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 (or other board pages), not inside thread view. So visitors will read them without clicking on them.
• The Hack's announcements are not static: ie. they can be powerfully programmed to change themselves according to many conditions.

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:

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

The conditionals even allows you to design "Board Tips" ever changing according to user's seniority or post number. See how-to document for conditional usage and more info..

It's tested in both v.2.2.6 and v.2.2.7 but it should work with any versions > 2.0.3. (v.2.2.8 or later Users READ HERE!) I'm using it in my own board and a friend's board for more than a month and found it quite stable and released it. Although not likely, if you found any bugs, holler and I'll fix it..

Here is a Screenshot from a "general announcement".
Here is a Screenshot of announcement which is addressed to a certain user.

Some Features:

• It's Admin CP integrated (Screenshot)
• Smiley and BBCode in announcements are parsed
• 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.

If you have problems displaying HTML/smilie/bbcode in your announcements, make this tiny change in hack code

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

Logician \\=^))

[Logician]

Screenshot1:

General announcement in forum home

[Logician]

Screenshot2:

An announcement addressed to a specific user only. (Needless to say it will be visible only if the visitor is that user)

[Logician]

Screenshot 3:

Admin CP/Settings: Where you customize your announcements

[Logician]

Add-on 1: Forum Tips Depending on visitor's post count

If you copy/paste this text into your announcement box, you'll create a forum tips announcement which will be displayed to your visitors according to their post count.

Eg.
If his post number < 1 displays "Tip 1"
If his post number = 1 displays "Tip 2"
If his post number > 1 AND <=5 displays "Tip 3"
etc..

More info in the text file..

[Logician]

How To Use - Conditionals Help

After you installed the hack:

Basic Usage:

If you want to display an announcement to ALL users, simply login to Admin CP/Choose VB Settings/Dynamic Forum Announcements and enter your announcement as a plain text into the box. (Delete the previous one). You can use smilies and all other bbcode in your announcements. This text will be dragged to your forum home regardless of whoever the page visitor is.

Advanced Usage:
You can use "conditionals" to set announcements displayed if a certain condition applies. If you are using my WebTemplates Hack , you should be already familiar with the term "conditional". In Webtemplates conditionals could be used to put different texts/HTML codes which will be parsed if certain condition appied in your non-vb pages. It's the same concept and their usage is same. Here is its format:

[[(your conditional)]] Your Announcement [[/(your conditional)]]

Conditional Rules:

• Conditionals are covered inside [[ ]] tags
• Conditional itself is in paranthesis ( )
• Announcements are written in between the conditional tags
• Opening and closing conditional are exactly same except closing conditional has a / right before (
• If you are trying to check if a X equals to Y use DOUBLE equation mark not single. eg. Correct: X==Y Incorrect:X=Y
• You can design as many conditional as you like. If more than 1 condition applies at the same time, the conditional which is above (=higher priority) is parsed.
• If you write a plain text without a conditional together with other conditionals, this text is considered "default announcement" and displayed if no conditions applies.

Some examples will help you understand the rules better. Here are some conditionals and the announcement texts which explains what that conditional do:

* [[($bbuserinfo[userid]==32)]] Show this announcement if page visitor's user id is 32 [[/($bbuserinfo[userid]==32)]]

* [[($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==5)]] Show this announcement if page visitor's usergroupid is 5 (=if he is a Super Mod) [[/($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==5)]]

* [[($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==1)]] Show this announcement if page visitor is a guest [[/($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==1)]]

* [[($bbuserinfo[userid]>1)]] Show this announcement if page visitor is NOT a guest [[/($bbuserinfo[userid]>1)]]

* [[($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==5 OR $bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==6 OR $bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==7)]] Show this announcement if page visitor's a Super Mod OR a Mod OR an Admin [[/($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==5 OR $bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==6 OR $bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==7)]]

* [[($bbuserinfo[posts]<10)]] Show this announcement if page visitor has less than 10 posts [[/($bbuserinfo[posts]<10)]]

* [[($bbuserinfo[lastvisit] and $bbuserinfo[lastvisit]<strtotime(-30 days))]]Show this announcement if page visitor has not visited your board for 30 days[[/($bbuserinfo[lastvisit] and $bbuserinfo[lastvisit]<strtotime(-30 days))]]

* [[($bbuserinfo[joindate]>strtotime("-2 weeks") AND $bbuserinfo[joindate]<strtotime("-4 weeks"))]]Show this announcement if page visitor registered in a date between 2 weeks to 4 weeks from now[[/($bbuserinfo[joindate]>strtotime("-2 weeks") AND $bbuserinfo[joindate]<strtotime("-4 weeks"))]]

You can use conditionals together too. Here is an example:
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
[[($bbuserinfo[userid]==32)]] Announcement 1 [[/($bbuserinfo[userid]==32)]]
[[($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==3)]] Announcement 2 [[/($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]==3)]]
Announcement 3
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
If you set this text as your announcement, the hack will:
Show Announcement 1, if user's userid = 32
Show Announcement 2, if user's usergroupid = 3 (=email confirmation waiting members)
show Announcement 3, For ALL other users

What if user 32 is also from user groupid 3? He will be displayed Announcement 1 because even if he matches both conditional 1 and conditional 2, conditional 1 (which is above) has a higher priority.

Notice About vbulletin admin CP/settings bug: While I code this hack I have noticed that vbulletin Admin CP/Settings section has a bug. This hack's installation step 6 also fixes this bug so you wont be effected by it after the installation. You can find more info about this bug in the official vbulletin.com thread.

Hope this document helps you to understand the term conditional. You can use this help page as a reference for this hack, for WebTemplates Hack and for some of other hacks I am coding at the moment. I have recently noticed that vbulletin version 3 will also have a concept "vb conditionals". I dont know their syntax but their logic will be same so you can consider yourself lucky by using the conditionals before it's officially integrated to the script.

If you need more help to design a "conditional", before asking me please read this document carefully for a few times, try to form it by yourself and if they all fail, ask in the hack's thread giving details about exactly what conditional you tried to form and what text (format) have you tried (and failed). Thank you.

[Logician]

Add-on 2: Forum Tips Depending on visitor's seniority

If you copy/paste this text into your announcement box, you'll create a forum tips announcement which will be displayed to your visitors according to their seniority (register date)
Eg.
If he registered today displays "Tip 1"
If he register day >1 AND <3 displays "Tip 2"
If he register day >=3 AND <5 displays "Tip 3"
etc..

More info in the text file..

[MarkB]

Very interesting hack!!

[KarateKid]

You're great Logican, you alway create very helpfull hacks!

Thank you very much!

[Dean C]

this is AWESOME... one of the best hacks... im definately going to install this later 2nite

- Mist