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 \\=^))

[Logician]

Originally posted by Boofo

But there's no way to be able to do it in the announcement itself? That would make it easier if you want to change the size of text on the fly.

Not tested but I guess you can apply bbcodeparse2 to the hack code. Like this:

Replace: (2 instances!)

PHP Code:

$matches14[2]=bbcodeparse(trim($matches14[2])); 


with

PHP Code:

$matches14[2]=bbcodeparse2(trim($matches14[2]),1,1,1,1) 


[Boofo]

Worked like a charm. Thank you, Sinan!

One last question...all bbcode or html code HAS to be in between the tags, right? You can't do it before and after the tags.

Like this:

[[($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==6)]]<normalfont>

and not like this:

<normalfont>[[($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==6)]]

[Logician]

that's right because the announcement is only the part in-between conditionals. Rest including the conditionals are cut when it is parsed

[Boofo]

Thank you for confirming that for me. Another fantastic hack by the "Great One!" I'm definitely going to have to make a trip back over there one of these days to meet the Master.

[Logician]

thank you for the undue kind words..

[Bad Bunny]

It was a stupid mistake on my poart.
As usual, your hack is awsome. Not that I ever doubted you. heh (Would not have installed it otherwise)

Thanks for all your hard work.

I didn't installed this hack, but i have a question:

How many time the message stay in the user's screen?
I explain: the user see the message, but when it disappear?
There's a time for it or it rest in the page all the time?

[Logician]

Originally posted by Triade
I didn't installed this hack, but i have a question:

How many time the message stay in the user's screen?
I explain: the user see the message, but when it disappear?
There's a time for it or it rest in the page all the time?

The announcement is a part of the page (HTML code), not a popup, so it stays there when user loads the main page.

If you want it not displayed anymore, you need to delete/modify it from your Admin CP..

[Logician]

Here is a April Fools Day announcement for people who is using this hack: :rambo:

Enter this announcement in your dynamic announcement box:

[[($bbuserinfo[userid]>0 AND date("m-d")=="04-01")]]
[ SIZE=4][ COLOR=red]Our member [ b]$bbuserinfo[username][ /b] has been caught while trying to hack into our site server and we are instituting legal proceedings ASAP. In the mean time please do not contact $bbuserinfo[username], nor reply his posts/pms. Please [ url="http://yoururl/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=x"]get more info here now![/ url][ /COLOR][ /SIZE]
[[/($bbuserinfo[userid]>0 AND date("m-d")=="04-01")]]

(Remove spaces in vbcodes and edit XX with a threadid)

You can insert it now, you don't need to wait for April 1st. This announcement will be visible in that day only if visitor is a forum member (it is invisible to guests). Everyforum member will see his name in this announcement and following the link will take them to a thread of your choice.

Enjoy..

[Boofo]

LOL at Sinan. Getting in to the old April Fool's day spirit already.

Would there be a way to make an addon where you could enter pre-made announcements like this for different days of the year and it could pull it from the db as needed?