Refer Friends!

First off, I need to thank c-pr0mpt's template driven pages hack for helping me with the online bit and template help.

Second, I must add a disclaimer. I am NOT fluent in PHP and this is my first publicly released hack. This may not be perfectly coded or the most efficient, but I have tested this numerous times on fresh vB's as well as hacked vB's and installation went smoothly every time, so I hope it works for you. I tried my best to make this hack as compatible as possible but I am sure I could have messed up somewhere. This is mostly an addon but optional integration is also supplied in the hack. If installation gets messed up it's not hard to revert, but it never hurts to backup your database first.

Now onto the details of the hack. This hack creates a new page for members that will send out emails to people of their choice with their referral links in them. It's a great way to get your members to promote your site. You could also start a referral contest and grant special prizes, like a custom title or avatar, to whomever gets the most referrals. You do not have to have referrals on, but it would help if you wanted to keep track of who has referred the most members.

Features:

1) Only registered members can use the referral page, guests will get an error page.
2) An error will also occur if a required field is left blank
3) Users can refer 3 friends at a time
4) Users can edit the title and message of their outgoing referral email
5) The user's referral link is in the email message by default (index.php?s=&referrerid=xxx)
6) Default title and message can be edited in the refer.php page
7) "Referring Friends" link appears in the who's online page when a member is referring people

Only 1 file edit (optional)
Only 1 template edit (optional)
3 new templates
1 new PHP file

4 screenshots in my next posts.

Support will be given, but as I said before, I am not fluent in PHP or MySQL, so I can't guarantee that I can make every addon or fix every error.

UPDATE: If you get a bug that sends you straight to the error page, install version 2.0. If the hack is already working for you, do not install version 2.0. This is just a bug fix, a patch, and is only needed if you can't get the original hack to work properly.

Enjoy.

-Marcus

[Mr H]

Works great! Last question, I swear.

Where do I go to see who referred who?

[Ryan McBain]

Originally posted by bpuetz
Ryan,

Have you looked at this: vButtonPro

Makes buttons a piece of cake, as long as you have PhotoShop 7.

Bill

i dont have photoshop 7 lol

[Unknown553]

Originally posted by Ryan McBain
the hack looks awesome, i want to install it but I would need some button icons for the refer link. can anyone help me?

http://www.ryanmcbain.com/forums

I'm not much of a button maker myself, so I can't help you. I'd ask whoever made your other buttons to make you another custom one, or just put a text link in the footer.

[Unknown553]

Originally posted by Mr H
Works great! Last question, I swear.

Where do I go to see who referred who?

This requires more hacking. It's very small though. I have it added on my forum as well.

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...325#post152325

In a members profile it will say something like

Referrals: 2 (username1, username2)

Or you can use FireFly's "Full List of Referrers and Referrals" hack

[Pilot]

VBstats hack shows top referrers etc

[Unknown553]

I don't believe it shows an entire list though. I don't use it so I'm not familiar with it.

[Mr H]

Okay, I added the Firefly referreal hack. It works

Is there anywhere to go to find a "top referrers" link or do I have to click on everyones profile to see who was the top referrer?

[Unknown553]

The last link I posted does exactly that. FireFly's Top Referrers list. See one in action here (slightly modified):

http://moacsupreme.com/forum/reflist.php

[thenetbox]

VERY nice its running on my site

http://www.darkforum.com/darkforum

[X-Fan]

I'm having the same problem - clicking the Refer Friends link brings up the error page straight away, even though I'm logged in.

I tried removing the sessionhash bit from the link, but the error page still came up.

Any ideas?