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]

Are you trying to include:
a) dynamic announcement in a non-vb page?
b) a html page inside a webtemplate?
c) the announcement in a webtemplate?

[lasto]

installed and works fine

/me clicks install

[lasto]

one thing is smilies etc supposed to show up in this box as when i do one the announcement shows up but the smilie i entered shows as text.

any idea why cause the hack works fine besides that.

[Logician]

Searched thread? I believe somebody else had a similiar problem and it is likely that I had provided a solution. I think...

[Wolverine]

Great hack, though I am having a small problem.
The install seemed to go well but the announcement is not showing up on my forum homepage. I removed the default conditional message and replaced it with a standard text message so that it would apply to all user groups, still nothing.

Where would you suggest I begin my troubleshooting?
I am running version 2.8.0

[robinsf]

Originally Posted by Logician

for 3.0? This hack is not coded for vb 3.0.

If you meant 2.3.0, first reapply hack steps accept running install file and it should work. And if it does not, run the install file too.

Ran the install file, re-implemented all the steps and still not working in v2.3.2

[robinsf]

Forgot to add... I now have 2 copies of the DFA option in admin cp.

[EchoHype.com]

logician- how hard would it be to get this working on 3.0, beta 6?

[Logician]

Originally Posted by Wolverine

Great hack, though I am having a small problem.
The install seemed to go well but the announcement is not showing up on my forum homepage. I removed the default conditional message and replaced it with a standard text message so that it would apply to all user groups, still nothing.

Where would you suggest I begin my troubleshooting?
I am running version 2.8.0

Make sure you applied all steps correctly (Do not reapply step 1, if you already did). Especially make sure:
a) In Step 4 you applied the correct code according to your vb version
b) In STEP 3, you created the template IN ALL template sets if you have more than 1.
c) In STEP 4, you are adding the code into forum/index.php, NOT forum/admin/index.php

Ran the install file, re-implemented all the steps and still not working in v2.3.2

I didn't test this hack with 2.3.2. I tested it with 2.3.0 though and it is working ok so I wouldn't expect any problems in 2.3.2 too. See my suggestions for Wolverine above.

To fix double options problem: (which happened because you ran the file in step 1 twice):
Edit "forum/admin/config.php", at the end file find the line ?> and before that add:

PHP Code:

$debug=1; 


Then close all your browser windows, open again and login into your admin cp. You'll see a new link named "Edit Settings" under "vb options", click it and scroll at the end of page. You see double "Dynamic Forum Announcements Hack" link there, remove one of them. Then edit your config.php file again and remove the line you added there.

how hard would it be to get this working on 3.0, beta 6?

I don't know. I didn't look at it yet. As you know VB3 hacking is not allowed at the moment.

[Wolverine]

Thanks a bunch! I did indeed manage to add the code to index.php in the admin folder by mistake. Works great now, thanks a ton