Dynamic Announcements: Programmable Forum Home Announcement/Message with conditionals

This hack allows you to post powerful dynamic announcements (changing according to different conditions) on forum home page. It differs from vbulletin's default announcements in 2 ways:

• The announcement is displayed in forum home page (or other board pages), not inside thread view. So visitors will read them without clicking on them.
• The Hack's announcements are not static: ie. they can be powerfully programmed to change themselves according to many conditions.

Basic Usage : You can set a text in your Admin CP and it's displayed in forum home to all users.

Advanced Usage : With conditionals you can set different texts/notifications/messages/announcements and they will be displayed if your pre-configured condition applies. This allows you to create powerful announcements/private messages/texts which address their receipt only if a certain condition is met. Some examples:

You can set to show an announcement in forum home IF:

2. user is X
3. user's usergroup is Y
4. his profile field Z is X
5. user has X posts or has more than Y posts but less than Z posts
6. his last visit time was X days ago
7. today is X, hour is between Y and Z, day is wednesday, month is Y, week is month's 2nd week, today is user's birthday
8. User is invisible/visible
9. user is using style A
10. his cookies are on
11. his timeset is set to A
12. etc..

The conditionals even allows you to design "Board Tips" ever changing according to user's seniority or post number. See how-to document for conditional usage and more info..

It's tested in both v.2.2.6 and v.2.2.7 but it should work with any versions > 2.0.3. (v.2.2.8 or later Users READ HERE!) I'm using it in my own board and a friend's board for more than a month and found it quite stable and released it. Although not likely, if you found any bugs, holler and I'll fix it..

Here is a Screenshot from a "general announcement".
Here is a Screenshot of announcement which is addressed to a certain user.

Some Features:

• It's Admin CP integrated (Screenshot)
• Smiley and BBCode in announcements are parsed
• You can address your users with their usernames inside announcements (Use $bbuserinfo[username] variable)
• Announcements are displayed directly in Forum Home so users are forced to read them.
• The Conditionals help you to design powerful and ever changing announcements/private messages/forum home notifications.

If you have problems displaying HTML/smilie/bbcode in your announcements, make this tiny change in hack code

If you install the hack, click INSTALL, thank you..

Logician \\=^))

[liquidblaze]

i am aware that this hack is kinda old, yet its the perfect thing for me...

i installed it into my main style and followed the install file to the end (well at least i think so) but the announcement doesnt show up somehow.

instead index.php shows "l l " before everything else and in options.php i also have a "l l " before everything else.

any help on that would be appreciated.

[EDIT]

i figured as much as that it has to do with the templates - as the || shows up in every page.

im using 2.3.2 at the moment.

[Logician]

Originally Posted by liquidblaze

i am aware that this hack is kinda old, yet its the perfect thing for me...

i installed it into my main style and followed the install file to the end (well at least i think so) but the announcement doesnt show up somehow.

instead index.php shows "l l " before everything else and in options.php i also have a "l l " before everything else.

any help on that would be appreciated.

I can not suggest much except advising to uninstalle first and then reinstalle. Apparently you installed it wrongly.

[liquidblaze]

i edited all the files i edited previously and killed the entries in SETTING and SETTINGGROUP. anything more?

[EDIT]

index.php doesnt show anything now except || and if i access anything inside /admin it also get tagged with the || thing. i killed the templates aswell and edited forumhome.

[EDIT]

found the prob ... a very strange prob occured. while i was coding an instant message window popped up and i entered some text there.. then returned to coding view but the im window remained active somehow and i entered some letters in the functions.php all solved now... now im going to get that announcement thing working.

[liquidblaze]

forgive me my being a noob ... it works (as always)

this was my 25th hack i installed and i would have been kinda ++++ed if it didnt work out but all is fine.

[Logician]

ok glad you solved the issue

[liquidblaze]

sweet hack thanks for writing it

[trekwarfare]

WOW! Works great! Running 2.3.2 and this installed with no problems!

Thanks!

[klaattu]

MEGA super cool hack installed it, had some minor problems but fixing them I spoted some other bad parsings etc, everythings works perfect took 20 minutes and then I installed it in my other forum in 6 minutes, Works like a dream in 2.3.0.

THANKS AGAIN

[klaattu]

One question:

Can I put in the conditionals an image path instead of some text?
For example I put [i m g] bal bla bla path to image [/img]
and Will it show up?

[Logician]

Originally Posted by klaattu

One question:

Can I put in the conditionals an image path instead of some text?
For example I put [i m g] bal bla bla path to image [/img]
and Will it show up?

yes.. announcements are parsed for smilies, [i m g ] tags, an all other vb tags that is available in your board..