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vBExperience · **Released**: 02-19-2008

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

Phalynx · #**2362** 03-27-2009, 07:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wsh

thank you for the wonderful script.

is there an easy way to set up a credit system for other modifications without too much coding? or would it have to be implemented into the vbExperience script itself. i'd like to be able to credit users for posting links using Video Directory but i know vbexperience doesn't support it yet.

You can use the plugin system of vBExperience for this, it's called CDP Custom Data Provider

Quote:

Originally Posted by the.code

i am using vbexperience n its really a cool addition bcz of my forum nature i need something like this but its lacking in a only single thing which is making other users to use vbcredits or so on , as right now i really need a bank thing where users can add their points as Money/BuX and donate them to others users to buy diff things like custom title/etc

hope to see this update soon

n yea an addon as ability to grab points from existing vbcredits/or other hacks so users can adapt this as their main system

wud like to see ur reply phalynx

Something like a bank is on my todo list, but not for the next version.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cory_booth

I have seen many post about this issue... And while it indeed seems to be a SQL server issue, I ran this query by itself in phpAdmin and had a NULL return.

Code:

Invalid SQL:

			SELECT text, languageid, special
			FROM aquia_phrase AS phrase
			LEFT JOIN aquia_phrasetype USING (fieldname)
			WHERE phrase.fieldname = 'frontredirect'
				AND varname = 'postthanks' AND languageid IN (-1, 0, 1);

MySQL Error   : MySQL server has gone away

So I reran the query by doing this:

Code:

Invalid SQL:

			SELECT text, languageid, special
			FROM aquia_phrase AS phrase
			LEFT JOIN aquia_phrasetype USING (fieldname)
			WHERE phrase.fieldname = 'frontredirect'
				AND varname = 'postthanks';
MySQL Error   : MySQL server has gone away

So it was a languageID issue. I changed the query back to normal,
and I changed the languageid to 1 and I got a return.

I change the languageid to -1 and then I did get a return.

Not sure what the significance was....

I'm not really sure what you want to show me...

cory_booth · #**2363** 03-27-2009, 04:23 PM

From Cory Booth.

What I was saying is... I have seen multiple posts addressing this particular SQL error. I assume this error is from the Post Thanks Scoring Hack? In anycase, I too have received this error.

But when I took the SQL from the email and pasted it into phpAdmin I got a NULL result.

To figure out why or what the query wanted I removed parts specifically "AND languageid IN (-1, 0, 1);"

This gave me the language phrase I belive the script was looking for. Therefore I assumed the languageid code was the problem for getting a NULL script.

So I played with the languageid code (changed it from -1 to 1) and reran the original SQL.

I got the return.

Out of confussion, I changed the languageid code back to -1 and I then got the return again.

Hmmmm....

So I imagine the SQL insert for this particular phase and languageid might be putting in a -1 with a blank space? Somehow the -1 for postthanks is corrupt?

Phalynx · #**2364** 03-27-2009, 09:32 PM

I see this error for the first time. Are you sure you are in the correct modification thread?

PrincessFiona · #**2365** 03-29-2009, 03:47 PM

This is a weird question, but...is it possible for the user to be able to purchase an actual item with their points....like...a gift certificate or something...instead of a virtual item?

Phalynx · #**2366** 03-31-2009, 07:15 AM

Yes, as long you can "link" an virtual item with a real one. If you enable it, you are getting an eMail (purchase certificate) upon a purchase.

PrincessFiona · #**2367** 04-01-2009, 09:00 PM

Could you further elaborate how that would work? Would I have to purchase the gift certificates in advance? I am thinking specifically of offering Amazon gift certificates in $10 increment for certain point values.

Would that person purchase the gift certificate and then I would have to manually deliver it (via email) to them?

Kris

PrincessFiona · #**2368** 04-01-2009, 09:25 PM

I installed this mod to play with it. I have a few questions.

Is it possible for me to recalculate the points? My board has been running for nearly 10 years, and I have users with >30,000 points. I'd like to try and start back at zero for everyone.

Also, I am only seeing 2 bars instead of 3.

How does the award system work? I have read the instructions, but I can't seem to find a place to create awards or figure out how to award them.

The user levels...what do they mean potentially for my users?

I'm sorry for the newbie questions. There are more than 150 pages to this thread and I can't seem to find the answers.

Kris

Phalynx · #**2369** 04-02-2009, 08:00 AM

Dear Fiona!

Quote: