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, not inside thread view. So visitors will read them on home page without clicking any links.
• The Hack's announcements are not static: ie. they can be powerfully programmed to display themselves according to many conditions.

This hack is the VB3 version of my Dynamic Forum Home Announcement Hack and it is a bit more improved in that it is now able to display your announcement as it was before AND also in DHTML popup box as well which ever you prefer better or even both. (DHTML poupup announcement is not technically a popup so popup killers can not kill it either.)

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:

1. user is X
2. user's usergroup is Y
3. his profile field Z is X
4. user has X posts or has more than Y posts but less than Z posts
5. his last visit time was X days ago
6. 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
7. User is invisible/visible
8. his timeset is set to A
9. etc.

It's tested in vb versions from v.3.0.0 to 3.0.9 and works fine with all of them. It will work for all future 3.0.x versions too. For vb2 version click here.

Here is a Screenshot from a general table announcement.
Here is a Screenshot from a popup announcement.

Some Features:

• It's Admin CP integrated (Screenshot)
• Smiley, BBCode, HTML, IMG tags are supported in announcements.
• 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.
• Poupup announcement can not be killed by popup killer software

If you install the hack, click INSTALL, thank you..

Hacks of the hack:
* Hack 1: Puts the announcement into header instead of forum home page so that announcement appears in all forum pages.
* Hack 2: Integrates announcement with vBA_CMPS portal hack.
* Hack 3: Popup announcement will popup once in every XX hours.


Logician \\=^))

[kristian]

Originally Posted by nonet

Hello everyone!

I am using the code below for registered users with 0 post. However, the message does not appear on the homepage when visited from a user with zero post. Do you see anything wrong with the code?

This works...

PHP Code:

[[($bbuserinfo[posts]==0)]] Hello $bbuserinfo[username]! Don't you think its about time you made your first post? Please visit 
the
<a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #0000FF; font-weight: bold" href="http://www.okctalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=46">
Introductions &amp; Welcome Forum</a> and tell us a little bit about yourself and 
become an active member of Oklahoma's largest online community.[[/($bbuserinfo[posts]==0)]] 


[kristian]

This alerts users that their PM box is nearly full (in this case 70 is their limit)... I have also excluded Admin and Mods from seeing this...

PHP Code:

[[($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]!=6 AND $bbuserinfo[usergroupid]!=5 AND $bbuserinfo[pmtotal]>65)]]
You have nearly reached your Private Messages limit of 70.

This counts for messages in your 'Inbox' and 'Sent Items' folder.  Please delete unwanted messages, as once your limit is reached you will no longer be able to receive new Private Messages.
[[/($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]!=6 AND $bbuserinfo[usergroupid]!=5 AND $bbuserinfo[pmtotal]>65)]] 


[Logician]

@nonet : use the conditional kristian quoted above.

@kristian : Thx for sharing your conditional and IMO it will go well together with this hack

@Divokymuz : If you get Parse Error in step 1-2, please make sure:
a) You applied it correctly. (eg. it is "REPLACE", not "add")
b) You hack your files with a text editor (eg. notepad), not a html editor (like frontpage or dreamweaver)

[Mickie D]

fantastic hack pal !

any chance to have a condition to make the popup only popup once ?

would be very handy as i think its great but members could get annoyed with it after a while

[Divokymuz]

[QUOTE=Logician@Divokymuz : If you get Parse Error in step 1-2, please make sure:
b) You hack your files with a text editor (eg. notepad), not a html editor (like frontpage or dreamweaver)[/QUOTE]
yes, that was ist.

i did with dreamweaver, like i always edit php with dreamweaver.

now done with notepad and it works.

thanks for your support. by the way, great hack.

[Galadrium]

Just installed. Great hack!

However, I cannot get the popup feature to work. I have not used conditionals or anything. I just entered in some text. I can get the forumhome announcements to work, but not the popups. What should I do?

Thanks

[kixxer]

thanks for the great hack! THis was just the thing i was searching for, installation worked perfectly without any problems!

[SaN-DeeP]

Hey Logician, Any comments on getting the header messages changed if a user changes the forums browsing ?

Example:
When user is watching Forum id=1 - all users/usergroups can see XYZ Messge
When user is watching Forum id=2 - all users/usergroups can see ABC Messge

I think you can look for an upgrade to the script to support this now ? or maybe its already supported so you can help me know the how-to on using it

Regards,

[Viks]

Hi guys,
im running a vb 3.0.3 forum...and i know this hack is for vb3.0
I would REALLY appreciate if anyone here who has installed this hack on VB3.0.3 will let me know of i need to make any additional changes.

thanks guys,

vik

[SaN-DeeP]

Originally Posted by Viks

Hi guys,
im running a vb 3.0.3 forum...and i know this hack is for vb3.0
I would REALLY appreciate if anyone here who has installed this hack on VB3.0.3 will let me know of i need to make any additional changes.

thanks guys,

vik

I am running on vb 3.0.3 and this hack works perfect without any additional changes

Regards,