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

[Budget101]

Yes, all users would lose the points of the forums that are now ignored. You can "pay" the users with custom points the points that they don't have anymore.

Thank you so much for your rapid response, I appreciate it greatly. I hadn't thought of the custom points payout idea. Much obliged.

[Budget101]

If I delete all statistics, will it start calculating from today on only or on the next automatic recalculation, will it recalculate since the forums began?

And, if does recalculate since the beginning, is there a way to prevent that?

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by Budget101

If I delete all statistics, will it start calculating from today on only or on the next automatic recalculation, will it recalculate since the forums began?

And, if does recalculate since the beginning, is there a way to prevent that?

It recalculates from the beginning and there is currently no way to override this.

[Nordinho]

First off, thanks for a great mod!

One bug some of my users are reporting is that they can't give away items they buy. Seems to be like the bug reported before.

Originally Posted by gx123

bug :
gift
any received gift can't be sold nor give to another person.
i recieve some gift from another member, when i buy the same item from the shop, the item amount are increased but still not able to sell one of it or give away the item to another member.

[DNG]

seems great, will give it a try, thanks

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by Nordinho

First off, thanks for a great mod!

One bug some of my users are reporting is that they can't give away items they buy. Seems to be like the bug reported before.

Are you using 3.8.3? Previous versions had problems with non ASCII chars in name.

[Nordinho]

Yep, I'm using 3.8.3 the username doesn't have special characters.

I logged into her account and checked her transactionlog. She did purchase the items.

Added a screenshot of what she sees.

[Pt1994]

how can i display awards in users signature and not next to their username?

[larry suttles]

Can this be used without having it displayed in the postbit? Can it be set, so just the admins can view the points and who is advancing?

I have my own ranking system, which I'd like to keep and I like the way my postbits look as they are but I would like to be able to see whos pulling their weight and whos just post whorin..

Will me having "Yet Another Awards System" installed mess with this mod?

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=187600

[gx123]

Hi Phalynx,
I currently upgraded from 3.8.0 to 3.8.3, there's some problem that existed since i upgrade it.

Problems :
Can't have level higher than 100.

I create custom level xml, and import it after i finished upgrading to 3.8.3. My user is so crazy they could actually jump 2 or 3 level per week. So i created custom level that i hope could expand their level higher. I follow your guide to create a higher set of level on readme_level.txt

I already done creating the new level set based on vbexperience_level_7_crazy.xml (using the XLS), and start importing it, then recount. Also, i have already set the Experience : Bars's Max Level to 255 before recount.


when recount is done, my user level capped at 100. They can't go higher. I checked everything, the xperience value, xperience level and usergroup, they are all right.

At the readme, i noted

Create your own levels
You can define the needed levels for your own - I've included an MS Excel Sheet with the raw data and also three XML Samples for small, average and big sites. Also, you have the possibility to decrease given points for e.g. posts and threads.
The XML files are generated via vBExperience_Level.xls, copied to a text editor, removed tabs and copied to XML. Using it that way you can define your own levels and also promotions. Just do some experiments with the XLS sheet. Currently only levels from 0 to 100 are supported.

I think is the XLS that capped at 100 yes ? Not the system ?

I attached the xml for you i used as custom level. And you could see the actual Ranking at here : http://www.gamexeon.com/forum/xperience.php

Something wrong with the layout

Before i upgrade, this list looks okay. After upgrade it to 3.8.3 this item list is getting too long and not wrapped like previous version.

Suggestion
I think it will be nice if vbex have some achievement system. Achievement could be given when user completed some set of condition, created by the admin. We can call it a 'quest'.

example,
user will get this icon, when they finished a quest for creating thread for the first time.
user will get this icon if they already make 50 post on the boards.

I can't make this happen using the award, because its only affect one member at a time, and i think it's too linear to create this using promotion system. I think achievement should be dynamically unlocked, and could be keeped by everyone, based by some condition.

It'll be getting more interesting if one medal could be a multiplier to their points. Perhaps bonus exp point, perhaps faster levelling, perhaps bonus item, perhaps just a simple medal. There's so much thing that could be make by integrating achievement system in vbexperience. Too bad i'm not such a programmer.

This is a mockup of how the achievement looks.

Achievement bar is the place where the achievement medal placed. And the green popup is the information of the medal, triggered by hovering the medal.

user really like to race one or another user, by using this achievement things, user will seriously increasing their activity.

I know I'm asking too much. I'm sorry.
I just loved this mods so much and I could see some improvement headroom for the mods.