Welcome headers - Improve community registration rates

vBulletin 3.6 users click here for the 3.6 compatible version of this plugin.

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 4.1.0
The 4.1.0 version of this system is a complete rewrite from earlier versions. All of the original functionality still exists; however, the system has been improved to make it much more modular. With the new version, you can now turn on/off individual welcome header messages, configure the content and change other settings all from your ACP Options panel. Additionally, a 5th welcome header has been added for global announcements. With the exception of one small phrase change, this upgrade is seamless to upgrade.

Upgrade Instructions:
Full upgrade instructions can be found in the attached zip file. However, to avoid confusion anyone upgrading from the 4.0.x version of this plugin to 4.1.x should do the following:

1 ? Upload the new version of the plugin file based on your version of vBulletin (3.5 or 3.6). Be sure to set the override option to ?yes?.
2 ? Go to your phrase manager and search for the phrase ?first_visit_message?, copy any customizations you have made to this phrase into the phrase ?welcome_guest?.
3 ? Go to your vBulletin options, select the ?Welcome Header System? group and configure the options as desired.

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 websites, upwards of 50% of traffic (or more) 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.

The results:
At first glance this system may seem a bit superfluous, however, the numbers rarely lie, nor does the feedback. Since posting this plugin in October, it has risen to over 1700 confirmed installations and is now one of the top 5 vBulletin plugins. On ScubaBoard.Com, the site the system was originally tested on, posting rates have 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.

But enough about why -- give it a shot yourself and let me know how your results turn out.

vBulletin 3.6 users click here for the 3.6 compatible version of this plugin.

[Suiko Jin]

I have a newb question here.

In the instructions

4) Modifying your phrases (optional)
4 new phrases are created as a part of this template hack including first_visit_message, welcome_unconfirmed, welcome_neverposted, and welcome_postmoreoften. While not required, it is recommended that you update these phrases to include language specific to your forum.

How do you modify phrases? I'd like to add those.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Suiko Jin

How do you modify phrases? I'd like to add those.

Go to your admin control panel, than the phrase manager and search for the phrase you wish to edit.

[Suiko Jin]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Go to your admin control panel, than the phrase manager and search for the phrase you wish to edit.

*Slaps his forehead*
I should have known that. Thanks, works great!

[RaceJunkie]

Originally Posted by Ted S

You can modify the HTML by opening the template welcome_headers. Change any td/tr styles you wish.

thank you

[MorrisMcD]

This hack is great.. I still have users that get on that cant figure out registration though.. lol

Thanks for this hack though.. Top 10 to me for sure

[Dermo-MIO]

i fixed my problem great plugin thankyou

[defcon_420]

Excellent idea! I've had this installed for about a month and have noticed my registration rate more than double for the same period before the installation.
Great Job!

[Buczilla]

Thank you very much for the hack! I hope I see similar results to yours!

[freefallu]

Hi,
I specialise in SEO and from that standpoint I would like to sound a word of caution with this hack. Every page on your forum that the spiders read is going to have a block of text that is the exact same. If you do not use VBSEO then all your metas are also going to be the same. I am not saying that you should use VBSEO ,, most people on here dont seem to. What i am saying is that its negative points for you SE position overall with this plugin as before the bots get to the meat of your page ( the posts ) they will have read the same metas and the same text . Its known that google in particular places the most relevence to the first paragraph on the page in deciding what its about. So if all the first paragraphs are the same you run the risk of getting penalties as some bots may believe the pages to be slightly altered copies of each other ( doorway pages ).

The second consequence is that your site might be " themed " as a page about " you are a guest " as this in terms of your overall content is going to appear quite a bit.

What would be ideal:

That this banner was displayed for a few posts or cloaked out on user agent.

What to do practically and now:

I would suggest making sure the guest header includes your money keywords. E.g. " Welcome to the widget1 widget2 forum. As a guest you can gain some access to our threads about widget1 . However to view pictures of widget1 widget 2 you must register "

Dont stuff it full of keywords ( thats also bad ) , just keep it shiort and laced with keywords , my suggestion is not a template

[Ted S]

Clearly having keywords and a good description in your welcome header is an important idea -- for search engines and for your users to understand the purpose of the site. With that said I have not noticed any negative impact of this hack on any of the major sites I've installed it to in terms of SE performance over a 6 or 12 month term.

With that said it is important to understand SEO and how your entire site relates to it. This hack is intended as a starting point -- I would not advise that anyone keeps their phrases default; that's just short changing yourself.

If you are truly concerned it is possible to set bots into their own usergroup and remove the welcome headers for them altogether. But as a word of caution, should an engine detect this, it could be seen as extremely negative.