Welcome headers - Improve community registration rates

vBulletin 3.6 users click here for the 3.6 compatible version of this plugin.

The out of the box vBulletin style does not have a robust method of informing users about their current activity status or user level. As a result, guests entering on a page other than the homepage (which is most often the case) have no idea what a forum is about or that they may need 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.

To help solve these problems, the welcome headers plugin creates a 5-part set of conditionals to better introduce members to your community while pushing them to register, activate or post. The default templates are just that, default ? I highly encourage you to tweak the language and functions to meet the needs of your actual community environment.

Modifications/ Instructions:
Template edits: 2
Plugins: 1 (adds 1 template and several settings)

This template hack should take under 5 minutes to implement and customize.

What?s new in 4.1.0
The 4.1.0 version of this system is a complete rewrite from earlier versions. All of the original functionality still exists; however, the system has been improved to make it much more modular. With the new version, you can now turn on/off individual welcome header messages, configure the content and change other settings all from your ACP Options panel. Additionally, a 5th welcome header has been added for global announcements. With the exception of one small phrase change, this upgrade is seamless to upgrade.

Upgrade Instructions:
Full upgrade instructions can be found in the attached zip file. However, to avoid confusion anyone upgrading from the 4.0.x version of this plugin to 4.1.x should do the following:

1 ? Upload the new version of the plugin file based on your version of vBulletin (3.5 or 3.6). Be sure to set the override option to ?yes?.
2 ? Go to your phrase manager and search for the phrase ?first_visit_message?, copy any customizations you have made to this phrase into the phrase ?welcome_guest?.
3 ? Go to your vBulletin options, select the ?Welcome Header System? group and configure the options as desired.

Customizing the content / messages
To customize which messages appear or what they say, go to vBulletin options, select the ?Welcome Header System? group and configure the options as desired. Each phase can be modified by adding translation text.

Details on how it all works:
Step One: Turning lurkers into Members
For most websites, upwards of 50% of traffic (or more) comes through search engines or deep links to threads, profiles and categories. Out of the box, vBulletin only displays a welcome message on the forum-homepage, meaning someone who enters through any other page does not have the benefit of seeing an explanation of the site or welcome message. The guest welcome header is used to explain the purpose of your site, sell users on the benefits of joining the community and push them to proactively register.

Step Two: Making Users Confirm their Account
Many vBulletin sites require email confirmation prior to being able to post or access an account. However, activation emails are often misdirected to spam folders, ignored or simply deleted, leaving unconfirmed users with little access rights and no explanation as to what is wrong with their account. The unconfirmed welcome header is used to inform unconfirmed members of their account status and to direct them to automatically resend their activation email, or to contact the webmaster for support.

Step Three: Get non-posting users to post
Another chronic problem faced by many forums is insuring users post after registering. Many new visitors register in order to access certain features with the intent of posting, but never do so. The never posted welcome header is used to encourage users to post for their first time and should ideally be linked directly to an introductions or new member forum to help users "break the ice".

Step Four: Getting inactive users to become more active
Many members start out as lurkers, register, post once or twice and then go back to being lurkers. Often time these members are not actively thinking about participating in topics or are still shy about interacting. The inactivity welcome header reminds members to make a post after a predetermined amount of time as specified by the forum administrator.

Step Five: General Announcements
Unfortunately the standard announcements are often overlooked or never even seen by members who use the "new posts feature". As a result, urgent notices may be missed by users causing problems and high volumes of support requests. The global announcement welcome header creates a message shown to all members who do not fall into the other welcome header groups (guest, unconfirmed, never posted, inactive). Whether it be a scheduled outage/ upgrade, an important request or the need to display an advertisement in a prominent spot, global announcements allow an administrator to effectively and quickly display messages in a way that is certain to be read.

The results:
At first glance this system may seem a bit superfluous, however, the numbers rarely lie, nor does the feedback. Since posting this plugin in October, it has risen to over 1700 confirmed installations and is now one of the top 5 vBulletin plugins. On ScubaBoard.Com, the site the system was originally tested on, posting rates have increased by over 100%; new user registration rates by over 60%; user activity by 50% and the welcome/ intro & greets forum has exploded over 400%. If you browse through the pages of this thread you will find even more real life testimonials and experiences from the thousands of people using the system.

But enough about why -- give it a shot yourself and let me know how your results turn out.

vBulletin 3.6 users click here for the 3.6 compatible version of this plugin.

[Ted S]

Here is the actual code which you can add yourself if so desired (rather than use the plugin).

At the end of your header template add:

<if condition="THIS_SCRIPT != 'register' AND THIS_SCRIPT != 'login'">
<if condition="$show['guest']"> 
	<!-- guest welcome message --> 
	<br />
	<table class="tborder" cellpadding="$stylevar[cellpadding]" cellspacing="$stylevar[cellspacing]" border="0" width="100%" align="center">
	<thead>
	<tr> 
	<td class="alt1" colspan="6">
	    <phrase 1="faq.php?$session[sessionurl]" 2="register.php?$session[sessionurl]">$vbphrase[first_visit_message]</phrase>
	     $vbphrase[welcome_ads]
	</td>
	</tr>
	</thead>
	</table>
	<!-- / guest welcome message -->
<else /> 

<if condition="is_member_of($bbuserinfo, 3)">
	<!-- / unconfirmed user message -->
	<br />
	<table class="tborder" cellpadding="$stylevar[cellpadding]" cellspacing="$stylevar[cellspacing]" border="0" width="100%" align="center">
	<thead>
	<tr> 
	<td class="alt1" colspan="6">
	   $vbphrase[welcome_unconfirmed]
	   $vbphrase[welcome_ads]
	</td>
	</tr> 
	</thead>
	</table>
	<!-- / unconfirmed user message -->
<else />

<if condition="$bbuserinfo[posts]<1">
	<!-- never posted message -->
	<br />
	<table class="tborder" cellpadding="$stylevar[cellpadding]" cellspacing="$stylevar[cellspacing]" border="0" width="100%" align="center">
	<thead>
	<tr>
	  <td class="alt1" colspan="6">
	     <phrase 1="$bbuserinfo[username]">$vbphrase[welcome_neverposted]</phrase>
	      $vbphrase[welcome_ads]
	 </td>
	</tr>
	</thead>
	</table>  
	<!-- / never posted message -->
<else /> 

<if condition="$headerstime - 1209600 > $bbuserinfo[lastpost]">
	<!-- never posted message -->
	<br /> 
	<table class="tborder" cellpadding="$stylevar[cellpadding]" cellspacing="$stylevar[cellspacing]" border="0" width="100%" align="center"> 
	<thead>
	<tr> 
	    <td class="alt1" colspan="6">
	       <phrase 1="$bbuserinfo[username]">$vbphrase[welcome_postmoreoften]</phrase>
	        $vbphrase[welcome_ads]
	   </td>
	</tr>
	</thead>
	</table>
	<!-- / never posted message -->
</if>
</if>
</if>
</if>
</if>

Then added 3 global phrases as follows:

welcome_unconfirmed

Your account has not been confirmed and is not yet active! To become a registered user on this forum (required for posting or accessing special features) you will need to verify your email address by clicking a special link sent to you in our original welcome email. If you have lost this email, or it never arrived, please go <a href="./register.php?do=requestemail">here</a> to request another activation email be sent to you. If you suspect your email address is set wrong, go <a href="./sendmessage.php">here</a> and fill the form out so an administrator can fix your account. Also please be sure to disable any spam filters you may have for our website, so that this and all future messages can reach you.

welcome_neverposted

Hello {1},<br />Our records indicate that you have never posted to our site before! Why not make your first post today by saying hello to our community in our Introductions forum. <br /><br /> Why not start with your first post today and become an active part {2} forums now!

welcome_postmoreoften

Hello {1} it appears that you have not posted on our forums in several weeks, why not take a few moments to ask a question, help provide a solution or just engage in a conversation with another member in any one of our forums?

I also recommend you udpate the standard welcome phrase first_visit_message to something along the lines of:

<SPAN class=smallfont>Welcome to Welcome to the <strong>{3}</strong> forums. <br /><br />You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions, articles and access our other FREE features. By joining our <strong>free</strong> community you will have access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload your own photos and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, <a href="{2}"><strong>join our community today</strong></a>! <br /><br />If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact <a href="/sendmessage.php">contact support</a>.

My appologies for all of the problems. This hack has been working successfuly on many sites for almost a year, unfortunately the plugin has some hiccups but I'm sure those can be resolved shortly.

[vau7]

You wrote something about a little Plugin to do to get the unconfirmed message to work in your first .txt

What about that?

I tried to get it with the first version to work but only the first_welcome was shown up. Same as now with this plugin.

[Romeos Tune]

ThankYou very much Ted! Got it and it's working great. I should have installed this way back when..... Awesome Job!

[Ted S]

I've rebuilt the product plugin and it now seems to be functioning properly on my test system. Unfortunately you will now need to modify an additional template to use this hack as a plugin. At the very end of of your header template add the code $welcomeheaders.

Again my apologies for all the confusion. Those of you who are using this with manual code rather than the plugin will not need to upgrade.

[jugo]

For those of you that it's not working...in your FORUMHOME template...do you have

$header

in the template?

[Ted S]

As an FYI, I changed from using the code $header to using $welcomeheaders and placing it in the header template.

[dreck]

Originally Posted by jugo

For those of you that it's not working...in your FORUMHOME template...do you have

$header

in the template?

Yep!

$stylevar[htmldoctype]
<html dir="$stylevar[textdirection]" lang="$stylevar[languagecode]">
<head>
	<!-- no cache headers -->
	<meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache" />
	<meta http-equiv="Expires" content="-1" />
	<meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-cache" />
	<!-- end no cache headers -->
	<title><phrase 1="$vboptions[bbtitle]">$vbphrase[x_powered_by_vbulletin]</phrase></title>
	$headinclude
$dfh_announcement_headercode
</head>
<body>
$dfh_announcement_popup
$header
$navbar
<!-- Gallery_Latest_Images -->

I will try the new way & let ya know.

Thanks, dreck

[dreck]

Works great with welcome_hdr_4_0_2.zip

I cant seem to find the code to remove the "Place your ad code (i.e. adsense) here."

Which template can I find this?

Thanks, dreck

[Ted S]

In the template welcome_headers remove $vbphrase[welcome_ads] from all 4 places where it shows.

[vau7]

works fine as a clockwork.