Major Additions - vBExperience 4

vBExperience 4.1 for vBulletin 4

Tested with all Version of vBulletin Forum and Suite 4.0.4 -> 4.1.11

Created by Marius Czyz aka Phalynx.

Triple Winner of the "Mod of the Month"-Award (March 2008, September 2009, July 2010) on vBulletin.org.

What is vBExperience?
vBExperience is your free feature packaged solution for motivating your users. vBExperience is an advanced and highly customizable level/promotion and activity measure system with awards, achievements, promotions 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.

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? How can the user's activitiy be compared to others? All this can be answered with this mod. Additionally your users get awards and collect achievements for beeing active on your board.

vBExperience is fully translated to many languages. Beside english there are language files for german, french, italian, portuguese, spanish, swedish and chinese simplified. Polish, turkish, persian are not fully translated.

Comments, suggestions, translations, bugs, etc... are very welcome! Support is only given to people who have clicked "Mark as Installed":
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/vborg_mis...hreadid=245023


/***** Demo *****\
No Demosite currently available.


/***** INSTALLATION *****\
Please read the file readme_install_uninstall_upgrade.txt for detailed instructions!


/***** Primary Support *****\
As vBulletin.org does not offer any help managing modifications, espacially the complex one like vBExperience, I have to decided to open a site together with TheMayhem that is dedicated just for this.
It features a forum not just a single thread, a bug and feature tracker. And you also test our modifications over there.



/***** Featurelist *****\

*** Plugins ***
vBExperience can be easily extended by using it's custom data provider interface (CDP). With the CDP everyone is able to create plugins that integrates into vBExperience calculation process. There are already several plugins like Post Thanks Integration.
The plugins data can also be used to create achievements, awards and also promotions.


*** Insight Experience ***
The insight into your personal experience and what's going on on the community. Currently support basic services like activity and some featured achievements, there are plans to extend this with helpful hints on how progress, depending on users points. Also a statistics module is in work.


*** Awards ***
Motivate your users to be the best in a defined category! With the Awards you are able to reward users who collect the most points, f.e. by making new friends and leading a social group.
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.

Currently there are six default awards: Most Popular, Activity Award, Posting Award, Community Award, Frequent Poster, Blog Award, Calendar Award, Discussion Ender, Master Tagger, User with most referrers, Downloads, Arm of Law, King of Publishing.
You can create as much awards as you like. Just select a title, choose from one of the 250 images and select the required points for it.


*** Achievements ***
Achievements are very similar to the awards a reward to the user. Unlike an award an achievement is not limited to a single user.
Similar to awards, you can create as much achievements as you like. Just select a title, choose from one of the over 500 images and create the required condition for it.


*** Promotion system ***
The promotion system enables you to move users to other usergroups, depending on their experience points. You can create conditions that have to be met to be promoted. Benefits and extended permissions will be shown automatically to the user. Promotions are showing also possible jumps from current to the next possible group with the required conditions.
Using this you can create multiple groups and assign additional features. Just an example: Usergroup 1 has no custom avatars and just a capacity of 20 private messages. With a condition of 1000 Experience points the user moves to Usergroup 2, where the user is able to upload his own avatar and store more private messages.


*** Rankings ***
Showing User, Level, Awards, Activity Points (experience, thread, post, user, misc) - sortable.


*** Social Groups Rankings ***
Starts the competition between social groups! This feature ranks the groups depending on their average user experience points.


*** Earn Points ***
This is an overview for the user on how points can be collected. It features also a possibility to compare own points to the community's average. All data is beeing pulled automatically from the database.


*** Give Away Points aka Point Donation ***
Users can donate their points to other community members. Choose the field which will be used for give away and select the amount that will be transferred. Admins can donate custom points to the user.


*** Statistics aka Leaderboards ***
The leaderboard 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.


*** Shop aka Market ***
vBExperience integrates easily with the Point Market System v3 by TheMayham (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=232676).
It features a virtual item store, username items, bank, gifts, gambling, lottery, and a lot more!
As of vBExperience 4.0, the vBExperience 3.8 Shop has been discontinued.



/***** Collecting Points *****\
vBExperience is collecting points for a user counting his actions in the community. The collected points can be used to reward users with awards, achievements and promotions - even if the collected data comes from a plugin.

Beside the automatic collection, the admin can manually donate custom points to the user, for example for a special reward. Of course you can use this also for awards, achievements and promotions.


Taken into calculation are these things:
Threads
- Creating threads and gaining additional points from views, replies, votes and ratings to this thread
- Creating thread tags
- Making a thread sticky
- Socialgroup Discussions (Discussions, Posts)

Posts
- Creating posts
- Views on attachments (needs "Who Downloaded This Attachment?" installed)

User
- Days since registration
- Average posts per Day (for users who are registered for at least seven days)
- Referrals
- Received infractions
- Given infractions ("Arm of Law")
- Reputation / Use of reputation system
- Visitor messages on profiles
- Creating social groups and getting members
- Uploading pictures
- Making friends
- Completing profile

Misc
- Doing calendar entries
- Writing vBulletin Blogs (vBulletin 4 Suite required)
- Publishing content with vBulletin CMS (vBulletin 4 Suite required)
- Manually assigned points

Additionally there is support for 3rd party modifications:
- Point Market System / Items Shop (included)
- Project Tools (plugin)
- Who Downloaded This Attachment? (plugin)
- DownloadsII v6 (included)
- LDM Links and Downloads Manager (included)
- Abe1 Post Thank You (plugin)
- DBTech Advanced Post Thanks/Like (Lite) (plugin)
- DBTech Advanced @UserTag (plugin)
- Helpful Answers (plugin)
- iTrader (plugin)
- ibProArcade (plugin)
- v3arcade Champions and Submissions (plugin)
- vB Tournaments and Ladders (plugin)
- Advanced Forum Points - set points independent for every forum (plugin)
- Consuming points by downloading attachments ("pay" for attachments) (plugin)
- IWT Time Spent Online (plugin)
- PhotoPost Pro 7 (plugin)
- PhotoPost vBGallery 3 (plugin)
- 8WR Media Library (plugin)
- vBSoccer (plugin)
- vBookie (plugin)
- vBookie Cash (plugin)
- Farcaster's Event Attendance (plugin)
- PhotoPlug (plugin)
- EasyForms (plugin)
- Triple Triad (plugin)
- AWCoding Donation System LITE (shipped within that product)
- AWCoding Donation System PRO (shipped within that product)
- AWCoding Subscription System PRO (shipped within that product)
- AWCoding Credit Purchase System LITE (shipped within that product)
- AWCoding Credit Purchase System PRO (shipped within that product)
- AWCoding Pirate Poker PRO (shipped within that product)
- AWCoding Pirate Poker Platinum (shipped within that product)
- AWCoding Product System PRO (shipped within that product)



You have to install these modifications for your own, vBExperience doesn't install nor touches these.
More addons will be published as soon as they are finished.



/***** Calculation of the activity *****\
The system calculates the activity (week, month and also a custom defined datespan, 60) by counting the actions a user has done. An action can be a post, a new thread, rating, download, etc... The activity bars will be filled during the first weeks. This has changed from earlier versions where just postings, visitor- and group messages have been counted.



/***** 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.
Many settings regarding the behaviour of vBExperience are making it easy to adjust it to your needs. You can select from 10 colors for the progress bars and also choose from around 250 icons.
Additionally, you can set ignore users (f.e. for bot users), forums (f.e. offtopic forums) and usergroup id's. Please keep in mind that out of the box the usergroupid 6 (Administrators) is beeing ignored.



/***** Performance, especially on 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 the word "Experience".

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. If you used vBCredits, vBActivity, uCash and similar systems - there is no need to convert the points.

Q: My conditions don't work correctly on achievements and promotions.
A: Conditions in achievements and promotions are calculated in POINTS, not in count of items.
If you create an achievement for reaching the first 10 Days, you must enter the points needed for this. If you reward 2 points for every day, you have to set 2 points for every day since registering. Calculation: 10 days * 2 points = 20 as condition. So you will have to set 20 as the condition.

Credits for images
- FAMFAMFAM, http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/
- IconExperience



/***** History *****\

vBExperience 4.1.1

Please reinstall ALL plugins you are using from the ZIP\Plugins! Espacially if you get SQL Errors after reinstalling vBExperience.

- Fixed Plugin for 8WR_Media_Library
- Fixed Plugin for Advanced_Forum_Points
- Fixed Plugin for Attachment_Consumes_Points
- Fixed Plugin for EasyForms
- Fixed Plugin for Post_Thanks_Abe1
- Fixed border around boxes
- Fixed not correctly saving award images
- Extended character length for manual award assignment
- Several smaller fixes

vBExperience 4.1.0, 16th December 2011

- Introduced the feature to start the calculation by a defined date. By default all data will be considered for calculation. Please keep in mind that there are some data that cannot be filtered by date, like added friends. You need to re-install all plugins to have them obeying the new calculation limit. This feature has been sponsored by BryanB. Thanks!
- Fixed Discussion Ender, can be now disabled by setting value to 0
- Fixed Arm of Law, can be now disabled by setting value to 0
- Insight: Optimized layout
- Insight: Optimized colours for darker styles
- Achievement "Three Friends" renamed to "Social" (does not affect existing achievement)
- Renamed point descriptions so they can be identified better as point system (f.e. Days since registered -> Points for every day since registration)
- Added: Romanian Translation (thanks to Teascu Dorin)
- Custom Points can now have a category, can be used as entry point for other modifications using vBExperience points, eg. Market/Shop purchases
- Fixed several smaller issues

Changelog for other versions is in history.txt

[dawges]

Installed on 4.07 with no issues except one. It is reporting that i have 3 friends which i have many more than that.

Oops, sorry that is an achievement not a bug. Still learning.

[TECNOANIMEX]

How do center the bars?

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by optimatez

Sorry, i will click it now. I have the 3.8 version, and testing this on the 4.0 version so i forgot to click it on both :-p great stuff though, one of the reasons we went with vbulletin is because of your mod.

It would be nice if the promotions ran off hooks or scheduled tasks though, i use the promotion system for my users ranks, and it updates very slowly and often has issues.

This will be fixed in 4.0.4 (This is also a hint to MonsterDK)

Originally Posted by betts02

As i said also mate, I have this version already installed
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...ight=gxboxlive
I updated both mods

Cannot confirm this as a bug.

Originally Posted by Mr Peabody

Just a question about using vbExperience with the Market system.
I've been playing around with both the mods but last night when I was banking my points I noticed my Level in experience had dropped from 64 to 8
Is this a bug? should the points work independent from your experience bar?
Does this mean the same thing would happen if you spent your points on Market items? if this is the case users would be reluctant to use the market knowing if would effect their current Experience level.
Cheers for your hard work.

This is not a bug. If you buy something, you are paying with your points.

Originally Posted by crowshead

how do i reset points for all users?

Not possible until vBExperience 4.1

Originally Posted by pandusetiawan

Thx Phalynx, great mod
A little problem, why the activity on my board for all members are 0%?What could possibly wrong in the setting?Thx.
Is it work with vS-Hide Hack Resurrection mod?

If this happenes shortly after you installed, you will have to wait some days.

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by Kuya

Is there any way I can select my RSS account to be excluded from awards?

Yes, check the user exclude setting.

Originally Posted by slinky

Blank page for awards - for some reason the template is not rendering at all. Everything else seems to work. See the following:

It doesn't even load the header/footer but all other pages load. using vB 4.0.7 upgraded from 3.8.5.

POTENTIAL ANSWER: The upgrade corrupted my custom awards. Unfortunately I'll have to delete them and reapply them and hopefully this will solve the problem. I have a question mark at the top of the awards page in the admin although all the custom awards do show, just not the standard ones.

Seems to be an issue with the path. Do you still have that problem?

Originally Posted by slinky

BUG - After I did the recalculate achievements, it got stuck a long time in #8 and then it started spitting out duplicate values, e.g. user name being awarded an item twice, duplicated once after the next.

And another bug when I tried to clear existing awards and create the default ones:

Database error in vBulletin 4.0.7:

Invalid SQL:
UPDATE user SET xperience_awards='';

MySQL Error : Unknown column 'xperience_awards' in 'field list'
Error Number : 1054
Request Date : Tuesday, September 28th 2010 @ 06:15:21 PM
Error Date : Tuesday, September 28th 2010 @ 06:15:21 PM
Script : http://www.mysite.com/forums/control...=doclearawards
Referrer : http://www.mysite.com/forums/control...do=clearawards
Classname : vB_Database
MySQL Version : 5.0.77

Fixed in 4.0.4

Originally Posted by AfterWorldForum

I'm having a minor issue getting the $xperience_awards_postbit variable to work in combination with the Tabbed Postbit mod.

Trying to insert the following:

<div class="info"><b>Achievements: </b>{vb:raw xperience_achievements_postbit}</div>
<div class="info"><b>Awards: </b>{vb:raw xperience_awards_postbit}</div>

With the experience setting switches set to the custom location. If I set them to postbit_userinfo_right, the icons show up, though looking totally off from the rest.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance Great hack, by the way

Uhm, I have no idea. Can you point me via PM to you forum so I can look.

Originally Posted by Hall of Famer

Umm where is the vbexperience shop? I want it back!

If you would read the readme file, and also the description of the mod than you would know that it has been replaced by the Point Market System.

You don't even have clicked "Mark as Installed", but you are asking here very often and also messaging me about this. This is really not fair.

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by lubbie

Is there a way to exclude Usergroups from vbexperience?

Yes, check settings.

Originally Posted by lauxanh

Does this work with Xcache installed?

I have no clue, as I'm not using it. Someone else?

Originally Posted by argothiusz

For some reason, my member's activity bar keep reseting back to 0. I recount it and it works then it reset back to 0 shortly after.

Are you using a plugin like RadioActivity?

Originally Posted by whitetigergrowl

Doesn't save the description once I edit and save it.

Are you using a ' ?

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by Rolll

It's work on vB 3.8.6?

Yes, please check the 3.8 thread.

Originally Posted by slinky

I still haven't been able to do a recount. It gets stuck at "processing achievement 8" although I see a "processing complete" link at the bottom of the page. I click that and it just goes back into the loop, processing users twice in a row for 3 month awards and can't seem to get past that. I'm wondering if others are experiencing a similar bug. I have many users on my site (over 50,000) but this shouldn't present a problem as it finished the others.

Originally Posted by slinky

I deleted the "xperience_achievements_issues" table and ran the rebuild again. There must be some bug because it apparently completes everything up to the 8th award, which is 3 months of membership. Then it loops again into the that award and I can see in the "Activities" panel it showing that members are receiving the 3 month award twice in a row, then it goes to the next member and does the same thing. Hmmm.... disappointing. Hopefully this can be figured out.

This should no happen. I know other boards running that count of users having no issues. Can I take a look at this? Please PM me.

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by jeremyricci

For some reason I'm getting Database errors in both Ranking and the Awards section of Experience tab. Is anyone else having similar issues?

For clarification, here is the page

http://www.project-abraham.com/forum...php?go=ranking

Originally Posted by Vikingant

I am with you Jeremy. Thank god it isnt just me (either that or we both made the same stuff up )

When I tried to recount and recieved this error message

Database error in vBulletin 4.0.7:



I also received and achievement notifiaction but when I clicked on it I got the error as well. and same again clicking on the experience button in the navbar.

I have since disabled the achievements and the error associated with the notifications and navbar tab is gone but we still get a similar error when recounting, issuing custom points.

Another question and I am not sure if I shoud ask here or in another thread, is how do I attach experience points to the market?

Thank you

Originally Posted by jeremyricci

I'm kind of glad to see someone else has similar issues, hopefully that will help to isolate the problem or find a solution.

This modification is not compatible with MySQL 4.1
Please upgrade.

Originally Posted by lubbie

Hi. I just received a Mail with this mysql Error


Would be nice if any could help me with that. thanks

Do you have the plugin for v3Arcade installed? Please re-install it.

Originally Posted by TECNOANIMEX

How do center the bars?

Edit the template "xperience_gfx" and add this at the beginning:

<div align="center">

and this at the end:

</div>

[Vikingant]

Originally Posted by Phalynx

This modification is not compatible with MySQL 4.1
Please upgrade.

Thank you. I will look into it.

By not compatible do you mean FIX IT NOW!!! or everything will be destroyed or does it mean it can wait if we are willing to put up with some minor glitches?

[cad2go]

Does this work with Xcache installed?

yes it does.

========================

couple of questions: average posts per day/per 30 days/Per 7 days always remain at 0. CAn I change this and is it average per person or average total posts?

e.g. I have about 50 members a day and 500 posts so is average posts per day 10 or 500?

tia

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by Vikingant

Thank you. I will look into it.

By not compatible do you mean FIX IT NOW!!! or everything will be destroyed or does it mean it can wait if we are willing to put up with some minor glitches?

Some features will not work, as I'm using new SQL commands.

Originally Posted by cad2go

yes it does.

========================

Thank you for confirmation.

Originally Posted by cad2go

couple of questions: average posts per day/per 30 days/Per 7 days always remain at 0. CAn I change this and is it average per person or average total posts?

e.g. I have about 50 members a day and 500 posts so is average posts per day 10 or 500?

tia

This will be calculated automatically by doing recount. Avg will be 10 on your board.