Major Additions - vBExperience 4

vBExperience 4.1 for vBulletin 4

Tested with all Version of vBulletin Forum and Suite 4.0.4 -> 4.1.11

Created by Marius Czyz aka Phalynx.

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

What is vBExperience?
vBExperience is your free feature packaged solution for motivating your users. vBExperience is an advanced and highly customizable level/promotion and activity measure system with awards, achievements, promotions 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.

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? How can the user's activitiy be compared to others? All this can be answered with this mod. Additionally your users get awards and collect achievements for beeing active on your board.

vBExperience is fully translated to many languages. Beside english there are language files for german, french, italian, portuguese, spanish, swedish and chinese simplified. Polish, turkish, persian are not fully translated.

Comments, suggestions, translations, bugs, etc... are very welcome! Support is only given to people who have clicked "Mark as Installed":
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/vborg_mis...hreadid=245023


/***** Demo *****\
No Demosite currently available.


/***** INSTALLATION *****\
Please read the file readme_install_uninstall_upgrade.txt for detailed instructions!


/***** Primary Support *****\
As vBulletin.org does not offer any help managing modifications, espacially the complex one like vBExperience, I have to decided to open a site together with TheMayhem that is dedicated just for this.
It features a forum not just a single thread, a bug and feature tracker. And you also test our modifications over there.



/***** Featurelist *****\

*** Plugins ***
vBExperience can be easily extended by using it's custom data provider interface (CDP). With the CDP everyone is able to create plugins that integrates into vBExperience calculation process. There are already several plugins like Post Thanks Integration.
The plugins data can also be used to create achievements, awards and also promotions.


*** Insight Experience ***
The insight into your personal experience and what's going on on the community. Currently support basic services like activity and some featured achievements, there are plans to extend this with helpful hints on how progress, depending on users points. Also a statistics module is in work.


*** Awards ***
Motivate your users to be the best in a defined category! With the Awards you are able to reward users who collect the most points, f.e. by making new friends and leading a social group.
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.

Currently there are six default awards: Most Popular, Activity Award, Posting Award, Community Award, Frequent Poster, Blog Award, Calendar Award, Discussion Ender, Master Tagger, User with most referrers, Downloads, Arm of Law, King of Publishing.
You can create as much awards as you like. Just select a title, choose from one of the 250 images and select the required points for it.


*** Achievements ***
Achievements are very similar to the awards a reward to the user. Unlike an award an achievement is not limited to a single user.
Similar to awards, you can create as much achievements as you like. Just select a title, choose from one of the over 500 images and create the required condition for it.


*** Promotion system ***
The promotion system enables you to move users to other usergroups, depending on their experience points. You can create conditions that have to be met to be promoted. Benefits and extended permissions will be shown automatically to the user. Promotions are showing also possible jumps from current to the next possible group with the required conditions.
Using this you can create multiple groups and assign additional features. Just an example: Usergroup 1 has no custom avatars and just a capacity of 20 private messages. With a condition of 1000 Experience points the user moves to Usergroup 2, where the user is able to upload his own avatar and store more private messages.


*** Rankings ***
Showing User, Level, Awards, Activity Points (experience, thread, post, user, misc) - sortable.


*** Social Groups Rankings ***
Starts the competition between social groups! This feature ranks the groups depending on their average user experience points.


*** Earn Points ***
This is an overview for the user on how points can be collected. It features also a possibility to compare own points to the community's average. All data is beeing pulled automatically from the database.


*** Give Away Points aka Point Donation ***
Users can donate their points to other community members. Choose the field which will be used for give away and select the amount that will be transferred. Admins can donate custom points to the user.


*** Statistics aka Leaderboards ***
The leaderboard 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.


*** Shop aka Market ***
vBExperience integrates easily with the Point Market System v3 by TheMayham (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=232676).
It features a virtual item store, username items, bank, gifts, gambling, lottery, and a lot more!
As of vBExperience 4.0, the vBExperience 3.8 Shop has been discontinued.



/***** Collecting Points *****\
vBExperience is collecting points for a user counting his actions in the community. The collected points can be used to reward users with awards, achievements and promotions - even if the collected data comes from a plugin.

Beside the automatic collection, the admin can manually donate custom points to the user, for example for a special reward. Of course you can use this also for awards, achievements and promotions.


Taken into calculation are these things:
Threads
- Creating threads and gaining additional points from views, replies, votes and ratings to this thread
- Creating thread tags
- Making a thread sticky
- Socialgroup Discussions (Discussions, Posts)

Posts
- Creating posts
- Views on attachments (needs "Who Downloaded This Attachment?" installed)

User
- Days since registration
- Average posts per Day (for users who are registered for at least seven days)
- Referrals
- Received infractions
- Given infractions ("Arm of Law")
- Reputation / Use of reputation system
- Visitor messages on profiles
- Creating social groups and getting members
- Uploading pictures
- Making friends
- Completing profile

Misc
- Doing calendar entries
- Writing vBulletin Blogs (vBulletin 4 Suite required)
- Publishing content with vBulletin CMS (vBulletin 4 Suite required)
- Manually assigned points

Additionally there is support for 3rd party modifications:
- Point Market System / Items Shop (included)
- Project Tools (plugin)
- Who Downloaded This Attachment? (plugin)
- DownloadsII v6 (included)
- LDM Links and Downloads Manager (included)
- Abe1 Post Thank You (plugin)
- DBTech Advanced Post Thanks/Like (Lite) (plugin)
- DBTech Advanced @UserTag (plugin)
- Helpful Answers (plugin)
- iTrader (plugin)
- ibProArcade (plugin)
- v3arcade Champions and Submissions (plugin)
- vB Tournaments and Ladders (plugin)
- Advanced Forum Points - set points independent for every forum (plugin)
- Consuming points by downloading attachments ("pay" for attachments) (plugin)
- IWT Time Spent Online (plugin)
- PhotoPost Pro 7 (plugin)
- PhotoPost vBGallery 3 (plugin)
- 8WR Media Library (plugin)
- vBSoccer (plugin)
- vBookie (plugin)
- vBookie Cash (plugin)
- Farcaster's Event Attendance (plugin)
- PhotoPlug (plugin)
- EasyForms (plugin)
- Triple Triad (plugin)
- AWCoding Donation System LITE (shipped within that product)
- AWCoding Donation System PRO (shipped within that product)
- AWCoding Subscription System PRO (shipped within that product)
- AWCoding Credit Purchase System LITE (shipped within that product)
- AWCoding Credit Purchase System PRO (shipped within that product)
- AWCoding Pirate Poker PRO (shipped within that product)
- AWCoding Pirate Poker Platinum (shipped within that product)
- AWCoding Product System PRO (shipped within that product)



You have to install these modifications for your own, vBExperience doesn't install nor touches these.
More addons will be published as soon as they are finished.



/***** Calculation of the activity *****\
The system calculates the activity (week, month and also a custom defined datespan, 60) by counting the actions a user has done. An action can be a post, a new thread, rating, download, etc... The activity bars will be filled during the first weeks. This has changed from earlier versions where just postings, visitor- and group messages have been counted.



/***** 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.
Many settings regarding the behaviour of vBExperience are making it easy to adjust it to your needs. You can select from 10 colors for the progress bars and also choose from around 250 icons.
Additionally, you can set ignore users (f.e. for bot users), forums (f.e. offtopic forums) and usergroup id's. Please keep in mind that out of the box the usergroupid 6 (Administrators) is beeing ignored.



/***** Performance, especially on 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 the word "Experience".

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. If you used vBCredits, vBActivity, uCash and similar systems - there is no need to convert the points.

Q: My conditions don't work correctly on achievements and promotions.
A: Conditions in achievements and promotions are calculated in POINTS, not in count of items.
If you create an achievement for reaching the first 10 Days, you must enter the points needed for this. If you reward 2 points for every day, you have to set 2 points for every day since registering. Calculation: 10 days * 2 points = 20 as condition. So you will have to set 20 as the condition.

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



/***** History *****\

vBExperience 4.1.1

Please reinstall ALL plugins you are using from the ZIP\Plugins! Espacially if you get SQL Errors after reinstalling vBExperience.

- Fixed Plugin for 8WR_Media_Library
- Fixed Plugin for Advanced_Forum_Points
- Fixed Plugin for Attachment_Consumes_Points
- Fixed Plugin for EasyForms
- Fixed Plugin for Post_Thanks_Abe1
- Fixed border around boxes
- Fixed not correctly saving award images
- Extended character length for manual award assignment
- Several smaller fixes

vBExperience 4.1.0, 16th December 2011

- Introduced the feature to start the calculation by a defined date. By default all data will be considered for calculation. Please keep in mind that there are some data that cannot be filtered by date, like added friends. You need to re-install all plugins to have them obeying the new calculation limit. This feature has been sponsored by BryanB. Thanks!
- Fixed Discussion Ender, can be now disabled by setting value to 0
- Fixed Arm of Law, can be now disabled by setting value to 0
- Insight: Optimized layout
- Insight: Optimized colours for darker styles
- Achievement "Three Friends" renamed to "Social" (does not affect existing achievement)
- Renamed point descriptions so they can be identified better as point system (f.e. Days since registered -> Points for every day since registration)
- Added: Romanian Translation (thanks to Teascu Dorin)
- Custom Points can now have a category, can be used as entry point for other modifications using vBExperience points, eg. Market/Shop purchases
- Fixed several smaller issues

Changelog for other versions is in history.txt

[john locke]

does it work with 4.1?

[MaemoMeeGo]

Fix for italian translation v4.0.3
Search for:

<![CDATA[Punti per visualizzazione discussione]></phrase>

Replace with:

<![CDATA[Punti per visualizzazione discussione]]></phrase>

@ Phalynx
Great addon, big thanks!

@Gn_Snake
Grazie per l'ottima traduzione!

[savraot]

Is there a solution, I do not want to update to vb 4.0.8.

[RollaJedi]

i have a couple suggestions that my members and i are all looking for in a future release. Can you possibly tell vbexperience to show the achievement images in an order of your choosing please? Right now, everytime i do a recount, it throws all of our achievement images into some random order it seems. If there was a way to specify which achievement should go first, second, third, etc., it would really be nice.

Also, next to the word 'achievements' in the postbit, could you possibly put how many achievements that person has total? We have a ton of achievements and the postbit for some people is pretty full. Thanks!!
example:

Achievements: 46
X X X X X
X X X X X
X X X X X

[intruder]

PHP Code:

Database error in vBulletin 4.0.8:

Invalid SQL:
UPDATE user 
        SET
        xperience_awardt='a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:2:"id";s:2:"53";s:5:"title";s:31:"Texas Hold'em Tournament Winner";s:5:"small";s:8:"A_16.png";s:3:"big";s:8:"A_32.png";s:10:"awardtitle";s:0:"";}}'
        WHERE userid=47270;

MySQL Error   : You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near [B][COLOR="Red"]'[/COLOR][/B]em Tournament Winner";s:5:"small";s:8:"A_16.png";s:3:"big";s:8:"A_32.png";s:10:"' at line 3
Error Number  : 1064
Request Date  : Thursday, December 2nd 2010 @ 08:53:20 PM
Error Date    : Thursday, December 2nd 2010 @ 08:53:24 PM
Script        : http://forum.torrents.ro/admincp/xperience_admin.php?do=saveaward
Referrer      : http://forum.torrents.ro/admincp/xperience_admin.php?do=editaward&id=54
IP Address    : 1.2.3.4
Username      : io
Classname     : vB_Database
MySQL Version : 5.0.77 


Had a issue with Award title: Texas Hold'em Tournament, changed to Texas Holdem Tournament and it's ok.

[MoonDaemon]

Great mod; just wondering how to maintain the Overdrive achievement since it keeps bouncing between a checkmark and X even though I have set it so that the achievement cannot be taken away if the user no longer fulfills the field; for the record, I've kept the requirement at the default of Activity=100

I've also had members receive negative points for their Miscellaneous category even after doing recounts several times; as far as I know, this does not seem to reflect any points that may be used in the Points Market or 'lost' when losing to a top score in Arcade games (both of which I have installed). Any idea where this is coming from and whether I am able to tweak it so that members do not receive negative points?

[RollaJedi]

ok, i'm trying to get the achievements for paypal donating to work. I have the mod VSa-paypal donate. There are lots of members who have donated through it. Some have only done $5, some have done all the way up to $145 total (not all at once).

So, for someone who say has donated total 20 dollars or more, i have:
paypal donate higher than 19

in settings for points, i have:
Points for VSa PayPal Donate
How many points should be given for donated money? 1

Phalynx, does it look at the total amount a person has donated from all the different times he gave money, or does it just look at what they donated at that moment one time?

Also, there are two drop downs for paypal in the field dropdown.
One of them is 'Paypal Donate' and the other is 'Paypal Donations'. What is the difference and which do you use for VSa-paypal donate?

Thank you!

[RollaJedi]

ok, i got it to work. i still would like to know what the 'paypal donate' drop down is for though.

[TheMayhem]

Originally Posted by MoonDaemon

Great mod; just wondering how to maintain the Overdrive achievement since it keeps bouncing between a checkmark and X even though I have set it so that the achievement cannot be taken away if the user no longer fulfills the field; for the record, I've kept the requirement at the default of Activity=100

I've also had members receive negative points for their Miscellaneous category even after doing recounts several times; as far as I know, this does not seem to reflect any points that may be used in the Points Market or 'lost' when losing to a top score in Arcade games (both of which I have installed). Any idea where this is coming from and whether I am able to tweak it so that members do not receive negative points?

It shouldn't have anything to do with the market because everything that is calculated between vBExperience and the Market relies on the xperience_shop field in the xperience table, which is seperate from the misc field. I'm not exactly positive what all is calculated with the misc field but hopefully Phalynx can help answer your question.

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by john locke

does it work with 4.1?

Yes.

Originally Posted by MaemoMeeGo

Fix for italian translation v4.0.3
Search for:

<![CDATA[Punti per visualizzazione discussione]></phrase>

Replace with:

<![CDATA[Punti per visualizzazione discussione]]></phrase>

@ Phalynx
Great addon, big thanks!

@Gn_Snake
Grazie per l'ottima traduzione!

Thanks for sharing!

Originally Posted by savraot

Is there a solution, I do not want to update to vb 4.0.8.

Currently not. Just stay with vBExperience 4.0.3, it is working perfectly with vBulletin 4.0.7 and below.

Originally Posted by RollaJedi

i have a couple suggestions that my members and i are all looking for in a future release. Can you possibly tell vbexperience to show the achievement images in an order of your choosing please? Right now, everytime i do a recount, it throws all of our achievement images into some random order it seems. If there was a way to specify which achievement should go first, second, third, etc., it would really be nice.

That has been already asked (Link: http://www.vbaddict.net/project.php?issueid=35), but currently I don't have time to realize this.

Originally Posted by RollaJedi

Also, next to the word 'achievements' in the postbit, could you possibly put how many achievements that person has total? We have a ton of achievements and the postbit for some people is pretty full. Thanks!!
example:

Achievements: 46
X X X X X
X X X X X
X X X X X

Noted:
http://www.vbaddict.net/project.php?issueid=97

Originally Posted by intruder

Had a issue with Award title: Texas Hold'em Tournament, changed to Texas Holdem Tournament and it's ok.

Yes, the apostroph ' should be removed.