Add-On Releases - vBExperience

vBExperience 3.8 (aka xPerience)

Created by Marius Czyz aka Phalynx.

Winner of the "Mod of the Month"-Award (March 2008) on vBulletin.org.


Description
vBExperience is your feature packaged solution for motivation and satisfying your users. vBExperience is an advanced Level/Promotion and Activity System with Shop, Awards and Activities. It will calculate an activity and experience score for every user based on their activites on the forum. Now your users will see how their level is increasing by participating on your forum.

This mod was developed by me because I was never satisfied with the post count. Communities are not only defined by post count, they need much more parameters: Are the postings the user creates helpful? Are his threads frequently read? Does the user participate on the community by posting pictures, attachments, leaving visitor messages, tagging threads? All this can be answered with this mod.

Comments, suggestions, translations, bugs, etc... are very welcome! Support is only given to people who have clicked Mark as Installed.


Compatibility
This mod will work with vBulletin 3.7.x and 3.8.x. For vBulletin 3.6 you will need vBExperience 3.7



Demo:
http://www.insideearth.net/xperience.php?langid=5

Demo Profile:
http://www.insideearth.net/member.php?u=1&langid=5

Demo Rankings:
http://www.insideearth.net/xperience.php?langid=5

Demo Awards:
http://www.insidesupcom.de/xperience...wards&langid=1

Demo Promotions:
http://www.insidesupcom.de/xperience...=shop&langid=1

Demo Shop:
http://www.insideearth.net/xperience...=shop&langid=5

Demo Stats:
http://www.insideearth.net/xperience...stats&langid=5

Demo Earn Points:
http://www.insideearth.net/xperience...=earn&langid=5

Other Demo Site:
http://www.insidesupcom.de/xperience.php?langid=1


There are mainly four things visible for the users: The users score, his level, his next level up in %/points and his activity in %.


Calculation of the score
Taken into calculation are these things:
Threads
- Created threads
- Thread views of own threads
- Thread replies of own threads
- Thread votes of own threads
- Thread tags
- Replies to own threads
- Sticky threads
- Socialgroup Discussions (Discussions, Posts)

Posts
- Created posts
- Views on attachments

User
- Days since registration
- Average posts per Day (for users who are on forum for at least seven days)
- Referrals
- Received infractions
- Reputation / Use of reputation system
- Visitor messages on profiles
- Members of own social groups
- Albumpictures
- Friends
- Completing Profile

Misc
- Calendar entries


Additionally there is support for 3rd party addons (some are already installed):
- vB Tournaments and Ladders (via CDP Addon)
- Post Ranking System (via CDP Addon)
- Helpful Answers (via CDP Addon)
- AWCoding-Donation System LITE and PRO (via CDP Addon)
- Cyb Paypal Donate (included)
- DownloadsII (included)
- ibProArcade Highscorer Points (via CDP Addon)
- LDM Links and Downloads Manager (included)
- PhotoPlog 2.1 (via CDP Addon)
- PhotoPost vBGallery (via CDP Addon)
- PhotoPost Pro (via CDP Addon)
- Post Thank You / Use of Post Thank You (via CDP Addon)
- QuoteIt! 3.16 (via CDP Addon)
- SAPR: Advanced Post Rating system (via CDP Addon)
- thanks via vS-Hide Hack Resurrection (Expanded Edition) (included)
- v3arcade Highscorer Points (via CDP Addon)
- v3arcade Submissions Points (via CDP Addon)
- vBulletin Blog (included)
- Who Downloaded This Attachment? (included)
- Other Addons can be easily added via CDP - Custom Data Provider plugins.

Additionally you can install these modifications:
- Thread Necromancer: Gives (minus-) points when a user is posting in old threads.
- Scrupulous Poster: Gives points for editing posts. Award users that are editing own posts instead of doing double post.
- Deletion Addicted: Gives points when an user/nod soft-deletes post, thread, visitormessage, groupmessage or picturecomment.
- Arm of Law: Give points for moderators who are using the infraction system
- Discussion Ender: Give points for people who are the last on a discussion
- RadioActivity: Reduce points for every day the user is not online

Also, there are already addons available that are working as Custom Data Provider (CDP). A CDP can extend vBExperience by collecting data and adding it to the vBExperience datastore. All point providers can be used for Awards and Shop.

You have to install these hacks for your own, vBExperience doesn't install nor touches these.


vBAdvanced
There are three vBAdvanced 3.0 XML modules: Most Active Users, Most Experienced Users and Last 20 Activities. Import them via vBAdvanced AdminCP.


Awards
There are six default awards: Most Popular, Activity Award, Posting Award, Community Award, Frequent Poster, Blog Award, Calendar Award. The awards are shown in Rankings and Profile. You can set them also to display in postbit near the username. There is a scheduled job running once a day (02:30h) to calculate them.
Via AdminCP they are completely customizeable and can also be assigned manually.
Awards can be created for every data provider.


Rankings
Showing User, Level, Awards, Activity Points (experience, thread, post, user, misc) - sortable.
Since 3.8.3, there is a also a ranking for Social Groups

Shop
A virtual Shop will motivate your users to earn more points. You can define categories and put virtual items with pictures in it. A currency can be defined seperatly for every item, e.g. 20 points from threads or 100 points from gallery. Users can purchase the items, they appear in their profile. The costs of the item are substracted from their xperience points. Additionally you can set quantity of the items.
The Shop will motivate your users to collect specific points to buy an item. Optionally you can show the last purchased items on postbit.
You can put virtual items in it, like WoW addons: Sell WoW Items in exchange of f.e. thread points. Great for RPG forums.
Non-Virtual Items like bold Usernames or Downloads for Points are already on my todo list.

Earn Points
There is an overview for the user on how points can be collected, with a list of users own points. All data is beeing pulled from the database (settings, phrases)

Statistics
The statistics is showing a Top-X list of the leading users. Usefull for optimizing points of the point provider. Only enabled point providers with results will be displayed.


Promotion system
To motivate users to do more on your forum I created the promotion system. By reaching defined xperience points the user will be moved to another usergroup - where you can set graphics, shadows, highlighting, etc... What is interesting in combination with this: you can give the user more possibilities f.e. larger avatars or bigger PM box. A log of the promotions is available.


Calculation of the activity
The system calculates the activity by taking the average post count/visitormessages/group discussion/Blog entries of the ten most active user and comparing it to own post count. This can be set to count only the last X days, f.e. 21 days.


Settings
You can control how many points are given to every calculation. For example you can give many points for creating new threads but only a few for views of that thread. Setting a value to 0 will disable a setting.
Additionally, you can set ignore users (f.e. for bot users), forums (f.e. offtopic forums) and usergroup id's.


Performance, Big Boards
vBExperience has been tested on smaller and also on some bigger sites. I know from boards with around 120k users running this mod smoothly. More about this topic can be read in the file readme_optimization.txt


Frequently asked questions
Q: How do I change the name Experience to something new?
A: You can change the name via phrases. Just search and replace all phrases that contains vBExperience.

Q: When installing vBExperience, does everyone start from scratch, or will it automatically configure everyone's points based on actions before the install?
A: If you recount, vBExperience will calculate ALL existing data since the beginning of the board.

Known Issues:
- Awards: On "Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread" awards are only shown for the user who is viewing this.
- Awards: If activated in with rich username, they are attached to the username. If the username is linked, the awards are also linked. If a link is underlined, the awards are also underlined. This behaviour is hardcoded in vBulletin and cannot be fixed.
- Settings are showing only a blank page, read here: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/proje...6979#note74140
- If you completely remove vBExperience, you need also to uninstall the product XML manually from the pluginssystem

Credits for icons
- FAMFAMFAM, http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/
- IconExperience


History
3.8.5 Beta 3, 18th September 2009
- Fixed Promotions
- Fixed Notifications
- Added Activities to Promotions
- All Activities are not obeying limit
- AdminCP/Experience has a recount for Promotions and Achievements
- Fixed listing of Achievements with Firefox
- Several Beta 2 fixes

3.8.5 Beta 2, 02nd September 2009
- Just a short note: Condition in Achievements and Promotions are calculated in POINTS, not in counts of items.
If you choose 10 Day, you must enter the points needed for this.
For example: You have an achievement for 10 days. You have set 2 points for every day since registering. Calculation: 10*2 = 20
You will have to set 20 as the condition.
- New tabbed interface. If you want to change the style, edit the template xperience_navbar_css
- Promotions now showing usergroups and conditions for a promotion to the next group
- You can import old vBExperience Legacy promotions (that were created within level.xml)
- Achievements in Profile
- Achievements below Avatar
- Several Beta 1 fixes

3.8.5 Beta 1, 28th August 2009
- Achievements!
- Promotions!
- Notification on Awards, Promotions and Achievements
- GAP: Empty pointfields will not be displayed anymore
- Activity: Showing percent values with a decimal
- Activities now also for users
- Awards below Avatar
- Default Awards are now also creating new category
- Shop: Fixed issue in not returning cash on sells
- Reworked Edit Shop Items


Todo for Beta 3:
- Download files with vBExperience as a credit system ("LDM Links and Downloads Manager", "DownloadsII")
- Activity eraser
- AdminCP Permissions
- Advanced User Permissions


For more see history.txt

[yingzhou]

can I use this with vbcredit! I think the credit is effective than the point and the vbcredit manage credit so fine!

[Alfa1]

I would like to only count referrals with a certain post count. Could you add this option?
Please add support for the AWCoding's donation system.

What level would you advise with 45.000 members?

I have been staring at the various levels, but do not exactly understand what they are.
What I do understand is that it defines at what amount of xperience_points a member will be in a certain xperience_level and usergroupid

So I assume that if I change the usergroupID anywhere, then that will create promotions?
Then does this mean that with the standard values, members get promoted to register member? Or is that just a value that the software recognizes as the lowest value? i.e. no promotion to usergroupid 2.

So what happens at each xperience_level?

[alanboo]

hi,
will be an addon for Zoints Local?

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by KURTZ

anyway, the forumdispay and shothread 'awards issue' remains ... it showd the secondary medals only if you have the gold ... otherwise nothing is showed ...

check the pic (the user nosfe has 2 silver awards)

It seems I have to visit your forum again to see what is happening over there

Originally Posted by KURTZ

edit: also i've found some incongruous values with the activity awards ... the stats shows me that the first is 'Nosfe' and 'Feror' is only 3rd, but if i go into the awards page Feror has the gold award ... check the last 2 attachments ...

Thats mathematics. 100% Activity means 100%. Sorting is not really usefull here. Cannot change this behaviour.

Originally Posted by RvG2

is there notes how to install this mod on themes other than default?

Originally Posted by RvG2

Ok... just wanna know what are codes added to postbits.

What exactly do you mean with install/codes? Templates, graphics, hooks?

Originally Posted by AnabolicResourc

Only 1 style issue: the bottom of the statistics doesn't close normal. Getting an extra space and no border-color on the bottom.
I have it with my own style but also in the default VB style.

Fixed in next beta

Originally Posted by comicus

Hi again. What I was looking for, was whether or not the users actually lose their *level* (not just points) when they buy something. Let's say they are level 11 and spend x amount of points in the shop, does that knock them down to lvl 10 or 9 or whatever?

The points you decide as a currency are substracted from users experience, yes. If they spend enough points they can lose a level - or more.

Originally Posted by comicus

Also...about running a recount to make the changes active, i did run a recount and it still shows the vbexp bars for my admins.

Cannot confirm this. Working on all forums that I manage.

[KURTZ]

just PMed to you ...

thx

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by redg8r

Uploaded the xml (chose overwrite)
Deleted existing exp stats
re-ran the counters to populate the usergroups.............. no change
Yes I activated the vbexp promotion system & had no existing native VB promotions to conflict with.

Delete the level product and import the level XML again. Recount - does something change? See also the Promotion log, does it have entries?

Originally Posted by Animecraving

nvm the shop work fine but if it can be like vbplaza it would be cool like include lottery/gift/...

This is NOT vBPlaza. This is NOT vBCredits.

Originally Posted by hiepsi@

Have problem with add new item in shop, the item in postbit show incorrect , I added correct url of picture icon

Originally Posted by hiepsi@

1. When new user buy item in shop, user ID transaction for another user, not current user, new user can't buy items in shop
2. Image's item shop on postbit not show, I have added correct image in shop item and into the shop's user show full items

Cannot confirm this. There are 3 possible pictures: Full, Thumbnail and Icon. Are you sure you filled the icon for postbit correctly?

Originally Posted by TunerNetwork

Is there a way to make an award for the person that reports the most posts. I want to make a "crybaby" award for my site...

No, as there is no persistent data about reports.

Originally Posted by TunerNetwork

And another one would be for who receives the most infractions? like a "badboy" award....

Yes.

[Vinyljunky]

Originally Posted by Alfa1

I would like to only count referrals with a certain post count. Could you add this option?
Please add support for the AWCoding's donation system.

I agree that it would be great to add support for that :up:

Thanks

VinylJunky

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by EWGF

I hope you come up soon with the option to replace the levelnumbers with names or graphics.

That is in fact a nice idea that will be included in the version where you will have a GUI for levels. Probably 3.7.16

Originally Posted by yingzhou

can I use this with vbcredit! I think the credit is effective than the point and the vbcredit manage credit so fine!

This is NOT vBPlaza. This is NOT vBCredits.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

I would like to only count referrals with a certain post count. Could you add this option?

Let me think about it.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Please add support for the AWCoding's donation system.

You will have to find someone who will do an addon for this.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

What level would you advise with 45.000 members?

Nothing, as these depends on many other factors.
Just import a product, run a recount and take a look at the rankings:
- Top Members are up to level 30-40: Import a higher level.
- Top Members are up to level 60-70: Great. Just keep the level.
- Top Members are up to level 80: There is only small room for growing.
- Top Members are above level 90: Take a lower level.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

I have been staring at the various levels, but do not exactly understand what they are.
What I do understand is that it defines at what amount of xperience_points a member will be in a certain xperience_level and usergroupid
So I assume that if I change the usergroupID anywhere, then that will create promotions?
Then does this mean that with the standard values, members get promoted to register member? Or is that just a value that the software recognizes as the lowest value? i.e. no promotion to usergroupid 2.

So what happens at each xperience_level?

By reaching defined xperience points the user will be moved to another usergroup. Uou don't need usergroupid, only if you want to move your users to another usergroup by reaching X points.

Originally Posted by alanboo

hi,
will be an addon for Zoints Local?

You will have to find someone who will do an addon for this.

[yingzhou]

Originally Posted by Phalynx

This is NOT vBPlaza. This is NOT vBCredits.

I just want to combine this with vbcredit. I'm using vbcredit longtime ago then now my member have a lot of money on forum with that hack. I think if you can use the database of vbcredit into your hack is so great! Its replace your point system with other point system hack.

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by yingzhou

I just want to combine this with vbcredit. I'm using vbcredit longtime ago then now my member have a lot of money on forum with that hack. I think if you can use the database of vbcredit into your hack is so great! Its replace your point system with other point system hack.

Ok, and what is the benefit of it? It does not make any sense to me replacing vBExperience Core with another Credit's core....