Dynamic Announcements: Programmable Forum Home Announcement/Message with conditionals

(This hacks works with both 3.5.x and 3.6.x)

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 different texts according to different conditions.

For instance you can tell "why they should register" if visitor is a guest, but if he is a member with 0 posts, you can tell him why he should start posting etc.! All in one announcement! Everybody will see the relevant text according to his status. (This is the hack everybody keeps asking in the TheAdminZone.com whose using the hack for members with 0 and 1 posts.)


This version of the hack is for vbulletin 3.5.x and 3.6.x (vb 3.0.x version is here and vb 2.x version is here. 3.5 version is coded as a plugin so you can install it WITHOUT modifying vb PHP files. It is easily installed in 2 steps through your admin cp.

Basic Usage of This Hack: You can set a text in your Admin CP and it's displayed in forum home to all users. Alternatively if you want, you can set another text as a popup announcement and it is displayed to all as a pop up announcement (it can't be killed with popup killers software!)

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. user has X posts or has more than Y posts but less than Z posts
4. his last visit time was X days ago
5. 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
6. etc.

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

Some Features:

• Coded as a vbulletin pluggin. Can be installed easily without hacking PHP files.
• It's Admin CP integrated
• 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

Hacks of Hack:
* For CMPS Integration see here
* French Translation by Allan : https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=143
* Nested Conditionals by dc3dreamer : https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=175
* Hack Annoucement appears in all vb pages:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...498#post911498



IMPORTANT FOR 3.x USERS:
If you were already using this hack in 3.0.x, remember to do 2 things:
BEFORE YOU INSTALL THIS HACK : Follow this instructions to remove the remnants of 3.0.x hack.
AFTER YOU INSTALL THIS HACK : Go to your admin cp / styles, find these 3 styles:
dfh_announcement
dfh_announcement_headercode
dfh_announcement_popup
and REVERT THEM so that your new templates that comes with 3.5 version will apply.

About vb4.x version:

I didn't consider porting this hack to vb4 because vbulletin has now a VERY SIMILAR feature in vb4 called "NOTICES". You can find it under your admin cp/Notices submenu/Notice Manager. It is not as powerful as this hack as this hack allows you to use any kind of conditional to produce your announcement but it is more user friendly because you don't need to deal with conditional syntax, you simply build your announcement (notice) with menus
If you install the hack, click INSTALL, thank you..

Logician \\=^))

[Logician]

Originally Posted by emforum

I uploaded "functions_dfha.php" into vb's /includes/ folder.

I Edited forumhome/forumhome template and replace the code

Uploaded xml file as product

No what i didnt understand is,,

Login to your vb admin cp, go to settings page and configure your announcements in "Dynamic Forum Announcements" settings.

I logged in to admin control pannel, where is the settings page???

emforum

in vb options

[skoenig]

@emforum - Scroll to the bottom of the drop down list you'll see Dynamic... thats where you edit the annoucements.

BTW is there anyway to make the edit boxes for the conditionals/strings wider/tall by default?

[morrow]

Nice hack... had it installed for a while but unfortunately, Photopost no longer functions when this product is enabled. Once I disabled the product, Photopost fired right back up again.

I noticed someone else asked about this but didn't get a response. Does anyone have this working with VBA/Photopost?

Thanks

*I'll leave it installed until tomorrow night. I'll fool around with it a little and if I figure anything out, I'll be sure to post the results. Too bad, I really liked this one!

[Logician]

Originally Posted by morrow

Nice hack... had it installed for a while but unfortunately, Photopost no longer functions when this product is enabled. Once I disabled the product, Photopost fired right back up again.

I noticed someone else asked about this but didn't get a response. Does anyone have this working with VBA/Photopost?

Thanks

*I'll leave it installed until tomorrow night. I'll fool around with it a little and if I figure anything out, I'll be sure to post the results. Too bad, I really liked this one!

Interesting experience, I cant think of why. Frankly speaking I installed it to a few boards which already use photopost but I didn't have such a problem.

[morrow]

Originally Posted by Logician

Interesting experience, I cant think of why. Frankly speaking I installed it to a few boards which already use photopost but I didn't have such a problem.

Possibly my directory structure?

root
- /vBulletin
- /photopost

Photopost is installed into a seperate directory than vBulletin. Could that possibly have something to do with it? Any ideas. My site is, http://www.njflyfishing.com Maybe after seeing the site, something will click. Keep in mind that the hack is disabled.

[Logician]

Originally Posted by morrow

Possibly my directory structure?

root
- /vBulletin
- /photopost

Photopost is installed into a seperate directory than vBulletin. Could that possibly have something to do with it? Any ideas. My site is, http://www.njflyfishing.com Maybe after seeing the site, something will click. Keep in mind that the hack is disabled.

Are you using "photopost" or "vbpicgallery"? I dont have any experience with the latter.

Also please make sure you use the original (supported) version of the hack which displays announcement in forum home page only. If you installed unsupported version (which displays announcement in all pages), I'm not sure what kind of problems it can cause with other hacks and scripts.

[morrow]

I'm using Photopost.

Ok, so vba would not be considered supported? If not, I'll remove it from my vba template.

[R-n-R]

I just installed this Plug-in last night and so for I have been getting good reviews, thansk for the script!

I did have a couple of my members make a suggestion that the annoucements be able to be shown on the "New Posts" page results as that is how they have my forum bookedmarked.

Would this be possible?

[paul41598]

Is there a way to use this multiple times? I see you can use this a max of twice, one for the forumhome and one for the popup. What if I want two popups? Or wahtever

[bang]

does this work on 3.6?