Miscellaneous Hacks - vBNewsletters

Hey all,

What is vBNewsletters?

It is a simple modification that adds a massive addition to your community! It gives you the ability to add a newsletter to your forum. It not only adds more features to your bulletin board, but can also help boost your member base as many forums find that members enjoy reading the happenings via newsletters.

Features

* Newsletter Page Added - ?do=newsletter
* Newsletter Switch Added
* Newsletter Title and Content Added
* Newsletter Release Date Function Added
* Newsletter Navbar Phrase Added
* HTML Ready
* Version Check Added (vBulletin Version 3.6)

Included in Modification...

* 1 Product
* 1 Template
* 1 Phrase
* 1 Plugin

Support

Support will be given at vBDiscussion.com and in this thread

Installation

Installation takes minutes as the product file does every thing apart from one small template modification which is to place the Newsletter link into your navbar! (This template modification is unneccesary if you have Menu Control installed!)

Thanks,

Marky

[Marky]

Originally Posted by acidburn0520

Use Psionic Vision's HTML E-Mail Hack.

Any chance on a 3.5.4 version of this?

Will arrive soon enough

Originally Posted by The-Ensemble

Very Nice. I love the idea.

I was wondering why doesnt it say
Viewing Newsletter
when your viewing who's online?
Is there a way to change this so it does?

That is because I didnt think of the idea whilst making it
I'll stuff it in there next update

Originally Posted by Kaezul

People are just too cynical these days, Marky. I personally think it's a great idea for those that do not want to install a portal. Announcements just don't cut it either - They get read less often than normal posts on my forum. A newsletter is a great idea, especially if you have some sort of alert when a new issue is released. I can code that myself, though it would be a handy addition to this addon.

All in all, I'd give you a 5/5 on this one. Great work.

Thank you very much Kaezul, your support is greatly appreciated
Do you have any idea on what kind of alert to give when a new issue is released?

Originally Posted by utw-Mephisto

Mmm... the title is really confusing imho ... I also expected a HTML based Mail newsletter .

Im all ears on a new title but I like vBNewsletters

Originally Posted by hornstar1337

Not bad, but if you included some more features then it would appeal to heaps more people.

some suggestions.

1. give us the option to email this newsletter out to selected usergroups.
2. allow people to submit topics to the newsletter so we can include that in the final posting of the newsletter.
3. Have an archive of old newsletters that have been sent out.
4. forgot this idea, will post it when i remember ^^ lol.

Thank you for the suggestions, I do definatly plan on releasing updates on this modification. I did only plan to include simple features for the first version, that way it can grow as the updates keep arriving

---

Thanks for all the suggestions guys
And hope you enjoy it ^^

[Reece^B]

Very good hack/idea Marky. Would be complete with Archive from old ones.

[Rich]

Hello,

I too found the thread title to be misleading. Newsletters, by definition and online example, are "sent" out as a means to draw users back in. This doesn't send anything out. This requires the users to already be active on the site. This is more of a "Site Update" type of modification.

I am not knocking it btw. I think it is a great idea for users that can use it. I too believe this would be great with an archive, but I would also suggest a mailing option. Without the mailing option, this will never be a news"letter".

[phpdevrus]

lol i found it to be confusing as well. i thought it was going to be like the newsletter I get from one of the vb community sites that just lists some recent and popular dicussion threads as well as statistical updates.

:-)

[BigFooty]

Honestly I still don't get it. Where does this 'newsletter' actually appear? Why not just add a sticky to a board or post your newsletters in a seperate board and link to that forum from the navbar?

[Rich]

Hello,

I was just checking in on this to see if there 3was any new info and something occured to me. Couldn't you do this EXACT same thing with a private forum? (Could even name the forum "Newsletter")

If the forum were set to private, with only admins being able to post, and HTML activated....you could create the same thing and it would be archived right from the beginning.

Users could then subscribe to that forum and get the newsletter in their mail too!

[wtrk]

Originally Posted by hornstar1337

Not bad, but if you included some more features then it would appeal to heaps more people.

some suggestions.

1. give us the option to email this newsletter out to selected usergroups.
2. allow people to submit topics to the newsletter so we can include that in the final posting of the newsletter.
3. Have an archive of old newsletters that have been sent out.
4. forgot this idea, will post it when i remember ^^ lol.

yup, i agree. it needs to be mailable! thats why i downloaded it because i thought you could mail out the newsletter (like commbull does).

[PixelFx]

any chance of adding RSS support to this news letter?

[RaceJunkie]

For those of you that want to have an Archive of news letters using this same concept you could use the WebTemplates 3.5.x: VB Integrated CMS (Content Management System) Just make a new page for yur News Letter call it Letter1 etc.. make another page that would have a link to each one... I have just started doing a How Too on my site using the WebTemplates 3.5.x: VB Integrated CMS (Content Management System). You can set permissions for each page by usergroup if you like.

[davidw]

FYI, to avoid any kind of future confusion, you may want to annotate that dependent on whether or not a member has altered their index.php file (if they are using a CMS such as vbadvanced and have renamed their index.php file to something else) that they will need to use the renamed index.php file in the link.

For example... [as per Step 2]
If Joe Doe's index.php file was renamed to forums.php, then their link would work as such:

<if condition="$vboptions['newsletter_switch']"><td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="forums.php?do=newsletter$session[sessionurl_q]">$vbphrase[nav_vbnewsletter]</a></td></if>