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

[dstruct2k]

Addon has been completed, tested, and now works! Someone send me e-mails saying that the $bbuserinfo var holds all the information in the User table for the current user.... I tried adding another un-needed query...

Anyways, here's the addon, just replace the PHP and the template, and run this SQL query:[sql]ALTER TABLE `user` ADD `referrals_sent` SMALLINT UNSIGNED DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL ;[/sql]


Once this addon is installed, you can show the current number of sent referrals on any vB page with $bbuserinfo[referrals_sent]

Enjoy!

[dstruct2k]

Oh, and Mist, you might wanna get rid of that attachment too.... I think it's kinda screwed on the "Sending Mail" line... :smoke:

[Marulatree]

My members are still having errors - see quote below:

05-27-03 at 05:07 PM Marulatree said this in Post #60
All of my members still get the error page when clicking on refer a friend link. Any ideas. I have installed version 2.0

[gspot]

This changed script only counts the number of actual verified/registered referred members for your users. It will also only show registered and verified referred members in the refer page (status page). You can edit it how you like, but I'm new to php coding, so please reply with any comments.

I got tired of it counting referred members that wouldn't actually be registered and verified... This fixed that.

Also thanks to unixman - all the referred members are now clickable to their profile.

Attached are the new revised files.

[armani1072]

thank you works great !!!

[glo]

Looks great!

does this work with 2.3.0?

[gspot]

Yes... It works great for version, 2.3.0. I ran it on mine for over 4 months before stepping up to version 3

Good luck hope it helps you.

[glo]

Thanks for the confirmation Gspot!

Since moving to vb3, have you found many of the hacks you had on your vb2 board were automaticallly built into vb3???

Or are you running it with much less hacks?

[gspot]

actually, I'm not installing very many hacks in my vb3 until the gold is released. There are many hacks that are being upgraded to work in vb3, such as the refer friends hack, but everytime you upgrade, you are required to over-right the files you have hacked, so kind of pointless to me at this time until gold is out..

[glo]

do your members miss any of the old hacks???

I personally only started to hack now, over a year after i got vB, so now the hacks are pretty much rock solid.

Thats my reason for not going to vb3 just yet.