Add-On Releases - vBExperience 3.8

vBExperience 3.8 (aka xPerience)

Created by Marius Czyz aka Phalynx.

Triple Winner of the "Mod of the Month"-Award (March 2008, September 2009, July 2010) on vBulletin.org.

A version for vBulletin 4.0 has been released! Thread: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=245023


vBExperience 3.8.6 is currently (August 2010) in development.


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 3.8.6:
http://www.insidetwoworlds.com/xperience.php

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
3.8.4.3 / 3.8.5 Beta 5, 10th July 2011
- Prio 1 security patch, please update just xperience.php!


3.8.5 Beta 4, 25th September 2009
- Promotions: Listing now also the last Usergroup. Please notice the new settings for nethermost/uppermost usergroups.
- Several minor cosmetic changes
- Clear Activities (except Shop)
- Fixed error with GetActivityAll() on profile
- Several Beta 3 fixes

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



For more see history.txt

[ndahiya]

A couple of feature requests

1. alter points for posts based on post size (excluding tags like [quote] etc). vbcredit has this feature, which makes a lot of sense as i would rather not have users post trivial posts just to increase score. i might like to even give negative credit for very small posts.

2. set up such as just logging in to get credit for activities...

3. have my forums integrated with mediawiki. there is a column called wikiedits in forums.user table has the number of wiki edits, and this gets automatically updated. Can i set up credit on that? not sure how the query would work.

4. option to hide vbexperience scores from guests (who are not logged in)
TIA.

ndahiya

[luan7749]

How much members for vbexperience_level_2_average.xml file ??

[bagh1]

Is there a way for the stats page to not show who has got the most infractions (that is a bit embarassing for users) but still give negative points for infractions???
TIA!

[bagh1]

Originally Posted by ndahiya

3. have my forums integrated with mediawiki. there is a column called wikiedits in forums.user table has the number of wiki edits, and this gets automatically updated. Can i set up credit on that? not sure how the query would work.

ndahiya

I also need to give out WIKI edit points. Can you please add this feature? Or perhaps tell me how to connect the two together?

[mindfawk]

Very wicked mod!

[mongothetrucker]

installed, but the images won't show

EDIT: nevermind... path problem. fixed it.

Great Mod!

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by Vaupell

Suggestion :

A small fix for links in awards location.
as you know VBA dosent work will with anything, and the medals aparently sometimes show in VBA online users module, and like everything else vba needs full url..

suggest : make it possible to make a full url link to the medals, and perhaps enable
alternate locations, so when modifying a medal simply add the url to that medal img
where you add the name and description etc.

:up: Wish you a good vecation !!

Thanks, I got a great vacation

Will be fixed in next version.

Originally Posted by itsbobtista

I am having trouble.. mine says Level 2: after every detail in the postbit.

http://www.atxscene.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7

See for yourself.

To get support, you will need to click "Mark as Installed". Also, I don't see a problem there.

Originally Posted by sweetguy2004

can you add points & awards for for vbitty depend on seeding ratio.

thanks

Please ask the author of the vbitty modification. He can use CDP for this.

Originally Posted by dthbah2006

Great Mod! Thanks So Much!

To create a monthly contest with this mod is it best to delete all stats and start over each month?

No, not possible.

Originally Posted by peppercola

I can't seem to get the gift portion to work.

I go to type the username to give the gift to and every time it says the username cannot be found.

*great job on this hack btw it is by far one of our favorite hacks on my forum*

Do the username have an underscore _ ? There is a known problem with this.

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by TC Topps

Question: Which two of the four Advanced files are the correct files to upload thru VBA admincp?

Take the newest, see date.

Originally Posted by TC Topps

Question: Which files in upload 3.8.1 are not current? I assume that all can be uploaded to Vb 3.8? Just want to make sure!

You need to upload files only from the upload_via_ftp folder.

Originally Posted by TC Topps

Question: If all files are current, then where are the ADDONS to be uploaded? I assume thru Product Manager? Again it was a big install and I want to be sure?

Yes, via Addon Manager.

Originally Posted by cykelmyggen

I've been testing for which plugin, that was causing the editing of post's to hang. I've been disabling all plugins one at a time, and it seems that when disabling vBexperiment it works fine.
The error show as edited post not reloading when corrections done (when clicking on "edit" button).
Any help would be appreciated, as for now I've disabled this awesome plugin.

Hmm, this is for me an unknown problem as I don't hook in there.

Originally Posted by luan7749

Will It auto update point ??

Yes.

Originally Posted by Vaupell

Hi, love it, but last update broke it again so when i sell items back to shop it just
transfer to a nonexisting page, no errors just a page not found. didnt have this error in 3.8.0
from 9th jan. only in the newer.

AND

DOES anyone got 2nd place awards working at all ?
meaning silver,bronze medals..

when i add a 2nd medal in same cat as a previous and set the gold/siler thing for 1 or 2
it never works, medels for 2nd and 3rd arent awarded.
does anyone else got this working besides creator ?

Yes, many sites. For example: http://www.fniv.it/board/xperience.php?go=awards

Originally Posted by FlameGun

Is it possible you can extend the Give Away feature so not only does it allow you to select who you send it to, but it also allows you to send a message with it? (In the form of a PM)

Marked for next version.

[Phalynx]

[QUOTE=ndahiya;1732997]
1. alter points for posts based on post size (excluding tags like

etc). vbcredit has this feature, which makes a lot of sense as i would rather not have users post trivial posts just to increase score. i might like to even give negative credit for very small posts.

It's very resource consuming, I'm not sure it would be welcome. You can exclude a forum from beeing calculated, like Offtopic.

Originally Posted by ndahiya

2. set up such as just logging in to get credit for activities...

Set a 0 to every point and it will be ignored.

Originally Posted by ndahiya

3. have my forums integrated with mediawiki. there is a column called wikiedits in forums.user table has the number of wiki edits, and this gets automatically updated. Can i set up credit on that? not sure how the query would work.
Contact the mod author of WIKI.

Originally Posted by ndahiya

4. option to hide vbexperience scores from guests (who are not logged in)
TIA.
ndahiya

Already included, it's tied into the permission "canviewmembers"

Originally Posted by luan7749

How much members for vbexperience_level_2_average.xml file ??

Depends on your posts.

Originally Posted by bagh1

Is there a way for the stats page to not show who has got the most infractions (that is a bit embarassing for users) but still give negative points for infractions???
TIA!

To get support, you will need to click "Mark as Installed".

Originally Posted by bagh1

I also need to give out WIKI edit points. Can you please add this feature? Or perhaps tell me how to connect the two together?

Contact the mod author of WIKI.

[ndahiya]

2. set up such as just logging in to get credit for activities...

Set a 0 to every point and it will be ignored.

I want to define logging-in as an activity so want it to be included, not excluded.

4. option to hide vbexperience scores from guests (who are not logged in)
TIA.
ndahiya

Already included, it's tied into the permission "canviewmembers"

Still shows in postbit_legacy, even though the permission is off....