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, not inside thread view. So visitors will read them on home page without clicking any links.
• The Hack's announcements are not static: ie. they can be powerfully programmed to display themselves according to many conditions.

This hack is the VB3 version of my Dynamic Forum Home Announcement Hack and it is a bit more improved in that it is now able to display your announcement as it was before AND also in DHTML popup box as well which ever you prefer better or even both. (DHTML poupup announcement is not technically a popup so popup killers can not kill it either.)

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:

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

It's tested in vb versions from v.3.0.0 to 3.0.9 and works fine with all of them. It will work for all future 3.0.x versions too. For vb2 version click here.

Here is a Screenshot from a general table announcement.
Here is a Screenshot from a popup announcement.

Some Features:

• It's Admin CP integrated (Screenshot)
• Smiley, BBCode, HTML, IMG tags are supported in announcements.
• 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.
• Poupup announcement can not be killed by popup killer software

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

Hacks of the hack:
* Hack 1: Puts the announcement into header instead of forum home page so that announcement appears in all forum pages.
* Hack 2: Integrates announcement with vBA_CMPS portal hack.
* Hack 3: Popup announcement will popup once in every XX hours.


Logician \\=^))

[Logician]

Originally Posted by mtha

Logician, how many query it'd add to the process?

I'd love to play with this, but I dont wanna slow down my board

none!

[Mobo]

This hack really rocks!! It's the best way to keep my staff up to speed that I have found so far. Thanks!!

[brandy]

Cool hack, I've downloaded it, but haven't installed it yet. When I do I'll click Install.

I was wondering if anyone new how to do the following with it:

I would like a pop up window that displays the 3 paid subscriptions that I offer (bascially the "Available Subscriptions" box.) I would like a person to be able to click to pay for a subscription in the pop up, and then have the pop up close and open the available payment page in the MAIN forum window (where the pop up originated).

Anyone?

[Kwak]

I should install this hack next weekend.

[poolking]

Great looking hack, I'll install it later.

[brandy]

This is a great hack!

How do the conditionals work regarding PRIMARY usergroups and SECONDARY usergroups?

For instance, I have a primary registered usergroup ID: 2
and a secondary contributing member usergroup ID: 10

I want usergroup "2" to get an announcement that asks them to donate.

When they donate, they are still in usergoup "2" but now also have a secondary usergroup "10" for contributing member.

I want usergroup "10" to have an announcement that thanks them, without having the announcement that asks them to donate.

Is there a way to do this?

Thanks,
Brandy

[zetetic]

Great hack!

One thing... it took me an obscenely long time to figure this out, but there's a semicolon missing from the pop-up template that causes some ugly formatting:

"padding: 10px; overflow:"

Thanks!

[Aurous]

Something doesnt look right. I need help:

I am trying to install this in one of my testboards before applying it to my main bb. The testvb folder is password protected by htaccess.

After following first step:
Replacing

if ($debug)

with:

// Logician Hack: Always debug on while adding a setting
$debug=1;
// Logician Hack: Always debug on while adding a setting
if ($debug)

YES, I know there are 2 instances of "if ($debug)", which I replaced with the above text and saved the changes in my server.

After that, when I go to:

http://YOUR_SITE_URL/FORUM_URL/admincp/options.php?do=addgroup

I see a blank white page!! I dont want to mess around with my live site and would like to make changes in my test forum first. I dont understand whats wrong here. Any help??

[Logician]

Originally Posted by Aurous

After that, when I go to:

http://YOUR_SITE_URL/FORUM_URL/admincp/options.php?do=addgroup

I see a blank white page!!

Obviously you edit the url in http://YOUR_SITE_URL/FORUM_URL/admin...hp?do=addgroup right?

[Aurous]

obviously, you think the users here are retarded!

And to ur question, ofcourse NOT! I used proper URL. Infact the strange thing is that, when I removed $debug=1; in both instances and saved it. I clicked on vBulletin Options in the admincp and I saw blank page as well!! Then I just copied the options.php from the live site to the testvb/admincp folder and it worked fine, when both the files had the same content! This is something very new to me. I even tried logging again and didnt see any difference.