Dynamic Announcements: Programmable Forum Home Announcement/Message with conditionals

(This hacks works with both 3.5.x and 3.6.x)

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 different texts according to different conditions.

For instance you can tell "why they should register" if visitor is a guest, but if he is a member with 0 posts, you can tell him why he should start posting etc.! All in one announcement! Everybody will see the relevant text according to his status. (This is the hack everybody keeps asking in the TheAdminZone.com whose using the hack for members with 0 and 1 posts.)


This version of the hack is for vbulletin 3.5.x and 3.6.x (vb 3.0.x version is here and vb 2.x version is here. 3.5 version is coded as a plugin so you can install it WITHOUT modifying vb PHP files. It is easily installed in 2 steps through your admin cp.

Basic Usage of This Hack: You can set a text in your Admin CP and it's displayed in forum home to all users. Alternatively if you want, you can set another text as a popup announcement and it is displayed to all as a pop up announcement (it can't be killed with popup killers software!)

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. user has X posts or has more than Y posts but less than Z posts
4. his last visit time was X days ago
5. 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
6. etc.

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

Some Features:

• Coded as a vbulletin pluggin. Can be installed easily without hacking PHP files.
• It's Admin CP integrated
• 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

Hacks of Hack:
* For CMPS Integration see here
* French Translation by Allan : https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=143
* Nested Conditionals by dc3dreamer : https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=175
* Hack Annoucement appears in all vb pages:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...498#post911498



IMPORTANT FOR 3.x USERS:
If you were already using this hack in 3.0.x, remember to do 2 things:
BEFORE YOU INSTALL THIS HACK : Follow this instructions to remove the remnants of 3.0.x hack.
AFTER YOU INSTALL THIS HACK : Go to your admin cp / styles, find these 3 styles:
dfh_announcement
dfh_announcement_headercode
dfh_announcement_popup
and REVERT THEM so that your new templates that comes with 3.5 version will apply.

About vb4.x version:

I didn't consider porting this hack to vb4 because vbulletin has now a VERY SIMILAR feature in vb4 called "NOTICES". You can find it under your admin cp/Notices submenu/Notice Manager. It is not as powerful as this hack as this hack allows you to use any kind of conditional to produce your announcement but it is more user friendly because you don't need to deal with conditional syntax, you simply build your announcement (notice) with menus
If you install the hack, click INSTALL, thank you..

Logician \\=^))

[otto]

Hi,

and sorry for my bad english ...

I search the conditionals for :

"today is X, hour is between Y and Z, day is wednesday, month is Y, week is month's 2nd week, "

Please help. Thanks!

[Bulent Tekcan]

Hello Logician

Is it possible this announcment special forum ? For example only ForumID 4,5,8 or what ever.

Thanks

[Bulent Tekcan]

Originally Posted by Bulent Tekcan

Hello Logician

Is it possible this announcment special forum ? For example only ForumID 4,5,8 or what ever.

Thanks

***Bump***

[atropos4]

/me clicks install

This may be just what I am looking for!

EDIT:
Exactly what i was looking for!
thank you!

[RaidenDAWG2]

Originally Posted by Bulent Tekcan

Hello Logician

Is it possible this announcment special forum ? For example only ForumID 4,5,8 or what ever.

Thanks

Do a condition based on the variable $forumid if you're using the hack to make the thing display on all vB pages, so something along the lines of...

[[($forumid == 4)]]Your message here...[[/($forumid==4)]]

Where your forum's id is 4 obviously...

Or, if you wanted to do more than one forum...

[[(in_array($forumid, array(5,6,7))]]Your message here...[[/(in_array($forumid, array(5,6,7))]]

Where array(5,6,7) would refer to forums with id's 5,6, and 7. Or whatever you prefer there. The form is basically a comma separated list with no spaces for in_array.

I've not tested those exactly, but my understanding of where that hook is located is that you should have access to the $forumid variable from global.php, which should be what you'd need to do it.

-RD

[Bulent Tekcan]

Aha it is worked

But your code include 2 extra space.

[[($forumid == 4)]]Your message here...[[/($forumid==4)]]

Working Code

[[($forumid==4)]]Your message here...[[/($forumid==4)]]

Thanks for great post.

[Bulent Tekcan]

I find a problem today.If I use this conditional User Notes is not working.When I press Post Notes or View Notes this error occured.Every user same thing

"No User specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator"

Any idea for this ?

[Bulent Tekcan]

Originally Posted by Bulent Tekcan

I find a problem today.If I use this conditional User Notes is not working.When I press Post Notes or View Notes this error occured.Every user same thing

"No User specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator"

Any idea for this ?

**Bump**

[Logician]

Originally Posted by Bulent Tekcan

**Bump**

I guess this happens because you use the unsupported "make it work in ALL vb pages" version. As stated in that hack of hack, it is not tested well and it can cause such problems. This is because the original of this hack is not designed to run in all vb pages but only in forum home. So if you have the problem, please revert to the original supported version of the hack.

[Soliloquy]

I'd like to display a message each Thursday to remind users it's chat night, and another each Thursday between 9 and 11 p.m. to remind users to go to the chat room. The first post says this plugin has that functionality, but there are no examples given with the rest of the usage instructions.