Welcome headers - Improve community registration rates

vBulletin 3.6 users click here for the 3.6 compatible version of this plugin.

The out of the box vBulletin style does not have a robust method of informing users about their current activity status or user level. As a result, guests entering on a page other than the homepage (which is most often the case) have no idea what a forum is about or that they may need 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.

To help solve these problems, the welcome headers plugin creates a 5-part set of conditionals to better introduce members to your community while pushing them to register, activate or post. The default templates are just that, default ? I highly encourage you to tweak the language and functions to meet the needs of your actual community environment.

Modifications/ Instructions:
Template edits: 2
Plugins: 1 (adds 1 template and several settings)

This template hack should take under 5 minutes to implement and customize.

What?s new in 4.1.0
The 4.1.0 version of this system is a complete rewrite from earlier versions. All of the original functionality still exists; however, the system has been improved to make it much more modular. With the new version, you can now turn on/off individual welcome header messages, configure the content and change other settings all from your ACP Options panel. Additionally, a 5th welcome header has been added for global announcements. With the exception of one small phrase change, this upgrade is seamless to upgrade.

Upgrade Instructions:
Full upgrade instructions can be found in the attached zip file. However, to avoid confusion anyone upgrading from the 4.0.x version of this plugin to 4.1.x should do the following:

1 ? Upload the new version of the plugin file based on your version of vBulletin (3.5 or 3.6). Be sure to set the override option to ?yes?.
2 ? Go to your phrase manager and search for the phrase ?first_visit_message?, copy any customizations you have made to this phrase into the phrase ?welcome_guest?.
3 ? Go to your vBulletin options, select the ?Welcome Header System? group and configure the options as desired.

Customizing the content / messages
To customize which messages appear or what they say, go to vBulletin options, select the ?Welcome Header System? group and configure the options as desired. Each phase can be modified by adding translation text.

Details on how it all works:
Step One: Turning lurkers into Members
For most websites, upwards of 50% of traffic (or more) comes through search engines or deep links to threads, profiles and categories. Out of the box, vBulletin only displays a welcome message on the forum-homepage, meaning someone who enters through any other page does not have the benefit of seeing an explanation of the site or welcome message. The guest welcome header is used to explain the purpose of your site, sell users on the benefits of joining the community and push them to proactively register.

Step Two: Making Users Confirm their Account
Many vBulletin sites require email confirmation prior to being able to post or access an account. However, activation emails are often misdirected to spam folders, ignored or simply deleted, leaving unconfirmed users with little access rights and no explanation as to what is wrong with their account. The unconfirmed welcome header is used to inform unconfirmed members of their account status and to direct them to automatically resend their activation email, or to contact the webmaster for support.

Step Three: Get non-posting users to post
Another chronic problem faced by many forums is insuring users post after registering. Many new visitors register in order to access certain features with the intent of posting, but never do so. The never posted welcome header is used to encourage users to post for their first time and should ideally be linked directly to an introductions or new member forum to help users "break the ice".

Step Four: Getting inactive users to become more active
Many members start out as lurkers, register, post once or twice and then go back to being lurkers. Often time these members are not actively thinking about participating in topics or are still shy about interacting. The inactivity welcome header reminds members to make a post after a predetermined amount of time as specified by the forum administrator.

Step Five: General Announcements
Unfortunately the standard announcements are often overlooked or never even seen by members who use the "new posts feature". As a result, urgent notices may be missed by users causing problems and high volumes of support requests. The global announcement welcome header creates a message shown to all members who do not fall into the other welcome header groups (guest, unconfirmed, never posted, inactive). Whether it be a scheduled outage/ upgrade, an important request or the need to display an advertisement in a prominent spot, global announcements allow an administrator to effectively and quickly display messages in a way that is certain to be read.

The results:
At first glance this system may seem a bit superfluous, however, the numbers rarely lie, nor does the feedback. Since posting this plugin in October, it has risen to over 1700 confirmed installations and is now one of the top 5 vBulletin plugins. On ScubaBoard.Com, the site the system was originally tested on, posting rates have increased by over 100%; new user registration rates by over 60%; user activity by 50% and the welcome/ intro & greets forum has exploded over 400%. If you browse through the pages of this thread you will find even more real life testimonials and experiences from the thousands of people using the system.

But enough about why -- give it a shot yourself and let me know how your results turn out.

vBulletin 3.6 users click here for the 3.6 compatible version of this plugin.

[Darat]

Great Mod - thanks for making it available and supporting it.

Quick question - how do I alter the period before it tells you "You've not posted for a a while"?

[jdebler]

This is GREAT plugin, and well needed. We have HUGE problems with people e-mailing us for support when they haven't verified their account. This is going to make things MUCH easier for us.

I had no problems installing and running it, my board is NOT modified except for this plugin.

Thank you VERY much for making this Ted. Make sure you get credit for it in the next VBulletin build.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Darat

Quick question - how do I alter the period before it tells you "You've not posted for a a while"?

In the template welcome_headers change 1209600 to the number of seconds you want to wait before showing the message.

86400 is one day, that should get you started.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by jdebler

Thank you VERY much for making this Ted. Make sure you get credit for it in the next VBulletin build.

This has been out for over a year in one form or another so I'm not too sure it will make it into the next update but here's to hoping (it's not like the code is particular complex or anything).

[ShadMan]

Works like a charm! Thanks!!

[tommykjensen]

Suggestion:

How about adding a fifth message that are shown if the user is a member of a certain usergroup?

I have just added a lot of users in a special usergroup because emails to them bounced. So I want to display a message advising them to update the email in their profile. Of course I can just edit the template and add it but it would be nice if this hack had this option too.

[richard4339]

See, where it says "Welcome, $username," I've love to have more stats there, such as...

Posts: [posts]
Rank: [Admin, Mod, Member]

etc...

Anyway of tieing that in with this?

[jdebler]

Originally Posted by tommykjensen

Of course I can just edit the template and add it but it would be nice if this hack had this option too.

I was thinking about this myself. Would it be as simple as adding the following to the welcome_headers template?

<if condition="is_member_of($bbuserinfo, USER GROUP ID)">
	<!-- / XXXX user message -->
	<br />
	<table class="tborder" cellpadding="$stylevar[cellpadding]" cellspacing="$stylevar[cellspacing]" border="0" width="100%" align="center">
	<thead>
	<tr> 
		<td class="alt1">
			<phrase 1="$vboptions[bbtitle]">$vbphrase[newly_created_phrase]</phrase>
		</td>
	</tr> 
	</thead>
	</table>
	<!-- / XXXX user message -->
<else />

[richard4339]

Kinda what I was getting at as well. Does anyone know if the Welcome message that goes next to the breadcrumbs is stored in a template?

[Ted S]

Richard - You can easily add those statistics, simply modify the welcome_headers template and/or the phrase you want the message to apply to.

Phrases are called like this: <phrase 1="$bbuserinfo[username]" 2="$vboptions[bbtitle]">$vbphrase[welcome_postmoreoften]</phrase>

To add another variable such as the post count, you would just assign it a value, in this case 3="$bbuserinfo[posts]"

Giving you <phrase 1="$bbuserinfo[username]" 2="$vboptions[bbtitle]" 3="$bbuserinfo[posts]">$vbphrase[welcome_postmoreoften]</phrase>

You can then add it to the phrase with the variable declaration {3}