Board Optimization - Welcome headers - Improve community registration rates

Attention vB 3.7 users: Please see the 3.7 version of this add-on.

The out of the box vBulletin style does not have a robust method of informing users about their current activity status or user level. As a result, guests entering on a page other than the homepage (which is most often the case) have no idea what a forum is about or that they may need to register. Additionally, there are no visible status indicators, making it confusing for unconfirmed, unapproved or new members to know what to do or where to begin.

To help solve these problems, the welcome headers plugin creates a 5-part set of conditionals to better introduce members to your community while pushing them to register, activate or post. The default templates are just that, default ? I highly encourage you to tweak the language and functions to meet the needs of your actual community environment.

Modifications/ Instructions:
Template edits: 2
Plugins: 1 (adds 1 template and several settings)

This template hack should take under 5 minutes to implement and customize.

What?s new in 4.2
The 4.2 version of this addon functions in the same way as previous versions but with modifications to the backend code. The addon is now designed to independently review conditional statements to make it easier to add new messages. If you are upgrading from a previous version and have changed the template welcome_headers, this version will revert your changes. There is no new functionality in this upgrade and it is optional.

Install Instructions:
Full install instructions can be found in the attached file. This addon requires adding a plugin and modifying one template.

Customizing the content / messages
To customize which messages appear or what they say, go to vBulletin options, select the "Welcome Header System" group and configure the options as desired. Each phase can be modified by adding translation text.

Details on how it all works:
Step One: Turning lurkers into Members
For most forums, upwards of 50% of traffic comes through search engines or deep links to threads, profiles and categories. Out of the box, vBulletin only displays a welcome message on the forum-homepage, meaning someone who enters through any other page does not have the benefit of seeing an explanation of the site or welcome message. The guest welcome header is used to explain the purpose of your site, sell users on the benefits of joining the community and push them to proactively register.

Step Two: Making Users Confirm their Account
Many vBulletin sites require email confirmation prior to being able to post or access an account. However, activation emails are often misdirected to spam folders, ignored or simply deleted, leaving unconfirmed users with little access rights and no explanation as to what is wrong with their account. The unconfirmed welcome header is used to inform unconfirmed members of their account status and to direct them to automatically resend their activation email, or to contact the webmaster for support.

Step Three: Get non-posting users to post
Another chronic problem faced by many forums is insuring users post after registering. Many new visitors register in order to access certain features with the intent of posting, but never do so. The never posted welcome header is used to encourage users to post for their first time and should ideally be linked directly to an introductions or new member forum to help users "break the ice".

Step Four: Getting inactive users to become more active
Many members start out as lurkers, register, post once or twice and then go back to being lurkers. Often time these members are not actively thinking about participating in topics or are still shy about interacting. The inactivity welcome header reminds members to make a post after a predetermined amount of time as specified by the forum administrator.

Step Five: General Announcements
Unfortunately the standard announcements are often overlooked or never even seen by members who use the "new posts feature". As a result, urgent notices may be missed by users causing problems and high volumes of support requests. The global announcement welcome header creates a message shown to all members who do not fall into the other welcome header groups (guest, unconfirmed, never posted, inactive). Whether it be a scheduled outage/ upgrade, an important request or the need to display an advertisement in a prominent spot, global announcements allow an administrator to effectively and quickly display messages in a way that is certain to be read.

Optional: One-View Messages
Some forums find that users grow tired of seeing the messages thus there is an option to show the welcome messages only once per browser session as determined by using a cookie.

Optional: Custom Messages
Welcome Headers addresses 5 common needs, your forum probably has more. I highly encourage you to add messages based on profile fields, user states and other criteria that may impact your users.

The results:
At first glance this system may seem a bit superfluous, however, the numbers rarely lie, nor does the feedback. On ScubaBoard.Com, the site the system was originally tested on, posting rates increased by over 100%; new user registration rates by over 60%; user activity by 50% and the welcome/ intro & greets forum has exploded over 400%. If you browse through the pages of this thread you will find even more real life testimonials and experiences from the thousands of people using the system.

vbSEO Add-ons
Some forums have found that after adding welcome headers, the welcome message shows up in their search descriptions. To address this issue, user's at vbSEO have recommended turning the guest welcome header into an image -- this way there's no duplicate content for the bots to spider. To learn more click here. My recommendation is that you test this option if you are allowing bots to spider your front-end pages.

Limited Guest Viewing compatibility
The Welcome Headers System is designed to work with the Limited Guest Viewing without any conflict. To insure that welcome header messages do not show up at the same time as the limited guest viewing message, please be sure you are running welcome headers version 4.1.3 or greater and have enabled the suppression option.

Support
Please post any enhancement or technical questions you may have and I will do my best to respond in a timely manner. Please note: I can not guarantee an immediate response and am unable to assist with integrating this addon with other addons or with HTML related questions.

Updates
4.2.1 - Fixed bug with global message
4.2.0 - Changed template conditionals to simplify customizations
4.1.9 - Added ability to disable messages if using Limited Guest Viewing system
4.1.3 - Added support for Limited Guest Viewing system

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Kwak

Is there a way to change the welcome header message for each styles?

Yup. You can customize the welcome+headers template for each style.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by scopo911

Hi - I'm new to vB, but think this is exactly what we need. We have downloaded and installed and can see all administration. I'm having trouble getting it to work (I think).

1. How or When should I see the Welcome Header? When you first go to our forum (free4gov.org), you see the standard welcome page. When you try to enter a forum that requires registration, you see the standard registration page (You are not logged in or you do not have permission to access this page...). Should I be seeing the welcome page here?

2. How / where do I define the arguments that are used by the varname? For example, I am getting the error:
Welcome to the [ARG:3 UNDEFINED] forums. when I view the default text. Also the "contact us" link uses variable {4} that is not correctly defined. Not sure where these get defined.

Thanks! SP

It looks like you didn't quite make it through the installation. You need to remove the default header (issue #2) and add the new ones (issue #1). Check the install.html file again and follow the second and third steps. If you run into issues, let me know.

[Yago]

Below is my original PM conversation with Ted. Following his recommendation, I have move the discussion to the board.

Originally Posted by Yago
Dear Sir,
I am very new to the Vb world and have only installed one hack to date which is the gender hack. Anyway your welcome header was to be my second hack but I ran into problems. Everything went as stated since I followed your instructions step by step. However at the end The original vb header is no longer showing and the new one does not show either. When I went to vbulletin options and scrolled down to the end like you said, thier is no "Welcome Header System" thier either. Please help me.

REPLY

Have you added the variable $welcomeheaders to your header template?
__________________
Ted S

Yago ANSWER
Yes

Ted S

If you have no messages showing and the options do not show in your control panel then you have not installed the plugin or activated the plugin system in your vbulletin installation. Also, I would ask that you direct all future questions to the appropriate public thread so others can see the answer. Thank you

[Yago]

Originally Posted by Yago

Below is my original PM conversation with Ted. Following his recommendation, I have move the discussion to the board.

Originally Posted by Yago
Dear Sir,
I am very new to the Vb world and have only installed one hack to date which is the gender hack. Anyway your welcome header was to be my second hack but I ran into problems. Everything went as stated since I followed your instructions step by step. However at the end The original vb header is no longer showing and the new one does not show either. When I went to vbulletin options and scrolled down to the end like you said, thier is no "Welcome Header System" thier either. Please help me.


REPLY

Have you added the variable $welcomeheaders to your header template?
__________________
Ted S


Yago ANSWER
Yes

Ted S

If you have no messages showing and the options do not show in your control panel then you have not installed the plugin or activated the plugin system in your vbulletin installation. Also, I would ask that you direct all future questions to the appropriate public thread so others can see the answer. Thank you

I followed the installation steps one after the other and even marked them off in pencil on my check sheet.
When you click on installed products from the plugin area, you can see that welcome header is among the installed product in addition with vbulletin but it does not show as a plugin.

[Ted S]

When you view your vbulletin options page, do you see the welcome heaers system option at or near the end of the list?

[Yago]

Originally Posted by Ted S

When you view your vbulletin options page, do you see the welcome heaers system option at or near the end of the list?

Nope it is no where to be found in that list.
That was the only step (which is at the end of step 4 ) which did not pan out for me.

[Ted S]

That would indicate that the Welcome Headers product is not installed or you have not enabled the plugin system.

[Yago]

Originally Posted by Ted S

That would indicate that the Welcome Headers product is not installed or you have not enabled the plugin system.

Ok, I really do not know what else to do or say. I enabled the plugin system because prior to step 3 which is "Add the attached plugin"

The product to the best of my knowledge is in the installed but is not running. My original header is gone and their is nothin in its place.
I followed all the steps one after the other being a newbie, I did not want to miss anything and I believe I did not.

[Yago]

I did a partial reinstall, I checked it again from begin and the ony thing I had to redo was re-upload the plugin after I uninstalled it. Now it works fine. Thanks Ted for all your help and a nice hack

[taffy056]

Hi,

Installed with no problems, almost! thanks for sharing

I am using the steel blue style, and the old header is still showing, part of the code is below, but I do not know what to remove, or even if this if this is the correct part of the code to remove. Hope someone can help.

Craig

PHP Code:

$stylevar[htmldoctype]
<html dir="$stylevar[textdirection]" lang="$stylevar[languagecode]">
<head>
    <!-- no cache headers -->
    <meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache" />
    <meta http-equiv="Expires" content="-1" />
    <meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-cache" />
    <!-- end no cache headers -->
    $headinclude
    <title><phrase 1="$vboptions[bbtitle]">$vbphrase[x_powered_by_vbulletin]</phrase></title>
</head>
<body>
$header
$navbar

<!-- main -->
<table class="tborder" cellpadding="$stylevar[cellpadding]" cellspacing="$stylevar[cellspacing]" border="0" width="100%" align="center">

$forumbits
<tbody>
    <tr>
        <td class="tfoot" align="center" colspan="<if condition="$vboptions['showmoderatorcolumn']">6<else />5</if>"><div class="smallfont"><strong>
            <a href="forumdisplay.php?$session[sessionurl]do=markread" rel="nofollow">$vbphrase[mark_forums_read]</a>
            <if condition="$vboptions['forumleaders']">&nbsp; &nbsp;
            <a href="showgroups.php$session[sessionurl_q]" rel="nofollow">$vbphrase[view_forum_leaders]</a></if><if condition="!$show['guest']">
        <!-- member logout -->
        &nbsp; &nbsp;
<a href="login.php?$session[sessionurl]do=logout&amp;logouthash=$bbuserinfo[logouthash]"  onclick="return log_out()"><phrase 1="$bbuserinfo[username]">$vbphrase[log_out_x]</phrase></a>
        <!-- end member logout -->
    </if>
        </strong></div></td>
    </tr>
</tbody>
</table>
$forumhome_markread_script
<!-- /main -->