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, not inside thread view. So visitors will read them on home page without clicking any links.
• The Hack's announcements are not static: ie. they can be powerfully programmed to display themselves according to many conditions.

This hack is the VB3 version of my Dynamic Forum Home Announcement Hack and it is a bit more improved in that it is now able to display your announcement as it was before AND also in DHTML popup box as well which ever you prefer better or even both. (DHTML poupup announcement is not technically a popup so popup killers can not kill it either.)

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:

1. user is X
2. user's usergroup is Y
3. his profile field Z is X
4. user has X posts or has more than Y posts but less than Z posts
5. his last visit time was X days ago
6. 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
7. User is invisible/visible
8. his timeset is set to A
9. etc.

It's tested in vb versions from v.3.0.0 to 3.0.9 and works fine with all of them. It will work for all future 3.0.x versions too. For vb2 version click here.

Here is a Screenshot from a general table announcement.
Here is a Screenshot from a popup announcement.

Some Features:

• It's Admin CP integrated (Screenshot)
• Smiley, BBCode, HTML, IMG tags are supported in announcements.
• 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.
• Poupup announcement can not be killed by popup killer software

If you install the hack, click INSTALL, thank you..

Hacks of the hack:
* Hack 1: Puts the announcement into header instead of forum home page so that announcement appears in all forum pages.
* Hack 2: Integrates announcement with vBA_CMPS portal hack.
* Hack 3: Popup announcement will popup once in every XX hours.


Logician \\=^))

[ixian]

This is the kind of hack that sneaks up on you. At first, you don't think you'd have much use for it, until you realize what it can really do.

Posting a message just for people waiting for email confirmation alone is worth the time to install this. I get tons of new users who don't know to do that, or put in fake email addresses, then email me when they can't post. I'm giving them a special popup that reminds them from now on until they confirm

I can also leave private messages for admins and such. I love this hack.

[Red Blaze]

lol Same reason I use it for ixian. And for admins since we're gonna run a SC Tournament soon. Thanks again Lugician, this came in handy big time, I believe I got use to the conditionals.

BTW: This adds a query, right? I've noticed that it went from 12 to 13. ^^;

[ixian]

I do love this hack so.

It works fine on my forum home page. Now I am trying to figure out how to get it to work with vbAdvanced's index.php. Because that would be, you know, boss.

Edit - Figured it out! See below for solution

[ixian]

BTW, here's my conditional to give a popup to users who haven't confirmed their email registration yet, in case any one else wants to use it. It provides a link to edit their profile/email (in case they didn't read and used a fake email address) and to have the activation email re-sent.

PHP Code:

[[($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==3)]][SIZE=4][B]IMPORTANT: READ THIS[/B][/SIZE]

Hello [b]$bbuserinfo[username][/b]! You are seeing this message because you have not yet confirmed your registration via the email we sent you. You will not be able to post or use other features of the site until you do. Please click the activation link in the email you were sent, or visit <a href="register.php?$session[sessionurl]do=requestemail">this page</a> to resend the activation email. If you did not receive the email then it's possible it was blocked by your email client. In this case you can either disable your blocker software or enter a new email address in <a href="profile.php?$session[sessionurl]do=editpassword">your profile</a> Thanks for coming by! This message will dissappear once you confirm your registration.[[/($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==3)]] 


That's the standalone version of course, I'm using it with the conditionals to display different messages to different groups, as outlined in Logicians excellent tutorial. Have fun.

[ixian]

Aha!!! I have it working for vbadvanced! Now it shows up all throughout your site, assuming you are using it

Mini-mod for vba:

Install hack as normal, confirm it works.

Edit vbadvanced's index.php

Find:

PHP Code:

'bbcode_quote'
); 


Add under

PHP Code:

// Logician Hack: Dynamic Forum Announcements Hack
$globaltemplates[] = 'dfh_announcement';
$globaltemplates[] = 'dfh_announcement_headercode';
$globaltemplates[] = 'dfh_announcement_popup';
// Logician Hack: Dynamic Forum Announcements Hack 


Find

PHP Code:

######################### News ######################### 


Add ABOVE

PHP Code:

// Logician Hack: Dynamic Forum Announcements Hack
if ($vboptions['dynamic_fha'] OR $vboptions['dynamic_popup']) {require_once('./includes/functions_bbcodeparse.php');}

if ($vboptions['dynamic_fha'])
{
eval('$dynamic_fha = "' . addslashes($vboptions['dynamic_fha']) . '";'); 
$dynamic_fha=str_replace("\\'", "'", $dynamic_fha);
$dfh_announcement_announcementtopaste = dynamic_a($dynamic_fha);
if (trim($dfh_announcement_announcementtopaste)) {eval('$dfh_announcement = "' . fetch_template('dfh_announcement') . '";');}
}

if ($vboptions['dynamic_popup'])
{
eval('$dynamic_popup = "' . addslashes($vboptions['dynamic_popup']) . '";'); 
$dynamic_popup=str_replace("\\'", "'", $dynamic_popup);
$dfh_announcement_popuptopaste = dynamic_a($dynamic_popup);
if (trim($dfh_announcement_popuptopaste)) 
    {
    eval('$dfh_announcement_headercode = "' . fetch_template('dfh_announcement_headercode') . '";');
    eval('$dfh_announcement_popup = "' . fetch_template('dfh_announcement_popup') . '";');
    }
}

// Logician Hack: Dynamic Forum Announcements Hack 


Now, edit your vbAdvanced INDEX template.

Find:

</head>

Add ABOVE

$dfh_announcement_headercode

Find:

$header
$navbar

CHANGE TO:

$dfh_announcement_popup
$header
$navbar
$dfh_announcement


Or put the two announcement bits wherever you want them to appear. Don't forget to do this for all your styles.

I may add this to the add-on hack section, but it's such a little mod - no code changes, just figuring out where the code goes in vba's scheme of things - it may not be worth the bother.

Enjoy, and thanks again Logician for a great hack!

[Logician]

Originally Posted by Pitman

When I get to step 2 (After uploading the edited options.php) I get the following parse error:

Make sure you applied STEP 1 correctly.

[Logician]

Originally Posted by Sonikku

BTW: This adds a query, right? I've noticed that it went from 12 to 13. ^^;

Actually no. It shouldnt add any queries because the announcement comes with vb settings so no additional database connection is made.

Originally Posted by ixian

Aha!!! I have it working for vbadvanced! Now it shows up all throughout your site, assuming you are using it

Thx for sharing it ixian.

[MrNase]

Very nice

I'll use that to remind my users of activating their account

thank you logician.

[high]* MrNase click install[/high]

[gmarik]

REally advanced

[Sketch]

The default vbAdv install as $index_header not $header -- I believe. But I got it. Nice hacks all around.