ladders (via CDP Addon)
- Post Ranking System (via CDP Addon)
- Helpful Answers (via CDP Addon)
- AWCoding-Donation System LITE and PRO (via CDP Addon)
- Cyb Paypal Donate (included)
- DownloadsII (included)
- ibProArcade Highscorer Points (via CDP Addon)
- LDM Links and Downloads Manager (included)
- PhotoPlog 2.1 (via CDP Addon)
- PhotoPost vBGallery (via CDP Addon)
- PhotoPost Pro (via CDP Addon)
- Post Thank You / Use of Post Thank You (via CDP Addon)
- QuoteIt! 3.16 (via CDP Addon)
- SAPR: Advanced Post Rating system (via CDP Addon)
- thanks via vS-Hide Hack Resurrection (Expanded Edition) (included)
- v3arcade Highscorer Points (via CDP Addon)
- v3arcade Submissions Points (via CDP Addon)
- vBulletin Blog (included)
- Who Downloaded This Attachment? (included)
- Other Addons can be easily added via CDP - Custom Data Provider plugins.

Additionally you can install these modifications:
- Thread Necromancer: Gives (minus-) points when a user is posting in old threads.
- Scrupulous Poster: Gives points for editing posts. Award users that are editing own posts instead of doing double post.
- Deletion Addicted: Gives points when an user/nod soft-deletes post, thread, visitormessage, groupmessage or picturecomment.
- Arm of Law: Give points for moderators who are using the infraction system
- Discussion Ender: Give points for people who are the last on a discussion
- RadioActivity: Reduce points for every day the user is not online

Also, there are already addons available that are working as Custom Data Provider (CDP). A CDP can extend vBExperience by collecting data and adding it to the vBExperience datastore. All point providers can be used for Awards and Shop.

You have to install these hacks for your own, vBExperience doesn't install nor touches these.


vBAdvanced
There are three vBAdvanced 3.0 XML modules: Most Active Users, Most Experienced Users and Last 20 Activities. Import them via vBAdvanced AdminCP.


Awards
There are six default awards: Most Popular, Activity Award, Posting Award, Community Award, Frequent Poster, Blog Award, Calendar Award. The awards are shown in Rankings and Profile. You can set them also to display in postbit near the username. There is a scheduled job running once a day (02:30h) to calculate them.
Via AdminCP they are completely customizeable and can also be assigned manually.
Awards can be created for every data provider.


Rankings
Showing User, Level, Awards, Activity Points (experience, thread, post, user, misc) - sortable.
Since 3.8.3, there is a also a ranking for Social Groups

Shop
A virtual Shop will motivate your users to earn more points. You can define categories and put virtual items with pictures in it. A currency can be defined seperatly for every item, e.g. 20 points from threads or 100 points from gallery. Users can purchase the items, they appear in their profile. The costs of the item are substracted from their xperience points. Additionally you can set quantity of the items.
The Shop will motivate your users to collect specific points to buy an item. Optionally you can show the last purchased items on postbit.
You can put virtual items in it, like WoW addons: Sell WoW Items in exchange of f.e. thread points. Great for RPG forums.
Non-Virtual Items like bold Usernames or Downloads for Points are already on my todo list.

Earn Points
There is an overview for the user on how points can be collected, with a list of users own points. All data is beeing pulled from the database (settings, phrases)

Statistics
The statistics is showing a Top-X list of the leading users. Usefull for optimizing points of the point provider. Only enabled point providers with results will be displayed.


Promotion system
To motivate users to do more on your forum I created the promotion system. By reaching defined xperience points the user will be moved to another usergroup - where you can set graphics, shadows, highlighting, etc... What is interesting in combination with this: you can give the user more possibilities f.e. larger avatars or bigger PM box. A log of the promotions is available.


Calculation of the activity
The system calculates the activity by taking the average post count/visitormessages/group discussion/Blog entries of the ten most active user and comparing it to own post count. This can be set to count only the last X days, f.e. 21 days.


Settings
You can control how many points are given to every calculation. For example you can give many points for creating new threads but only a few for views of that thread. Setting a value to 0 will disable a setting.
Additionally, you can set ignore users (f.e. for bot users), forums (f.e. offtopic forums) and usergroup id's.


Performance, Big Boards
vBExperience has been tested on smaller and also on some bigger sites. I know from boards with around 120k users running this mod smoothly. More about this topic can be read in the file readme_optimization.txt


Frequently asked questions
Q: How do I change the name Experience to something new?
A: You can change the name via phrases. Just search and replace all phrases that contains vBExperience.

Q: When installing vBExperience, does everyone start from scratch, or will it automatically configure everyone's points based on actions before the install?
A: If you recount, vBExperience will calculate ALL existing data since the beginning of the board.

Known Issues:
- Awards: On "Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread" awards are only shown for the user who is viewing this.
- Awards: If activated in with rich username, they are attached to the username. If the username is linked, the awards are also linked. If a link is underlined, the awards are also underlined. This behaviour is hardcoded in vBulletin and cannot be fixed.
- Settings are showing only a blank page, read here: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/proje...6979#note74140
- If you completely remove vBExperience, you need also to uninstall the product XML manually from the pluginssystem

Credits for icons
- FAMFAMFAM, http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/
- IconExperience


History
3.8.5 Beta 3, 18th September 2009
- Fixed Promotions
- Fixed Notifications
- Added Activities to Promotions
- All Activities are not obeying limit
- AdminCP/Experience has a recount for Promotions and Achievements
- Fixed listing of Achievements with Firefox
- Several Beta 2 fixes

3.8.5 Beta 2, 02nd September 2009
- Just a short note: Condition in Achievements and Promotions are calculated in POINTS, not in counts of items.
If you choose 10 Day, you must enter the points needed for this.
For example: You have an achievement for 10 days. You have set 2 points for every day since registering. Calculation: 10*2 = 20
You will have to set 20 as the condition.
- New tabbed interface. If you want to change the style, edit the template xperience_navbar_css
- Promotions now showing usergroups and conditions for a promotion to the next group
- You can import old vBExperience Legacy promotions (that were created within level.xml)
- Achievements in Profile
- Achievements below Avatar
- Several Beta 1 fixes

3.8.5 Beta 1, 28th August 2009
- Achievements!
- Promotions!
- Notification on Awards, Promotions and Achievements
- GAP: Empty pointfields will not be displayed anymore
- Activity: Showing percent values with a decimal
- Activities now also for users
- Awards below Avatar
- Default Awards are now also creating new category
- Shop: Fixed issue in not returning cash on sells
- Reworked Edit Shop Items


Todo for Beta 3:
- Download files with vBExperience as a credit system ("LDM Links and Downloads Manager", "DownloadsII")
- Activity eraser
- AdminCP Permissions
- Advanced User Permissions


For more see history.txt

[MonkYZ]

I found a bug.
In my homepage (using vBadvanced) sometimes it shows broken images in the Online Users module... with links like
http://www.mywebsite.com/images/misc...d_activity.png

There must be something wrong, as that's not the right path to my pictures. It should be
http://www.mywebsite.com/forum/mysty...d_activity.png

Hope this can be fixed

[cykelmyggen]

Suddenly the items bought in shop shows twice - though only bought once. What could be the reason for this - and eventually the solution to the problem?

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by RenegadeFerret

-Bought Items list on a User Profile only has 3 items horizontally instead of all of them horizontally. The rest go down vertically.

Fixed in 3.7.18

Originally Posted by RenegadeFerret

-Users get to choose what order their bought item icons appear in postbit.

Uhm, really complicated to do.

Originally Posted by Mazinger

How to delete items a specific user bought from his items list?

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....postcount=1658

Originally Posted by AuroraStorm

My apologies for mixing your name up. As far as the hack is concerned, I'm sorry but I'm gonna uninstall for now. Having to install the shop items individually plus adding the awards to each skin is too much of a hassle and I'm just as limited on time as you are. Perhaps you'll come up with a way to make the install process more user friendly...

Sad to read. You have just to copy the award to every skin, nothing more. I'll try to include in next versions a possibility to include awards from everywhere, so f.e. independable from styles.

Originally Posted by yahoooh

points for :
1.user when he reads thread depend on who read threads addon of paul
2.user when he send to friend but i think need addon for store data for who using send to friend for thread

Use CDP for that

Originally Posted by yahoooh

the images for award should has id not the same name of award because i have multilanguage site and i suggest to adding phrase language for awar if it can be

Nice idea, will see what I can realise for next versions.

Originally Posted by MonkYZ

I was wondering if you can do something for the next version. I want to reward my users with prizes, so i setup a few vBExperience medals. But now i realise i have some top users that take all the prizes, and they remain on top every time. Can you do something so i can see/sort what user is doing better for the last week, or month, or something like that ?

Use the query position... scroll up in this thread, it has been asked sooooo many times :/

Originally Posted by MonkYZ

User X goes to 1000 points. The closest one is user Y,Z,W with 100 points.
There is no way on earth that user Y will ever get higher than user X !
But, as user X is getting lazy (knowing nobody can reach him), i want to see which one from users Y,Z,W is trying harder lately.
So, as for last week User X points increase is going lower, but Y,Z,W is getting higher, although not even close to X. I want to see which one from Y,Z,W has done the best in last week.

Doing awards based on a time frame is very difficult as many data vBExperience is collecting does not have a timestamp. Also, this would mean I have to collect that data and store in database, which means I'm collecting much more data.

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by MissKalunji

What's CDP?

See \extras\Custom Data Provider\readme_custom_data_provider.txt

Originally Posted by MissKalunji

Let's say i have something else needed a Custom Money Row to use with experience.

What would be the Money Row of vbexperience?

There is non. You can use every column of xperience_stats for that.

Originally Posted by MonkYZ

In my homepage (using vBadvanced) sometimes it shows broken images in the Online Users module... with links like
http://www.mywebsite.com/images/misc...d_activity.png

There must be something wrong, as that's not the right path to my pictures. It should be
http://www.mywebsite.com/forum/mysty...d_activity.png

This is known, will be fixed in next version.

Originally Posted by cykelmyggen

Suddenly the items bought in shop shows twice - though only bought once. What could be the reason for this - and eventually the solution to the problem?

Where do they show up twice?

[cykelmyggen]

Originally Posted by Phalynx

Where do they show up twice?

In postbit - but the problem seem to have cured itself - as everything now is back to normal. Maybe a recount fixed it..??

[dinodonk]

after recount several times, most users are still in level 1 even i change the level product. do i miss anything??

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by dinodonk

after recount several times, most users are still in level 1 even i change the level product. do i miss anything??

Seems you are taking a too high level.

[masons_mum]

could i just add for the simpletons like me ... thats the query position to change to stop admin etc getting all the awards is in 'manage awards' then in 'edit award' for each award.

If you set it to 0 it will go to the person with the highest count of whatever the award is for, set it to 1 and it will go to the person with the second highest, 2, to the person with the third highest and so on.

Most of my awards are set to 2 because me and my head admin if not get all the medals.

It is a great hack and my members are loving it, thank you

[SBoards]

great mod! It installed very easily, and worked out of the box. It looks like I can take my time setting it up the way we want it.

Thanks very much!!

[MissKalunji]

Originally Posted by Phalynx

See \extras\Custom Data Provider\readme_custom_data_provider.txt


There is non. You can use every column of xperience_stats for that.


This is known, will be fixed in next version.


Where do they show up twice?

Thanks wicked add-ons!

*confused anyone can help me set it up?