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 \\=^))

[Imperial Fritz]

Installed Thanks for the great hack.


edit: removed stupid question, found answer

[docvader]

Awesome hack. Installs easily on 3.3, and works great.
Thanks!

[docvader]

Originally Posted by Logician

I see! This should help:

[[(!$bbuserinfo[fieldX])]] You haven't filled the location field yet! Please do so by following the link to your profile edit page. [[/(!$bbuserinfo[fieldX])]]

(X should be replaced by the profile field id of your location field.)

I'm having trouble getting this to work. Shouldn't there be another "conditional" that defines what group your inquiring about? And, is that the way the field conditional should be worded?

Thanks! Love this hack.

[Edric]

How do I change the colours of the announcement, I am not referring to the popup window.
Is it possible to have a white background and a red border (the announcement seems to have a frame, I am referring to that). My coding knowledge is close to nothing but with the right instructions I find no problems.

Any help is appreciated thanks.

[docvader]

Edric, I think you do it by going into your Admin CP, into the general settings for that particular style, (Styles and Templates/ Style Manager/ All Style Options) and altering the "panel" and "panel" surround areas (lots of options there). It might affect other parts of your board though. I have no doubt that you could rewrite and add html to the dfh_announcement template.

[Tbird66]

Installed I used Hack 1 and put the variables into the forum header, and it worked with vBadvanced CMPS without doing the integration to CMPS!

Thanks!

[Tbird66]

I have one question - in my announcement logic I need to check the email address that a user has stored in their profile; how do I do this?

Edit:
doh! - $bbuserinfo[email]

[trackpads]

Excellent work!

[trackpads]

This is a great hack!

I have one problem related to my site if you can help. I have javascript pulldowns on the nav of my site and the dhtml popup displays under these. Is there a way to make this show up below the message instead of above it?

Thanks again,

-Jason

[T3MEDIA]

Originally Posted by ixian

Aha!!! I have it working for vbadvanced!

Im so excited I didnt read to see if anyone got this to work for vbindex!!!