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]

Originally posted by RayMatrix
. . .but your explanation is to hard for me to understand.

ok let me clarify:

find the hack code in index.php (the one you referred above) and cut (delete) it.

Now go at the end of index.php, find:

PHP Code:

eval("dooutput(\"".gettemplate('forumhome')."\");"); 


Before that paste (insert) the hack code, then you'll be fine..

Is there any place where i can read about the Variables so i can understand where '$bbuserinfo' comes from ?

$bbuserinfo variable saves the info of the page visitor according to the "user" and "userfield" tables. Field names in these tables are also references in this variable. So for example the "usergroupid" field in user table is $bbuserinfo[usergroupid]. Check the fields in these 2 tables and you'll see what this variable keeps.

And is it right that your Code only get called in index.php when i insert the code as step 4 tells to do ?

What I meant was that: Check where the hack code resides and where your variable $allpm[messages] gets a value. The hack code is parsed BEFORE $allpm[messages] is assigned a value so it couldnt work in your announcement.

If you heed to my advice and change the code's location, the hack would parse the $allpm[messages] variable because it would already have a value BEFORE hack runs..

See?

[RayMatrix]

. . .and i think the creator also

THX for your help, great Hack. . .i love it more from minute to minute !

Keep on your good work !!

Regards

[LOD-squa]

I have a question can you do this outside the announcement?

[Logician]

Originally posted by gohanssj2
I have a question can you do this outside the announcement?

Do what? If you mean "using conditionals", I have some other hacks using them:
For non-vb web pages check webtemplates hack
For vb templates check dynamic templates hack

[LOD-squa]

Originally posted by Logician

Do what? If you mean "using conditionals", I have some other hacks using them:
For non-vb web pages check webtemplates hack
For vb templates check dynamic templates hack

Could you link me to dynamic templates?

[Logician]

Originally posted by gohanssj2
Could you link me to dynamic templates?

Advanced Templates: Dynamic Templates Changing according to different conditions

[LOD-squa]

Okay Thanks for your help man.

[Bison]

This is one friggin *cool* hack ... this should be implemented into vB 3.0 in a major way!

[SIZE=3 ] SIX STARS !!! [/SIZE] :banana:

[Cyberhouse]

Originally posted by Rolodex
This is one friggin *cool* hack

Agree

[Obi-Wan]

Very very kewl hack.

Me tries to install