Competitions

Description
Adds a competition module to your forums. You can create as many competitions and allow members to participate in them.

Features

• Ability to force participants to fill certain custom profile fields
• Send Private Message to members who participate in the competitions
• Ability to allow more than one entry from a participant
• Input field for answers can be either a textbox, a textarea, radio buttons or a drop-down menu
• If the input type is radio buttons or a drop-down menu, the system can filter out wrong answers and generate a list of winners by picking random participants
• Schedule competitions by setting the starting date (user contributed)
• Very customizable

Installation

1. Upload all necessary files to their respective directories.
2. Install the product XML file.
3. Edit the navbar template to add a link to competitions.php page. (see below)
4. Set necessary permissions for each usergroup to access and/or participate in competitions.
5. Edit the "hkc_nopermission_loggedin" and "hkc_winner_congratulate_message" phrase to customize to your taste.

Upgrade

1. Upload all necessary files to their respective directories.
2. Install the product XML file. Be sure to set "Allow Overwrite" to Yes.

Editing the navbar template

1. Open the navbar template

2. Find:

<td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="calendar.php$session[sessionurl_q]">$vbphrase[calendar]</a></td>

3. Add after:

<td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="competitions.php$session[sessionurl_q]">$vbphrase[hkc_competitions]</a></td>

4. Save template

Author Notes
This extension was developed specifically for my website but I am releasing the code since a few members here have have shown interest. I cannot state that it is totally free of bugs. I would appreciate your feedback in making this extension better.

Maybe in Future
At the moment, the question is only restricted to one per competition. I would like to have the ability to add more than one question per competition.

[husain]

Can you reproduce the unread PM error again? Has anyone else had this problem too?

--

When a competition ends, nothing happens really other than the competition being shown in the Closed Competitions list. It is up to you to remember when competitions close and select winners.

I am working on setting up a cron job to notify the administrator when a competition ends. Other than that, what would you want the hack to do when a competition ends?

[criscokid]

Husain: are you planning on any new versions of this great mod anytime soon? Just curious as I've previously submitted some suggestions to this thread.

[Smiry Kin's]

possible to make it work on posts..

it selects a X amount of people from a X group( the top X people who posted the most ), and randomly choose who will win??

[cat4m]

Argggh ! I still get the following message in the amin cp

Start Date End Date Controls
1 Minute Ago 01:00 AM 1 Minute Ago 01:00 AM

Also I uploaded the 2nd XML file and disabled the first one and dont have anything showing on my forums now. I have put all the files to their original settings and still have no Competition showing on the forum page. ??

The dates and times still remain the same. Can someone help please.

[criscokid]

Another useful addition for the next feature: a text block or something that site admins can use to write something like "Are you a company looking to promote your product? Why not offer some of your products as prizes for a competition? Click here to find out more..."

I've already had a few companies discover my competitions section - they've gone on to email me asking how they can get involved. If there was a link there I'd probably get even more enquiries and prizes being donated. The link could open a new page telling them the low down and what they need to do to get the ball rolling or maybe the link could just open a page asking for more deatils like company name, what they have in mind as prizes, etc and that info can then get sent as an email to the site admin.

[funinthesun]

I've just installed this and I get this error:

Database error in vBulletin 3.5.3:

Invalid SQL:
SELECT competitionid, title, description, startdate, enddate, entrycount
		FROM hkc_competitions
		WHERE is_enabled = 1 AND startdate < 1147467286 AND enddate > 1147467286
		ORDER BY enddate ASC, startdate DESC, datestamp DESC;

MySQL Error  : Table '*****db.hkc_competitions' doesn't exist
Error Number : 1146
Date         : Friday, May 12th 2006 @ 09:54:46 PM
Script       : http://www.*******.com/competitions.php
Referrer     : http://www.******.com/competitions.php
IP Address   : **.*.***.**
Username     : ******
Classname    : vb_database

Any idea what's wrong?

[Jaymee]

Thanks ALOT dude!. Really helpfull

[SimonVlc]

Hi all,

I´m having one trouble using this mod with one line answer. The system didn´t recognize any winners.

Ex. I create a dummy competition with answer "anything". I´ve enter the comp with a user, write the correct answer, close the comp, and pushed on get winners, but the system ask me to enter the id of the winners.

If I do the same with radio buttons, the system identifies correctly the winners.

Is this the normal behaviour? Thanks in advance, Simon.

[peterska2]

I've never used the free text answers, just the radio buttons and it has worked every time for me.

Using free text requires exact capitalization and spelling so it could be difficult for the system to match it.

[SimonVlc]

Thx for the answer peterska, but I´m still unnable to get it working.

Copy pasting the answer didn´t work... anyone else did notice this behaviour?

Thanks in advance, Simon.