Add-On Releases - vBExperience

vBExperience 3.8 (aka xPerience)

Created by Marius Czyz aka Phalynx.

Winner of the "Mod of the Month"-Award (March 2008) on vBulletin.org.


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 Profile:
http://www.insideearth.net/member.php?u=1&langid=5

Demo Rankings:
http://www.insideearth.net/xperience.php?langid=5

Demo Awards:
http://www.insidesupcom.de/xperience...wards&langid=1

Demo Promotions:
http://www.insidesupcom.de/xperience...=shop&langid=1

Demo Shop:
http://www.insideearth.net/xperience...=shop&langid=5

Demo Stats:
http://www.insideearth.net/xperience...stats&langid=5

Demo Earn Points:
http://www.insideearth.net/xperience...=earn&langid=5

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
3.8.5 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


Todo for Beta 3:
- Download files with vBExperience as a credit system ("LDM Links and Downloads Manager", "DownloadsII")
- Activity eraser
- AdminCP Permissions
- Advanced User Permissions


For more see history.txt

[johnlittle]

the member lvl and exp is not accurate is there a way to correct?
old member registered on 2007 jan he posted only 4 post and get 1000+ exp and 10+ lvl compare to new member who joined in 2007 december who posted 700+ posts and getting alot lesser????

[TCB]

First of all: thanks for this great mod. I just installed it (v37.18 BETA3) yesterday and people already love it.

I do however have problems with the promotions: all my mods were 'promoted' to the registered usergroup. Just like with the admingroup, this should have been disabled by default.

So I edited class_xperience.php with this line:

PHP Code:

if ($level_current['usergroupid']<>0 AND $user['usergroupid']<>$level_current['usergroupid'] AND $user['usergroupid']<>6 AND $user['usergroupid']<>5) 


I used to promote users when they reached 2000 posts to usergroupid 28. I have deleted the old (vb) promotion before enable the vbexperience promotion system. So I edited vbexperience_level_2_average.xml and decided to levelup everyone with level 50 (and up) to this usergroupid 28:

$vbulletin->db->query_write("INSERT INTO " . TABLE_PREFIX . "xperience_level (xperience_points, xperience_level, usergroupid) VALUES (6150,51,28)");
$vbulletin->db->query_write("INSERT INTO " . TABLE_PREFIX . "xperience_level (xperience_points, xperience_level, usergroupid) VALUES (6350,52,28)");
$vbulletin->db->query_write("INSERT INTO " . TABLE_PREFIX . "xperience_level (xperience_points, xperience_level, usergroupid) VALUES (6550,53,28)");
$vbulletin->db->query_write("INSERT INTO " . TABLE_PREFIX . "xperience_level (xperience_points, xperience_level, usergroupid) VALUES (6750,54,28)");

and so on up to level 100.

What am I doing wrong here? Is anyone getting the promotions to work?

[Greek76]

Item sold out? How can I make it so its not sold out? Great mod by the way.

[Ski-Whiz]

I'm not sure if anyone else is getting this but when I have vBe enabled I get a redirect page when I post a Quick Reply.

I changed to the original template and it still does the redirect.

I enable vBe and the redirect comes back.

Like I said, it's when I post a quick reply.

I'm running vb 3.8 (latest) and the beta 3 of vBe..

I didn't see the quick reply redirect issue posted before so I'm wondering why it's just my site.

[Stryker412]

How do you disable the Earn Points section? I'd rather my members not know how to gain points so they start spamming.

[dizzine]

i have 2 little questions..

1. my awards system is working great but how do i set the trigger for the awards.?
2. i have created an award for those who donate via AWCoding Software LITE. in the Fields selection list what should i select? i have Donations and Paypal Donate selected but still the award is not being displayed. All transactions have been confirmed in AWCoding LITE admincp..

many thanks..great mod..!

[creativepart]

Asking again... does anyone know what all is included in the Activity points section. There is a description for all the other points sections like threads, posts, User. But no description at all about what, exactly, is contained in Activity.

My users are asking and I have no real answer for them.

[DebtFree]

Still no answer (or even a response) to any of this ...

Originally Posted by DebtFree

First off, thanks Phalynx for a fantastic addon
2nd, I will admit that I have not read every post in this thread so sorry if I repeat something that has already been asked.

A couple of questions/requests ...

1. Does a purchase permanently deduct points or are the total points simply calculated minus any purchase transactions? eg I have 100 points and purchase an item for 20 points. Do I still have 100 points but it only shows as 80 or do I only have 80 points left?

2. If the points are actually removed, can we please get some form of 'point convertor' so that a member can change 1 point type for a second point type, therefor allowing them to purchase items they may not have enough specific points for.

3. An alternative to number 2 would be another option in Costfield that would spread the cost over all point types.

4. There are points awarded for referrals but could we please also have an option where points are awarded when your referred member makes a 'paid subscription' payment. ie a commission payment. This would need to be based on the payment being made and possibly being recurring (PayPal subscription)

Thanks again for a fantastic addon. Keep up the great work

I take it what was looking like a very promising product is now a dead project?

[Phalynx]

vBExperience 3.8 RC has been released. A final version will be released at the end of the next week.

Full Changelog:
- Now compatible with vBulletin 3.7.x and 3.8.x - support for vBulletin 3.6.x has been dropped
- New Experience: Socialgroup Discussions (Discussions, Posts)
- New Experience: Completing Profile (per editable profile fields, excluded are fields with a default value)
- Awards: Fixed handling of awards for ignored usergroups (thanks goes to Abe1)
- Awards: You can now define the max awards a user can get (thanks goes to Abe1)
- Awards: Award for activity is beeing set only to one user (more experience points wins), all other users are getting 99%.
- Awards: You can exclude usergroups from getting Awards. Administrators (Group ID 6) are excluded by default.
- Fixed margin of vBExperience tab in profile
- Settings: Removed links in AdminCP, please go directly to "vBulletin Options"
- Rankings: Fixed XSS Vulnerability (thanks to snunhuck and Y4I)15)
- Experience: Changed "post_thanks_thanked_times" to "post_thanks_user_amount" (post thank you hack)
- Experience: Handling of "Post Thank You" data now via CDP Addon. Support in Experience core has been dropped. You will need to import the addon from extras/addons.
- Shop: Fixed AdminCP Links visible to everyone
- Shop: Fixed AdminCP, Manage Shop, "Transactionlog (Page %1$s/%2$s) | There are %3$s Entries."
- Shop: Fixed missing BBUrl Prefix
- Shop: Give Away is sending PM to receiver (setable)
- Shop: Selling item is sending PM to defined list (setable)
- Shop: Writing a PM upon a purchase can now be deactivated
- Shop: Improved "give away" and display in postbit/profile
- Shop: Set if points from purchased products should be substracted
- Shop: User can sell item back to shop and get 75% points back (amount setable)
- Shop: User can give away item (gift) to someone
- Shop: Transactions in AdminCP are now paged
- Shop: User can see own transactions
- Shop: Categories have now an icon and a description
- Shop: Description of Costfield in AdminCP with default value if translation is empty
- Fixed unchached templates
- New feature: Earn Points. It tells the user where and how he can get points. Title and description are pulled from phrases of the settings
- CDP: New revision of CDP to support Earn Points
- CDP: All addons have been upgraded to support "Earn Points"
- Added row breaker for profile shop items
- Smaller fixes and changes

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by DebtFree

1. Does a purchase permanently deduct points or are the total points simply calculated minus any purchase transactions? eg I have 100 points and purchase an item for 20 points. Do I still have 100 points but it only shows as 80 or do I only have 80 points left?

You can control that for yourself, check setting "Subtract points?"

Originally Posted by DebtFree

2. If the points are actually removed, can we please get some form of 'point convertor' so that a member can change 1 point type for a second point type, therefor allowing them to purchase items they may not have enough specific points for.

Uhm, sounds like a lot of work :>

Originally Posted by DebtFree

3. An alternative to number 2 would be another option in Costfield that would spread the cost over all point types.

You can already substract from the main experience points.

Originally Posted by DebtFree

4. There are points awarded for referrals but could we please also have an option where points are awarded when your referred member makes a 'paid subscription' payment. ie a commission payment. This would need to be based on the payment being made and possibly being recurring (PayPal subscription)

Feel free to use the CDP to create an addon.

Originally Posted by GlitterKill

Regarding the Award feature, can an admin assign more than one person an award? Can you create new awards that are not based on any data source?

Yes.

Originally Posted by ebiltyler

I'm trying to import the xml after I added in all the files and it says, "You need to upload files first!" and now I'm stuck and it's pissing me off.

It seems you didn't copied the files to the correct folder. xperience.php should be where your forum.php is.

Originally Posted by LGKeiz

is there a reason people can't level? they have 99% everything, but they don't level.

Seems you imported a too small level file. Try to import a bigger one, don't forget to recount.

Originally Posted by nike.stars

@phalynx
you write above that there is 3rd party addon for DownloadsII, where do i find this? i can't find it using the search feature :-/

It's already included and installed in the main installation.