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

[Alfa1]

I see. Thanks.

How does the promotion system of this mod work?

Could you please add the following functions:

1. I'd like to block certain members from promotions if they have infractions are active or that have expired within the last X amount of months.
2. The option to reward members that use the reputation system (i.e. rate both positive and negative)
3. The functionality to identify the member with most experience in a specific forum? It would be awesome to easily identify the main members of a specific forum.
4. The option to reward members that report bad posts to staff.

And off course this:

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Marius; is it possible to have a member of the month based upon vBE?

Originally Posted by Phalynx

For sure. How should a member of the month be detected?

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Total amount of experience points received in a calendar month. IMO reputation should be an important factor, but any admin can set this for him / her self.

[nerofix]

Originally Posted by Blackhat

How come almost all of my users have 0% activity. Its set to default 21 days.

Same question here.

Is the activity only related to forum postings?

[FRANKTHETANK 2]

Originally Posted by FRANKTHETANK 2

Ok this is the problem i'm having. In the postbit it shows everything 3x's here is a pic for you to see. Any idea's on how to fix it?

can i get some support on this please. the pic is on page 37

[hrk]

Hi . installed and still testing.

i would like to rename the tab Vbexperience with some other name. pls guide on this.
thank you.

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by FRANKTHETANK 2

Thanks I don't know why but I have been making these simple mistakes lately. Other than that works great. Can I change the color of the bars in the postbit?

Of course. It's the *.gif files in misc/level/

Originally Posted by FRANKTHETANK 2

And i also found out that this conflicts with vbpro arcade. It won't show the games that the person won in the postbit. Is there any way to fix this?

I cannot handle support for arcade. vBExperience is using template hooks. If arcade does not - not my fault.

Originally Posted by FRANKTHETANK 2

Well i found somthing else that i can't figure out. In quick reply it gives two links for vbexperience and it also does it when i turn on auto navbar.
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g1...les9786/VB.jpg - example

Cannot confirm that. I don't know any board where this happens. If you still need help provide me an admin user on your board.

Originally Posted by Blackhat

How come almost all of my users have 0% activity. Its set to default 21 days.

Originally Posted by nerofix

Is the activity only related to forum postings?

Yes, in it's current version only postings are counted towards the activity. It is planned to span that over all monitored xperiences, but this will come in the next major version.

Originally Posted by unforsaken

Whenever I run the maintenance on this mod I get to about 4000 count on it and then I get an error from my SQL server stating that I have overdone my sql query limits that are set at like 100000 or something. I would like to know if there is any way possible that I can either split the maintenance into two parts or slow it down so that I do not run into this error. It is unable to complete the maintenance and was unable to even complete its run the first time thru. More importantly than just not getting everyone/everything included it takes down my vB for a few mins while it resets and I can sql query access again. I have spoken with my hoster and there is no possible way to get more queries added on. I am currently running at the Level 2 with about 6300 users with an avg of 360 active per day. Would changing to the higher level correct this or just make it worse? Any thoughts thanks and sorry for the rambling.

If your database host has limited the queries than there is no other possibility than starting counter manually. Keep in mind that you need to recount only at the first time!
Starting manually you should take this URL:
http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/admincp/mi...STARTAT&pp=100
Replace RESTARTAT with f.e. 1000, so it calculates all users from userid 1000.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

How does the promotion system of this mod work?

If a member reaches a defined amount of points he get's promoted... Ok, what did you expect should I say?

Originally Posted by Alfa1

*I'd like to block certain members from promotions if they have infractions are active or that have expired within the last X amount of months.

Next major version.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

*The option to reward members that use the reputation system (i.e. rate both positive and negative)

Included in 3.7.11 RC2

Originally Posted by Alfa1

*The functionality to identify the member with most experience in a specific forum? It would be awesome to easily identify the main members of a specific forum.

Next major version.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

*The option to reward members that report bad posts to staff.

Not possible.

Originally Posted by hrk

i would like to rename the tab Vbexperience with some other name. pls guide on this.
thank you.

Change the phrase xperience_name

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by FRANKTHETANK 2

can i get some support on this please. the pic is on page 37

If you click INSTALL (Mark as installed), yes.

[Alfa1]

Originally Posted by Phalynx

If a member reaches a defined amount of points he get's promoted... Ok, what did you expect should I say?

Where do I define the amount of points and to which membergroup the member will be promoted by reaching the amount of points?

Many thanks for taking up the suggestions.

[Phalynx]

This is defined via Excel-Sheet, or if you don't have Excel via level product.

There you have defined "xperience_points", "xperience_level" and "usergroupid". By reaching defined xperience_points the user get's xperience_level, and if defined the user is changeing to new usergroup.

In next major version this will be done via AdminCP.

[Alfa1]

Awesome.

here are some more suggestions:

For links and downloads:
Points for 'hits' (number of times your file has been accessed)
Points for keywords added
Points for ratings of your file

Points for new threads in specific forum(s) (handy for NuWiki, GARS or any other addons where the first post is a major contribution)

Photopost Pro:
Points for new entries
Points for posted comments
Points for recieved ratings
Points for views of entries

vbulletin Blog:
Points for posted blogs
Points for recieved ratings
Points for posted comments

GARS:
Points for new thread/review (see suggestion above: Points for new threads in specific forum(s))
Points for ratings new thread has received
Points for ratings given

Originally Posted by Phalynx

Not possible.

Is anything possible with this hack:
Cyb - Top Post Reporters

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Points for 'hits' (number of times your file has been accessed)

Already included.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Points for new threads in specific forum(s) (handy for NuWiki, GARS or any other addons where the first post is a major contribution)

This has been cut out because of complexity.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Photopost Pro:

Not supported, only Photopost Gallery

Originally Posted by Alfa1

vbulletin Blog:

Already included.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

GARS:

Not supported.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Is anything possible with this hack:
Cyb - Top Post Reporters

I see. It would be possible, but will be currently not included. The problem behind this is the case if you defined a user for reports.


The next major version will have custom defineable point providers - I annonced this already.