Dynamic Announcements: Programmable Forum Home Announcement/Message with conditionals

(This hacks works with both 3.5.x and 3.6.x)

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, not inside thread view. So visitors will read them on home page without clicking any links.
• The Hack's announcements are not static: ie. they can be powerfully programmed to display different texts according to different conditions.

For instance you can tell "why they should register" if visitor is a guest, but if he is a member with 0 posts, you can tell him why he should start posting etc.! All in one announcement! Everybody will see the relevant text according to his status. (This is the hack everybody keeps asking in the TheAdminZone.com whose using the hack for members with 0 and 1 posts.)


This version of the hack is for vbulletin 3.5.x and 3.6.x (vb 3.0.x version is here and vb 2.x version is here. 3.5 version is coded as a plugin so you can install it WITHOUT modifying vb PHP files. It is easily installed in 2 steps through your admin cp.

Basic Usage of This Hack: You can set a text in your Admin CP and it's displayed in forum home to all users. Alternatively if you want, you can set another text as a popup announcement and it is displayed to all as a pop up announcement (it can't be killed with popup killers software!)

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:

1. user is X
2. user's usergroup is Y
3. user has X posts or has more than Y posts but less than Z posts
4. his last visit time was X days ago
5. 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
6. etc.

Here is a Screenshot from a general table announcement.
Here is a Screenshot from a popup announcement.

Some Features:

• Coded as a vbulletin pluggin. Can be installed easily without hacking PHP files.
• It's Admin CP integrated
• Smiley, BBCode, HTML, IMG tags are supported in announcements.
• 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.
• Poupup announcement can not be killed by popup killer software

Hacks of Hack:
* For CMPS Integration see here
* French Translation by Allan : https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=143
* Nested Conditionals by dc3dreamer : https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=175
* Hack Annoucement appears in all vb pages:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...498#post911498



IMPORTANT FOR 3.x USERS:
If you were already using this hack in 3.0.x, remember to do 2 things:
BEFORE YOU INSTALL THIS HACK : Follow this instructions to remove the remnants of 3.0.x hack.
AFTER YOU INSTALL THIS HACK : Go to your admin cp / styles, find these 3 styles:
dfh_announcement
dfh_announcement_headercode
dfh_announcement_popup
and REVERT THEM so that your new templates that comes with 3.5 version will apply.

About vb4.x version:

I didn't consider porting this hack to vb4 because vbulletin has now a VERY SIMILAR feature in vb4 called "NOTICES". You can find it under your admin cp/Notices submenu/Notice Manager. It is not as powerful as this hack as this hack allows you to use any kind of conditional to produce your announcement but it is more user friendly because you don't need to deal with conditional syntax, you simply build your announcement (notice) with menus
If you install the hack, click INSTALL, thank you..

Logician \\=^))

[funinthesun]

I installed 2 days ago. I've just checked again and it is now working fine. The only thing I have changed since I last checked it is removing the fish hack so I guess that was what was interfering with it. Sorry, about that :nervous:

[q8-star]

Originally Posted by Logician

I really believe you do something wrong (especially related to step 1) but if you are sure you do everything correctly, give me admin cp and FTP access to your board and let me check.

Logician sorry for late reply :speechless: .Man .... you were absulutely right, I changed the ftp manager and the hack works absulutely fine ...

Thanks again for the great job ...

[Mu5icMan]

I have a problem when installing this product the database throws an error:

Warning: Unknown(): Unable to access /*****/includes/functions_dfha.php3 in /index.php3(459) : eval()'d code on line 5

Warning: Unknown(/******/includes/functions_dfha.php3): failed to open stream: Success in /index.php3(459) : eval()'d code on line 5

Fatal error: (null)(): Failed opening required '/******/includes/functions_dfha.php3' (include_path='.:/usr/share/pear') in /******/index.php3(459) : eval()'d code on line 5

According to the vb files there is no functions_dfha, so why is it looking for it?

Sorry dumb mistake forgot to add the file to includes folder :P

[LJR]

OMG! This enhancement is the absolute DOGZ DANGLY BITS!!!! Thank you for putting this together and imho this should be part of the core product.

A disable radio button would be nice, but it's easy enough to work around (as stated in numerous previous posts).

Thanks again!

[Extreme John]

Wow I love this!!

[gigaenvy]

Originally Posted by Logician

It is mostly same but there a few improvements:

1- You can set up the frequency of popup announcement. Eg. you can make it popup in every 12 hours for the same user instead of every visit. (See admin cp screenshot above)

2- I get rid of the complainted "green" color Popup window and make it inherit your vb style with a cool red border.

3- It does not require any PHP hacking and can be installed through your admin cp as a pluggin.

4- Unlike vb3.x version, I don't support "header" version of it in which the announcement is displayed in all forum pages, not only forum home. It caused some minor bugs in post cached enabled forums so I only support forumhome announcement version which is stable

It would be nice to see random or rotating announcements in v3.5 and 3.0.x.

[sensimilla]

is it possible to make the announcement scroll (move) in the table ?

[LJR]

Can someone tell me what the variable name is to check a user's secondary usergroup id?

I have an awards night and want to put up an announcement only to those who nominated (known because they are part of a seconday usergroup). The $bbuserinfo[usergroupid] contains the user's primary group id.

[TitanJeff]

Love this hack but wanted to ask if the color red can be changed on the pop up. Also, I have a spacing issue with it on the front page with more space above it than below. I'd like it to be even if possible. http://www.gotitans.com/goForum/

Thanks for a great addition to my forum!

[ILTK]

INSTALLED, Very nice hack, I was using something hardcoded but this is sooo much nicer

Just one question, how would I go about using a conditional to not trigger it when a search engine spider drops by?

This would be great to avoid so you can write a long blurb about why people should register and not mess up onpage seo on forumhome.

Thanks!