Mini Mods - Welcome Headers: Notices System Default Messages & Settings to Drive Participation

Out of the box, your forum isn't personalized to assist or address your visitors. As a result, guests entering on a page other than the homepage (which is most often the case) have no idea what to do or why to register. Additionally, there are no visible status indicators, making it confusing for unconfirmed, unapproved or new members to know what to do or where to begin. But with a little customization, the use of the vBulletin Notices System and Welcome Headers, you can solve these issues in just a few minutes.

What is Welcome Headers?

Welcome Headers is a set of predefined messages and rules designed to help you get started in personalizing your site's notices using the vBulletin notice feature. The default templates are just that, default ? I highly encourage you to modify and add to the language and rules to meet the needs of your actual community environment.

Modifications/ Instructions:

Plugins: 1 (creates notices rules and phrases)
This template hack should take under 5 minutes to implement and customize.

Installation/ Upgrade Instructions

1 ? Install the attached plugin file
2 ? Customize the notices to include your site's name

For detailed instructions on each step please view the install.html file included with this addon.

Support

Please post any enhancement or technical questions you may have and I will do my best to respond in a timely manner. Please note: I can not guarantee an immediate response and am unable to assist with integrating this addon with other addons or with HTML related questions.

Why use this when the notices system exists?

Welcome Headers have been around since before vBulletin 3.0 but as of 3.7 the functionality of the system was no longer needed as vBulletin added its own native feature to handle notices. However while the notices feature lets you show welcome header style messages it doesn't give you any to start with. The notices version of this addon does not add any functionality but instead provides a set of 4 notices that have been time-tested and help your forum grow and function better for guests and members.

Please be sure to customize and add to the messages from this addon to match the individual needs of your forum!

Older Version Support (Templates)

While most users are choosing to upgrade to the notices system, there are some advantages to the "old" system mainly in that it does not rely on a rules system and can be configured as designed with code changes. Additionally, the "old" version has automatic interfacing with several other addons which the notices system does not. For this reason, the old version is still supported being developed and will appear as a seperate file to download.

Updates from 3.7/3.8

Minor code changes to support 4.0, no changes to the functional mod.

[Krusty1231]

Thank you.

[cbiweb]

Nice little mod, but was it really necessary? All you really had to do was submit an article with the pre-written messages, and specify which usergroup or other settings is relevant to each one, and let us put them into the native notices system. Why have a bit of 3rd party code floating around in the database just for a few canned messages?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by cbiweb

Nice little mod, but was it really necessary? All you really had to do was submit an article with the pre-written messages, and specify which usergroup or other settings is relevant to each one, and let us put them into the native notices system. Why have a bit of 3rd party code floating around in the database just for a few canned messages?

You're absolutely correct. Of course this mod doesn't add any code, it merely creates messages and their corresponding settings. Could an article explain that? You bet.

You may notice that this version was posted a couple years back right after the release of 4.0 and that there's a number of versions for older vBulletin installs. After having the welcome header system out there for over 7 years [mod was launched in the vB 2.0 days] people asked for it to continue even with the advent of notices so here it was ported over.

As the introduction and install file states, this is just intended to get people started with some ideas of marketing messages. I wish everyone would create their own but that's not the case and for those who want a jump start, this makes it very easy. If that's not you then by no means should you use it.

[v12kid]

dumb question, once installed, where do I go to change my message?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by v12kid

dumb question, once installed, where do I go to change my message?

Head over to your notices manager where you can not just change the text but easily configure settings and build more messages. This is a vBulletin default feature, welcome headers are just a few default messages to get ya started.

[v12kid]

thanks Ted

[hyperviperx99]

How do I change the color of the background of the header?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by hyperviperx99

How do I change the color of the background of the header?

The headers run through the notices system which is a default part of vBulletin. Customize the notices css .

[hyperviperx99]

Thanks Ted! I got it now!

[LisaArnold]

Thanks, works great with 4.1.4. Just what I've been looking for.

One thing.... how can I get them to stay there even after you've logged into the site/forum and not just there if you're not logged on?