Dynamic Announcements: Programmable Forum Home Announcement/Message with conditionals

(This hacks works with both 3.5.x and 3.6.x)

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 different texts according to different conditions.

For instance you can tell "why they should register" if visitor is a guest, but if he is a member with 0 posts, you can tell him why he should start posting etc.! All in one announcement! Everybody will see the relevant text according to his status. (This is the hack everybody keeps asking in the TheAdminZone.com whose using the hack for members with 0 and 1 posts.)


This version of the hack is for vbulletin 3.5.x and 3.6.x (vb 3.0.x version is here and vb 2.x version is here. 3.5 version is coded as a plugin so you can install it WITHOUT modifying vb PHP files. It is easily installed in 2 steps through your admin cp.

Basic Usage of This Hack: You can set a text in your Admin CP and it's displayed in forum home to all users. Alternatively if you want, you can set another text as a popup announcement and it is displayed to all as a pop up announcement (it can't be killed with popup killers software!)

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. user has X posts or has more than Y posts but less than Z posts
4. his last visit time was X days ago
5. 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
6. etc.

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

Some Features:

• Coded as a vbulletin pluggin. Can be installed easily without hacking PHP files.
• It's Admin CP integrated
• 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

Hacks of Hack:
* For CMPS Integration see here
* French Translation by Allan : https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=143
* Nested Conditionals by dc3dreamer : https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=175
* Hack Annoucement appears in all vb pages:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...498#post911498



IMPORTANT FOR 3.x USERS:
If you were already using this hack in 3.0.x, remember to do 2 things:
BEFORE YOU INSTALL THIS HACK : Follow this instructions to remove the remnants of 3.0.x hack.
AFTER YOU INSTALL THIS HACK : Go to your admin cp / styles, find these 3 styles:
dfh_announcement
dfh_announcement_headercode
dfh_announcement_popup
and REVERT THEM so that your new templates that comes with 3.5 version will apply.

About vb4.x version:

I didn't consider porting this hack to vb4 because vbulletin has now a VERY SIMILAR feature in vb4 called "NOTICES". You can find it under your admin cp/Notices submenu/Notice Manager. It is not as powerful as this hack as this hack allows you to use any kind of conditional to produce your announcement but it is more user friendly because you don't need to deal with conditional syntax, you simply build your announcement (notice) with menus
If you install the hack, click INSTALL, thank you..

Logician \\=^))

[Logician]

Originally Posted by Loco Macheen

what is the condition to make it say the users name ..
like here it would be

Hello Loco Macheen pls post more

i seen it was set in the default, but i've edited it..ty

[[($bbuserinfo[userid] AND $bbuserinfo[posts]<5)]]
Hello $bbuserinfo[username] pls post more
[[($bbuserinfo[userid] AND $bbuserinfo[posts]<5)]]

Translation :

If visitor is a user but has less than 5 posts, say :

Hello $bbuserinfo[username] pls post more

[aacircle]

Anyone know what would be the condition if a user hasn't posted for 30 days? I have been trying the following without luck.

[[($headerstime - 1209600 > $bbuserinfo[lastpost])]]Message Here[[/($headerstime - 1209600 > $bbuserinfo[lastpost])]]

[Allan]

The French Language

[Logician]

Originally Posted by Allan

The French Language

Thanks for sharing. I linked in the hack post.

[nexus851]

Seems like i cannot close announcement POPUP at the FORUM homepage. When it pops up, and i click "close announcement" it doesnt close and stays there.. its annoying for my users.. Only way i can close it is to goto another link. Anyone knows whats wrong or how to fix this???

John P.

[Logician]

Originally Posted by nexus851

Seems like i cannot close announcement POPUP at the FORUM homepage. When it pops up, and i click "close announcement" it doesnt close and stays there.. its annoying for my users.. Only way i can close it is to goto another link. Anyone knows whats wrong or how to fix this???

John P.

If you modified popup template, revert it to the original. If not, give me the URL of your board, put a announcement for guests and let me check it.

[davidw]

<font color="SeaGreen">* chrisitanb clicks install</font>

[nexus851]

i didnt modify the templates at all... couldnt close the announcement at my FORUM HOME only, but for my CMPS home, it closes fine. Check it out at www.pimpwithus.com and click "Forum" link under navigation link on left. It was like this even before i put in the CMPS codes in, i just thought maybe after i install the CMPS add on it'll work fine, but guess not... please advise...


P.S - it has 2 different size popup tables in the FORUM HOME.. maybe that's a clue in why it's duplicating the popup and not closing one.

[aacircle]

Logician... are you able to help with my above post #142. I am using your hack and this replaced the welcome headers hack I was previously using. The welcome headers hack was similar, but places the message on every page, whereas I don't want to be so "in the face" for our users.

Need the message to only display if a user hasn't posted for x amount of days.

Thanks.

[Logician]

Originally Posted by mycolumbus

Anyone know what would be the condition if a user hasn't posted for 30 days? I have been trying the following without luck.

[[($headerstime - 1209600 > $bbuserinfo[lastpost])]]Message Here[[/($headerstime - 1209600 > $bbuserinfo[lastpost])]]

[[($bbuserinfo[lastpost] and $bbuserinfo[lastpost] < strtotime("-30 days"))]]Show this announcement if page visitor has not posted in the last 30 days (although he posted before)[[/($bbuserinfo[lastpost] and $bbuserinfo[lastpost] < strtotime("-30 days"))]]