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 \\=^))

[Banana]

This is unrelated and a small suggestion. Rather than have the admin function tucked away at the end of a very long page. Why not have it linked directly off its own control panel navigation link in the left hand column?

[Logician]

Originally posted by Banana
This is unrelated and a small suggestion. Rather than have the admin function tucked away at the end of a very long page. Why not have it linked directly off its own control panel navigation link in the left hand column?

it would require a little bit more hacking and an additinal 1 query in your main page so this is why I integrated into vb settings section (detailed info is somewhere in the thread). But if you find the announcement edit column small, you can enlarge it. I gave the hack for it in the thread.

BTW. can u still not see bbcode after you applied the change I gave you above?

[Banana]

Originally posted by Logician
BTW. can u still not see bbcode after you applied the change I gave you above?

Correct - Still doesn't work - that's what post #110 says.

Thanks for the rest of your post above BTW.

[Banana]

Logician, if I change "bbcodeparse" to "bbcodeparse2" in the code section I posted about 5 messages up I get the bold, and quote and smilies working BUT i still get "$bbuserinfo[username]" (without the surrounding quotes) appearing in the announcements.

[KarateKid]

Hi,

does it work with 2.2.9 ?

Regards.

[Logician]

Originally posted by KarateKid
does it work with 2.2.9 ?

I didnt test myself but I believe it should work provided that you apply the 2.2.8 modification in the installation. I appreciate if someone who tested confirms this.

[KarateKid]

okay, thanks.

I'll try it

[freeshares1]

Thanks, This is fanatasic......

[Shpookdefied]

Well, I just tried installing on 2.2.9, and have absolutley nothing to show for it. The options arent coming up in AdminCP. I'm a bit confused, and pretty new to this, so any help would be much appreciated. But still, it's a very nice hack.

[Logician]

Originally posted by Shpookdefied
Well, I just tried installing on 2.2.9, and have absolutley nothing to show for it. The options arent coming up in AdminCP. I'm a bit confused, and pretty new to this, so any help would be much appreciated. But still, it's a very nice hack.

sounds like a template problem. Make sure you made the template modifications/additions correctly (check template name, it's caps etc. too) and if you have more than 1 template sets, apply the modifications in all sets..

Also make sure you clicked "APPLY" in vb settings section after you installed the hack