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

[rinkrat]

Uncached templates: xperience_shop_item_p (1)

[Ryuk]

I would love a pre-elaborated shop like vBPlaza default's shop

[Ideal Web Tech]

Phalynx I would also like to point out that your custom data provider neglects to mention that you need to catch the template.

BTW the custom data provider works great other then that. I have already used it to create an ibpro arcade champs points module that I use on my site.

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by Mutt

trying to understand Custom Data Providers
does this get changed? and if so, is there a sample template becasue I don't see this template anywehre

Template xpcdp_profile is included in product_vbexperience_cdp_example.xml

Originally Posted by djilou

How an award is assigned to a member?

Edit the Award, put the user's ID's in manual assign.

Originally Posted by KURTZ

Marius, just a question, i build some new awards, i mean silver and bronze for all the default categories that you created ... but i saw that in the forumdisplay i don't see the medals near the name of the other users ... check the pic

the second user has 2 awards: one silver and the other bronze ... however if i check in the in the profile he has the awards (also in the buddy list, and near the nickname in the posts runs correctly) ... so i think this is a 'small issue' cause in showthread and forumdisplay it shows only the gold awards or maybe i forgot something ...

Will check this.

Originally Posted by Ufgy.com

im getting this, it just repeats itself.

Originally Posted by Sunflower2007

I also get that graphic - but only for "add new awards"

Image not available. Also, please click Mark as Installed to get support!


The default four awards work fine. How do I add more awards with graphics that work? Do I have to upload the metal .gifs somewhere?[/QUOTE]
Check the identificator, it must be the same as the graphics.

Originally Posted by Mutt

are there any existing addons for this script? I'd like to make different awards based on posts in a specific forum.

As Custom data providers were released few days ago I think scripts for this would need some time.

Originally Posted by DwTeam

Spanish language for the new vbexperience 3.7.14

Thanks.

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by Jwoody

Bah, just noticed doing this forces it to change all the awards from within the site (like the tab, and whos online section) Is there any way around this?

It's definitely something to look at for future versions; the medals are cool, but you have to mouse over them to see what they are, where as it would be great to have an option to allow them to be placed under the username, below the users title; yet have the medal inline within the rest of the site.

I will try to wrap something around this in 3.7.15

Originally Posted by hiepsi@

Hi
I want to move own's items shop from member info to under my sign, where can I edit code?
thanks

Please click Mark as Installed! No support if you don't want to support me.

Originally Posted by itcjoe

In the Store settings......specifically the 'show items on postbit' doesn't seem to be working for me.

It seems to display only 2 of the 16x16 icons..........anything above 2 shows a broken image in the postbit. In addition, if I set it to o to disable it, the images still appear in the user's information.

I have checked and rechecked the path to the images, but all is correct.

Did you clicked on Generate items for postbit?

Originally Posted by lighthazard

Where is the 'vbExperience Shop' ? I cannot seem to find it anywhere.

You will have to enable and fill it in AdminCP.

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by tafreeh

okay i need help...

In profile it says VB EXPERIECE
i need to change this to somthing else....
how would i do that

Change the phrases...

Originally Posted by Ideal Web Tech

Found a bug in the code for counting the points for the pictures (albums).

I see, fixed in 3.7.15
But it will not use while, I will use COUNT() instead.

Originally Posted by Ideal Web Tech

I am also looking into making this more efficient as well as making the stats update in real time to avoid the load that comes from updating and to avoid the delay from updating it.

I switched from live updating to live because of the performance... Also, next problem to this is that many places don't have hooks where I could jump in.

Originally Posted by Lord_of_Darknes

Yes I have.
I upload it it to my host, and into vbulletin, but nothing happen.
I'm totally nnew at thise I had a hard time installing vbulletin so some company did it for me.
Is there a way some one could help me?

Cheers.

Please click "Mark as Installed".

Originally Posted by Captain Tycoon

I have a problem trying to customize this. How would I be able to put the statistics from the "vBExperience" block in the profile page to the "Profile" block as shown in the screenshot:

From Here


To Here


When i copy the code from the "xperience_memberinfo" template to "memberinfo_block_mainprofile" it says "No Data Available"

Yes, because that would need to modify the code to work for mainprofile. Currently it is attaching a new tab.

Originally Posted by Calash

Great mod. Going to play with the Custom Data soon, but I am having an issue with CMPS. The Online users block shows broken images where the awards should be. I see this from time to time, and all I need to do to fix it is add a / in the code, however I cannot find the template that deals with this part.

Is this added in the template or is it coded in the file?

It is hardcoded in functions_xperience.php, function GetAwards.
"This has to be hardcoded as the fetch_musername hook comes before cache_templates"

[alanboo]

Hi everybody,
what are the differences between this mod and vBCredits?

thanks

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by pooslokka

Is User Rankings Module is part of vbExperience ?
Coz, Not sure wheather it was exist before we install this vbExperience

Ranking yes, but it has no menue. vBulletin has also it's own ranking.

Originally Posted by callumbush

I have installed a new style and it has broken vbexperienced (and postthankyou hack).
In the position below the username where the vbexperienced stats normally show, the stats for my members are now showing as plain text.

Please copy images to your new style.

Originally Posted by Audentio

Its adding an extra </a> to each username on the forums...any idea for a fix?

Originally Posted by Ideal Web Tech

I can confirm that the code for building the awards and attaching them to the musername leave the html structure invalid.

Here is a quick fix that I coded up that will fix the problem but it will also make the awards linked with the name for now. I chose to fix it in this method instead of just fixing the link building part of it because fixing it would leave us with a blank <a href="#"></a> tag or something similar.

Just disable Awards on username. Will be fixed in 3.7.15
The </a> problem was introduced in 3.7.14 because I wanted to fix the underlined space between awards and username.

[Ideal Web Tech]

Originally Posted by alanboo

Hi everybody,
what are the differences between this mod and vBCredits?

thanks

Did you bother to read the thread? If you had you wouldn't be asking that question.

This mod allows you to give points for most everything in vbulletin as well as with the new data provider is allowing additional mods to be made for it that allow giving of points for additional hacks even.

[Ideal Web Tech]

Originally Posted by Phalynx

Just disable Awards on username. Will be fixed in 3.7.15
The </a> problem was introduced in 3.7.14 because I wanted to fix the underlined space between awards and username.

The problem with doing that even if you properly setup the tags in it to work with the links is that there are places where the musername is called and not setup as a link such as in the profile.