Major Additions - Point Market System 3.1x

Hack Summary
The Point Market System 3.1 is a stand alone "store" or "shop" hack for vBulletin 4x series. This hack is considered a major addition that allows for you to install one or multiple point systems, activity systems, or currency systems to use points for forum related item enhancements or a virtual/physical store system for your vBulletin forum.

The Point Market is actually four major hacks combined into one. Those five major hacks are a Forum Enhancement Store, A Virtual & Physical Store, a detailed Banking/Payment System, Currency to Point Converter, and a Lottery/Gambling Center. Below is a little bit more about each section.

Forum Item Enhancement Store
The Point Market Forum Item section is what is considered a traditional forum store. You can use a very comprehensive Admin background to be able to sell a variety of forum items that can help enhance a user's enjoyability on the forums. In addition, there are many forum items that a user can purchase for other users. I should also note that a point donation is possible in this section since many point systems do not offer the ability to donate. Below is a listing of the market items & categories:

Forum Items User can Purchase
Market Features (Additional Market Access Features Users Can Purchased)
- Steal Protection
- Gift Market Access
- Stolen Point History
- Donation History
- Gambling Access
- Coupon Access
User Title
- Custom User Title
- User Title Glow
- User Title Color
- Usertitle Strikethrough
Gifts / Awards / Ribbons
- Purchase a Gift
- Create a Gift
User Permissions
- Primary Usergroup Change
- Secondary Usergroup Change
Username Permissions
- Change Username
- Username Color
- Username Glow
- Username Strikethrough
Forum Permissions
- Special Forum Access
- Forum Password Access
- Moderate a Forum
- Change Forum Description
- Create a Forum
Images
- Create Smiley Category
- Upload Smiley
- Upload Avatar
Other Users
- Change Custom User Title
- Gift a Gift
- Donate to Another User
- Steal From a User
- Fire a Moderator
- Change Avatar
Posts
- Post Font Bold
- Post Font Color
- Post Font Face
- Post Font Italics
Threads
- Sticky a Thread
- Delete a Thread
- Color a Thread
- Thread Strikethrough
- Ban a User From a Thread

In addition to these powerful Forum Items, the Point Market has revolutionized the way shop systems can handle charging items. The Point Market allows for all market items above to be charged in two different currencies. That means you could use a combination of any of the supporting point mods to charge for each forum item. Additional features that have been recently been introduced involves the ability to set when these market items expire, allowing for only tempory or permanent purchases. Furthermore, Administrators can choose whether to enable/disable the refund capabilities of these market items as well as individual usergroup permissions that can set individual access, coupon capabilities, and an individual maximum purchase.

Other powerful enhancements to our forum item store system allows for Administrators to set the ability of charging for category access in order to access these market items. This will give the user's one more way to stay active and motivated on accumulating points in order to use them for store purchases. A recently introduced user requested feature also allows for subcategories and the ability to create an unlimited amount of duplicate forum items by using the above market items as a template for a new item. This means you can choose to set different quotos for each market item and can truly personalize your forum item store section.

Bank & Paycheck Center
The Point Market version 3.1x series has done some extreme enhancements to how point banking is now handled. Users have the classic ability to be able to use a bank to store two different point system currencies of the Administrators choosing. These currencies are stored and can accumulate primary usergroup interest that is set during a specified time period by the Administrator. Below is an exact list of Banking features.

Bank Features
- Store Two Currencies that are protected from all steal protection
- Allow for interest to be earned controlled by Administrators on a payout period
- Set minimum/maximum fees (usergroup controlled)
- Set minimum/maximum withdraw and deposit amounts (usergroup controlled)

A main change in the Point Market that makes it so different is the concept of receiving paychecks. Many forums that use point systems want the ability to pay their staff or special usergroups with a paycheck to say thanks as a form of payment. The Point Market gives you the ability to pay users on a specified period by the Administrator. There best part about this paycheck feature is the Admin can choose two different amounts that a user can earn. Admins can choose a set amount that is guarenteed during each pay period OR Administrators can choose for the user to earn a percentage of Point Market Forum Item Sales during a specified period that is defined by their primary usergroup. This allows for staff to become almost salesman like within the Market and can also guarentee a fluxuating paycheck based off of activiity.

Virtual & Physical Online Store
Based off of user demands, the Point Market has created a store system that users can create virtual and physical items and sell it on the website with users using points to purchase these items. Administrators can create an unlimited amount of store items. These items have the ability to:

Store Features
- Purchase an unlimited products by the Admin
- Multiple shipping methods (Email, Mail, Downloadable, No Shipping)
- Control shipping costs if by Mail based off a user's Country
- Up to 5 screenshots uploaded by the Administrator that can be viewed
- Give detailed reviews of products purchased
- Rate products 1 to 5
- Control Quantity of available products
- Coupons Enabled

A designated Administrator will immediately be notified via Private Message of a purchase. From there an Admin can enter the Admin Control Panel and choose to ship the product in whatever method the user chose. A log of this purchase is also available for the user who can view it in their User Purchase history as well as the shipping status of the item.

Point Currency Converter
Sometimes you need to generate actual cash revenue. Many users are willing to purchase points for money. So what better way then to introduce a cash transaction center that will allow for the Administrator to set an amount to charge for a set amount of points? This feature is supported via Paypal and allows for a great income method.

Furthermore, some sites like to use more then two currency systems and the Point Market is designed to meet those needs. Users can be able to select from a specified currency list by the Admin and change points from one system to the next at a fee chosen by the Administrator. This is a pretty convinient method to use every point system possible and allow for user's main goal to be as active as possible so that they can adjust their points to their liking.


Lottery & Gambling
Gambling these days are in high demand and the Point Market has set to address it. The Point Market has created 3 seperate games to allow user's to gamble their points on multiplying their points. Those 3 games are:

- Match The Card
- Higher Card
- Lottery

The Lottery has a built in expiration set by the Administrators and can also be used with coupons for discounts. Massive jackpots can be set at a starting amount or at 0 and an adjustable charge price as well. Administrators can also control the odds of the other two games. Finally a powerful Administrative backend will allow for Admins to see information and statistics related to the lottery.


Other Administrative Features
The Point Market has a series of features in addition to the main 5 hacks that creates the Point Market. The author truly believes the reason the Point Market is truly the best shop system is the easy Admin system combined with the powerful feature capabilities. Below are some of the main Administrative features:

- Advanced individual Administrative Access features (controlled by superadmin)
- Detailed Moderator/Supermoderator Control Panel (features controlled by superadmin)
- Informative statistics related to purchases & activity within the market
- History & Transaction log of all Forum Market Items
- Controllable Coupon creation with pages of advanced controls
- Maintenance section used for debugging purposes and serious updates
- Detailed Gift/Ribbon/Award section
- Banking paycheck creation & transaction history


vBulletin.org Mods This Works With
1) vBExperience (Point Market v3.0+)
2) uCash
3) vBookie
4) Kbank
5) vBCredits Deluxe II
6) vBActivity

Integration With Other Mods
This hack has been intended to be integrated with a 3rd party point system. You can choose to either use a hack added on vBulletin.org or write your own point system. The hack is dependent on the user table having a point/credit/cash field within the user control panel. Please note that vBExperience will only work with the Point Market version 3x series.

In addition, if you do not want to integrate this hack directly with another point system. You can still install this hack and use the reputation field, which will allow user's to purchase items based off of their reputation. I suggest if you choose this option that you set all prices to not include any decimals, as it will be useless and cause unwanted errors.

As of the 3.1x series, the Point Market has begun to create individual forum items related to other modifications offered on vBulletin.org. If you would like your hack to have a special feature &/or capability that can be purchased within the Point Market, just let the developer of this modification know. I will gladly work with any developer to create purchaseable forum items within the Point Market that enhances your modification.


Support Policy
The only available modification that can be downloaded now is the 3.1x alpha/beta series. The reason why I have it marked in such titles is because the bugs that are remaining seem to be very minimal and the product is pretty stable. That being said their are still a few features that have not been scripted and are marked in a lime green color above in my post. Those features still might not correctly function once they are introduced into the beta series of the 3.1x series and users should use some caution. That being said, I will do my best to offer support in this thread. In order to gain support, you must have downloaded the Point Market product and be listed as installed with the latest available version. PLEASE NOTE: if you are having an issue, please provide the following information
- URL to the page you are experiencing problems or a database error
- Primary Point Field name (What point system are you using)
- Secondary Point Field name (What point system are you using
I need to know these in order to fix the majority of problems I need to know this information as there are so many combinations and point systems that can cause different problems, this is the only way I can help replicate an error in order to fix it


IMPORTANT UPGRADE INFORMATION: After you have upgraded from version 1.0.4 to version 2x, please visit the Maintenance section of the Admin CP. Please update the transaction counter and refund counter so that user's information is displayed accurately. Do not use the User Title updater unless you have recently run vBulletin's User Title and Rank Updater in the maintenance section of vBulletin's Admin CP. Please note that only purchases after 2.0.1 is installed can be fixed on the User Title Updater within the Market Admin CP. If you are upgrading to the 3.1x series for the first time, please run the update Maintenance scrippted called Forum Expirations to deal with expired forum items.

Screenshot and release information: To view specific information about the historical releases of the Point Market, please visit this post:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....14&postcount=2
This includes a changelog summary and screenshots of the latest version of the Point Market.

Lastly, I ask all users who install it to kindly click the install button and please rate my product as it is my motivation for future versions of this product.

3.1.0 Gold Release Information
Visit https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....postcount=1861 for 3.1.0 Gold Release. This Upgrade IS REQUIRED!

The following directories must be chmodded to 777
/customavatars/
/images/smilies/
/images/pointmarket/store/
/pointmarket/downloads/

[Skyrider]

Why do I keep getting:

The point field has been entered but no data exists in this field name.

The point field is:

market_xperience

in the Point Market system.

EDIT:

Found it..

Market_xperience no longer exists.. It's xperience now.

			$xperience['points'] = vb_number_format($post['xperience']);
			$xperience['level'] = vb_number_format($post['xperience_level']);
			$xperience['levelp'] = vb_number_format($post['xperience_levelp'], 1);
			$xperience['level_up'] = vb_number_format($post['xperience_next_level']);
			$xperience['level_up_points'] = vb_number_format($post['xperience_next_level_points']);
			$xperience['ppd'] = vb_number_format($post['xperience_ppd'], 1);

[Webrunner]

Please remember to add the plug-in for the posts social groups

[TheMayhem]

Originally Posted by FF|Skyrider

Why do I keep getting:


The point field is:


in the Point Market system.

EDIT:

Found it..

Market_xperience no longer exists.. It's xperience now.

			$xperience['points'] = vb_number_format($post['xperience']);
			$xperience['level'] = vb_number_format($post['xperience_level']);
			$xperience['levelp'] = vb_number_format($post['xperience_levelp'], 1);
			$xperience['level_up'] = vb_number_format($post['xperience_next_level']);
			$xperience['level_up_points'] = vb_number_format($post['xperience_next_level_points']);
			$xperience['ppd'] = vb_number_format($post['xperience_ppd'], 1);

Hmm I wonder what Phalynx would change that. I sent him a PM related to it let me ask him before you use that as the field because vBExperience does a lot of calculations and I don't want our mod to mess up how he calculates points earned.



As a follow up to what I posted earlier, I'm on hold on releasing Beta 4 until I hear from Phalynx on related to the vBExperience changes. That's simply because the majority of the users who use the market also use vBExperience and it's very important that the two work well together.

As far as good news, I've done a lot of modifications to the product pointmarket that's given people issues over the year that the Market has been alive. I finally found and fixed a longstanding bug related to an unclosed tag occurring on importing the Point Market that some people experienced. Another bug I fixed was a duplicate column error related to the mid or users not having the mid column being created. Once you upgrade to Beta 4 this should fix these errors and it will also save so it doesn't try to create duplicate fields in the future. Beta 4 is going to feature the screenshot selection for the Market Store. There isn't much left to script related to the 3.1x series so we will be going to a Release Canidate stage by the end of May and wrapping this bad boy up

[djdog]

Originally Posted by TheMayhem

Hmm I wonder what Phalynx would change that. I sent him a PM related to it let me ask him before you use that as the field because vBExperience does a lot of calculations and I don't want our mod to mess up how he calculates points earned.



As a follow up to what I posted earlier, I'm on hold on releasing Beta 4 until I hear from Phalynx on related to the vBExperience changes. That's simply because the majority of the users who use the market also use vBExperience and it's very important that the two work well together.

As far as good news, I've done a lot of modifications to the product pointmarket that's given people issues over the year that the Market has been alive. I finally found and fixed a longstanding bug related to an unclosed tag occurring on importing the Point Market that some people experienced. Another bug I fixed was a duplicate column error related to the mid or users not having the mid column being created. Once you upgrade to Beta 4 this should fix these errors and it will also save so it doesn't try to create duplicate fields in the future. Beta 4 is going to feature the screenshot selection for the Market Store. There isn't much left to script related to the 3.1x series so we will be going to a Release Canidate stage by the end of May and wrapping this bad boy up

Great news and I helped to contribute to fix those pesky bugs! Exterminate them all!

[TheMayhem]

This is the official post for Beta 4 release:

Beta 4 is now complete. I am very happy to announce that with the exception of the coupon listings page, all main features for the 3.1x series have been scripted with the Point Market. I fixed some severe long term bugs that were occurring for some users since the version 1x series with this release. In addition, the product file has been updated and is far more advanced and better to deal with when doing upgrades from existing Point Market versions.

Beta 4 has a few features that have been heavily requested but never been completed due to time constraints or me not being exactly sure on how to complete. You can no have files that users can purchase with the Store section of the point market that can be downloaded. This is in addition to the current no shipping method, mail method, or email method. Another cool feature I scripted with Beta 4 is I completely redid the big image screenshots that are available for market store items. Admins can now upload up to 5 images that can be viewed by users in a nice javascript slideshow. I really hope that the improvements I've made over the beta series will greatly benefit you the users.

So what's next? Well the next Beta will see the completion on my end as far as main features. All I have left to do is script the coupon listings page, which I've already started on. That will just display available coupons for users to choose from if they purchased the feature. Outside of that, I'm done. There will be 2 more betas in total. 1 will have my coupon listings and the final beta will feature any other minor tweaks or requests the users really feel I need to add before this goes to a release candidate.

If I missed any bugs that were reported and still exist, please make sure you reply to "remind" me. We want to squash all remaining bugs so this thing can go gold with as few RC's as possible. Below is the bug fix log:


--------------
Beta 4 Bug Fixes
--------------
** Import/Overwrite Product Mysql Error related to image_big_3 for market_store table
** Import Product Unclosed Tag Error Related to </vb:if> in market_convert_transaction template
** Duplicate column error if reimporting for mid field in market_items table in product file
** Several tables not being removed when doing an uninstall of the Point Market

[djdog]

First one to download 'Beta 4', Installed and Imported successfully on version 4.0.1

Thanks!

I don't know if this is possible with your script or has to be done with uCash (Point System, I'm using), but there anyway to support majority of the Shout boxes/Chat Boxes to gain points for posting?

[TheMayhem]

Originally Posted by djdog

First one to download 'Beta 4', Installed and Imported successfully on version 4.0.1

Thanks!

I don't know if this is possible with your script or has to be done with uCash (Point System, I'm using), but there anyway to support majority of the Shout boxes/Chat Boxes to gain points for posting?

Gaining points per shout would be more of a modification for your point system to add (vbexperience, ucash, vbcredits, etc.) because it deals with adding points. Point systems main objectives are to do actions to earn points where as the market is supposed to take away points

And I'm very glad that you can now successfully import the point market. Just remember because your using 4.0.1 that there might be a few sections that don't work completely correct because your version is about a year old.

[djdog]

Yeah, I figured.

Is uCash the best way to go? or which one do you recommend, I don't think their a side by side comparison.

Yeah, I can't any many other can't justify the price of upgrading to the latest when the upgrades cost $175 whereas it use to be $60.00, Only reason why I'm on v4 is it's OWNED v3 license that offers v4 from that license, which is perfectly legal, based on the F.A.Q. I've read.

I planned to upgrade in the future, either by sucking it up and just buy the license or find a cheaper license on a forum that someone else had purchased an no longer needs it.

[TheMayhem]

Hmmm... there is no point product I'd really recommend over the other.

uCash as you asked about is very-very easy to use. It doesn't have near the features or potential capabilities in determining how you earn points as some of the other point systems; however, for some users that is exactly what they want. Something that is very easy to use and straight forward to manage.

I personally use vBExperience because I like how it calculates activity. The admin system is rather easy. In addition, I think the majority of market users use vbexperience in some form or another so I want to make sure I'm familiar with it as possible.

There are some other modifications that you should also consider such as vBCredits Deluxe or vBActivity. I originally built the Point Market system for vBCredits because I used it in the 3.x series and was highly frustrated that no one came out with a shop/store system to purchase cool market addon features. I'd probably still use vbcredits deluxe if I could find the cash to purchase the full version that isn't offered here because many of my users still use it. vBActivity from what I saw was a great activity alternative to vBExperience, but it just depends on what admin cp system your most comfortable with since the layouts are a little different on each.

There's some other systems I haven't tested near as much such as kbank and so forth. Those you could also try but really I'd recommend installing several systems and playing with each for a few days before you make up your mind. Remember, the Point Market will support two different currencies so theoretically you could use 2 point systems and use them in some capacity or another within the Point Market. I can't really recommend one system over the other because I try to stay neutral so I can support all point systems but play around and find out what works best with your forum needs. If one system doesn't make sense or is too confusing there are enough point system alternatives you can always try but only one Point Market

[sadaar]

Sorry to be so n00b, but HOW does one sell a gift that has been created through the "create a gift" item? It shows up on profiles as purchased and active, but I see not how to sell it.