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 \\=^))

[Logician]

Originally posted by Boofo

Ok, but you said the global is called before the index.php. I was referring to the $allpm example you gave above. I would like to be able to do that sort of thing on the index page and still be able to use it elsewhere in the forum.

when you add the code into global.php, the dynamic announcement variable is formed for all vb files that runs (including index.php). Therefore you can use it nearly all vb templates. However if a template is called inside a function (eg. postbit template), then the variable should be declared global or will be blank since functions in PHP does not have global variable scope..

And I tried adding that code under the vb options link on the left but it takes me to the top of the vb options listing instead of to bottom of it. And idea how to make it go to the bottom? I did the settinggroup ID but it didn't change it.

make sure settinggroupid is belongs to dynamic announcement hack's id and is correct..

[Boofo]

Originally posted by Logician

when you add the code into global.php, the dynamic announcement variable is formed for all vb files that runs (including index.php). Therefore you can use it nearly all vb templates. However if a template is called inside a function (eg. postbit template), then the variable should be declared global or will be blank since functions in PHP does not have global variable scope..

This is the message I was referring to.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...738#post317738

make sure settinggroupid is belongs to dynamic announcement hack's id and is correct..

I did that. The settinggroupid is 101 for it in my admin cp and it still stays at the top of the vb options page.

[Logician]

Originally posted by Boofo

This is the message I was referring to.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...738#post317738

I see.. the reason we applied the hack to index.php in that post is because the variable ($allpm) used in the announcement is being assigned a value in index.php. So if you use this announcement in another template which is called in an other .php file but index.php $allpm variable will have no value, thus conditional will prove always FALSE.. To make it run in other templates, you have to hack the .php file where that template is called and assign a value for $allpm variable..

[Bad Bunny]

Hmmm, I finally remembered this hack. Sheesh

Anyway, I have your dynamic templates hack installed, and that works wonderfully, but now I tried toi install this, and it does not seem to be doing anything.

Would the fact that I renamed my index file to forums have anything to do with this? I applied the changes that were for index to my newly named index. If you follow what I mean.

I receive no errors, nothing.
It seems that I could do a similar thing with just modifying the forumhome template using your other hack. So...should I just use one and not both?

Summary:
I have renamed my index, and applied the hack to it. Shouwld this affect the hack adversly?
Are your dynamic announcments and dynamic templates hacks compatible?

[Boofo]

Originally posted by Logician

I see.. the reason we applied the hack to index.php in that post is because the variable ($allpm) used in the announcement is being assigned a value in index.php. So if you use this announcement in another template which is called in an other .php file but index.php $allpm variable will have no value, thus conditional will prove always FALSE.. To make it run in other templates, you have to hack the .php file where that template is called and assign a value for $allpm variable..

Ok, I see. Then we either use it one place or the other. I supposed I can use the dynamic templates for the other areas of the site that I can't reach with this if I put it in the index.php.

[Logician]

Originally posted by Bad Bunny
I have renamed my index, and applied the hack to it. Shouwld this affect the hack adversly?
Are your dynamic announcments and dynamic templates hacks compatible?

No, your changing the file name wouldnt effect the hack and yes both hacks should work ok together.

Please check :
1- If you have more than 1 template sets, have you created D.Announcement hack template in all sets.
2- Have you clicked SAVE SETTINGS in vb options after installation.
3- If you have a conditional, does it apply when you check it? Or simply remove the conditional and see if it works

[Bad Bunny]

Well, minus the running of the script, I will retry the whole installation.

I know how to apply hacks, and I know you do a great job on hacks, so it must have been somewhere that I messed up in applying it.

I do have a couple styles, but they are forum dependant and not user-selectable.

[Boofo]

I just tried to use the <normalfont> tags in the announcement and it still shows smallfont and the tags themselves. I tried the fix from page nine of this thread and it didn't make any difference. Am I doing something wrong somewhere?

[Logician]

you need to edit that part in the hack's template:

<smallfont>$matches14[2]</smallfont>

[Boofo]

Ahhh, ok. I supposed I should have looked there before I bothered you with this. Sorry about that.

But there's no way to be able to do it in the announcement itself? That would make it easier if you want to change the size of text on the fly.