Mini Mods - Welcome headers - Improve community registration rates

Exciting Announcement! vBulletin 3.7.0 now includes a built in Welcome Headers System (named "Notices") that easily allows you to add and control your own welcome messages with functionality above what can be found in the traditional welcome headers system. There are some important differences in these systems so please read this thread before upgrading.

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Important: If you are upgrading from the 3.6 or earlier versions and have modified the navbar template you will either need to revert it or add new vBulletin code as shown in https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=152.

Out of the box, your forum isn't personalized to assist or address your visitors. As a result, guests entering on a page other than the homepage (which is most often the case) have no idea what to do or why to register. Additionally, there are no visible status indicators, making it confusing for unconfirmed, unapproved or new members to know what to do or where to begin. But with a little customization, the use of the vBulletin Notices System and Welcome Headers, you can solve these issues in just a few minutes.

What is Welcome Headers?

Welcome Headers is a set of predefined messages and rules designed to help you get started in personalizing your site's notices using the vBulletin notice feature. The default templates are just that, default ? I highly encourage you to modify and add to the language and rules to meet the needs of your actual community environment.

Modifications/ Instructions:

Plugins: 1 (notices entries, rules and phrases)
This template hack should take under 5 minutes to implement and customize.

Installation/ Upgrade Instructions

1 ? Backup any existing welcome header messages (upgrading)
2 ? Remove the default welcome header from your forum home template (new installs)
3 ? Install the attached plugin file
4 ? Now Required: Customize the messages to include your site's name

For detailed instructions on each step please view the install.html file included with this addon.

Support

Please post any enhancement or technical questions you may have and I will do my best to respond in a timely manner. Please note: I can not guarantee an immediate response and am unable to assist with integrating this addon with other addons or with HTML related questions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Please see the second post in the thread for a list of frequently asked questions which is updated periodically.

Older Version Support

While most users are choosing to upgrade to the notices system, there are some advantages to the "old" system mainly in that it does not rely on a rules system and can be configured as designed with code changes. Additionally, the "old" version has automatic interfacing with several other addons which the notices system does not. For this reason, the old version is still supported and remains fully compatible with 3.7.

Updates

- 5/9/2008 :: A small upgrade has been released fixing the typo in the sendmessage.php file

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by TimberFloorAu

One question.

Can we have a specific message for a specific forum ? For all Users.

Example:
We have threads in one particular forum, where the lingo can get a tad saucy, and of an adult nature ( swearing etc ) all good stuff, but would like to display a notice for first time visitors, that the forum they are entering contains stuff that is adult in nature .

Ste

Glad you like the addon!

Take a look at the notices system and adding a new notice... You can set things up to work for specific areas with a lot of other criteria if you so chose. If that doesn't do it for you let me know and I'll show you the code to manually add a message to one or a couple of forums.

[John_Shaft]

Ted I've uninstalled this, after reverting all my templates, after upgrading from 3.6.4 to 3.7.3 (using the 3.6 version of this Mod).

BUT the welcome message is still showing up for unregistered users (with the ARG undefined thing) though not for anyone else (such as registered users who haven't posted).

I've searched and can't find $welcomeheaders anywhere in any of them.

I've completely uninstalled, reverted all templates. I even created a NEW Parent style, it even shows up in that.

How do I COMPLETELY remove everything?

Thanks

[Ted S]

Go to the Notices Manager and be sure to remove any messages you don't want there.

[John_Shaft]

Ted as I mentioned this was the 3.6 version of this mod, added when I was running 3.6.4, as such Notices didn't exist. I've checked the Notices Manager and have confirmed it is completely empty already.

There must be a remnant of this somewhere, it's showing up evenin freshly minted Parent styles (but ony too Guests).

[Ted S]

Delete the template welcome_headers from your system.

[James Argo]

Thanks Ted S

* Installed *

[Chunky Monkey]

Has anyone managed to set up the version that uses the notice system to display different images for different notices? The second post in this topic, the FAQ, https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....55&postcount=3, seemed to suggest it would not work that way out of the box.

This means if you are using an image for your guest message, you would need to take extra steps to make your other messages display properly. The solution to this is to remove all HTML from the notices template and customize the layout directly through the notice body; this way you can have entirely different styles for different messages.

I would really like to use this mod but don't want to have irrelevant text displayed on every page to search engines. I am new to vBulletin and am hoping that somebody can expand on the instruction offered in the blurb above so that even I can do it.

Thanks!

[Ted S]

Chunky Monkey as I said in that post, you can use the notices system and images, it just takes some tweaking to get the layout right. As an alternative, the 3.6 version of this hack which does not use the notices system will work just fine in 3.7.

[Chunky Monkey]

Thank you. I misunderstood and thought you meant it required additional code, conditionals, etc.

[iduchesne]

Installed on RC Addicts http://www.rc-addicts.com

Works great. Thanks.