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 \\=^))

[ixian]

Originally Posted by Sketch

The default vbAdv install as $index_header not $header -- I believe. But I got it. Nice hacks all around.

Oops. Sorry bout that

Shouldn't matter anyway, since by that step you can stick the bits wherever you want them to appear, you don't need to follow the instructions to the letter

[Pitman]

Originally Posted by Logician

Make sure you applied STEP 1 correctly.

Lol, I did, there is only 2 instances of what to search for and replace, I did it exactly as the instructions say

[ixian]

Originally Posted by Pitman

Lol, I did, there is only 2 instances of what to search for and replace, I did it exactly as the instructions say

"Lol", you obviously didn't, because this hack is working for the rest of us. You must have missed something. Go over it again, line by line.

[dsotmoon]

login Admin CP, choose VB settings, click Forum Home Page Options and find "Dynamic Forum Home Announcements" box.

The dynamic forum announcement box isnt showing up in my adminCP although the welcome box is showing fine on forum home, what did i do wrong? or what part of the hack do i need to redo?

[dsotmoon]

duh! nevermind, it works great, i was confused.

[Logician]

Originally Posted by Pitman

Lol, I did, there is only 2 instances of what to search for and replace, I did it exactly as the instructions say

If you are sure you did it correctly, then your problem is more likely related to your text editor. Always use notepad or a similiar text editor to apply hacks, not HTML software like Dreamweaver or Frontpage. They tend to change certain lines in PHP scripts without letting you know and this can cause parse errors.

[lasto]

weirdest thing mine dont appear under one another likes yours do.When i went to do the code for one of them (the green popup) it said it was a duplicate entry and would`nt allow it so in my options i have 2 seperate otions - one for the box and one for the popup.

Is this cause i had the old hack of yours on vb2 and just upgraded the board to vb3

[Logician]

Originally Posted by lasto

weirdest thing mine dont appear under one another likes yours do.When i went to do the code for one of them (the green popup) it said it was a duplicate entry and would`nt allow it so in my options i have 2 seperate otions - one for the box and one for the popup.

Is this cause i had the old hack of yours on vb2 and just upgraded the board to vb3

yes. you need to delete the old record before installing this one. To do it add:

PHP Code:

$debug=1; 


to your config.php file right before ?> and upload the file. Now login to your admin cp, choose settings and then the settings of my hack. You'll see the link to remove it. After you removed it, you can also remove the debug line from your config.php, upload it back and then install the hack.

[lasto]

cheers for help once again - worked fine

[Highlander]

i cant wait for VB Templates ,, i did the change last week to vb3.0 .. and must leave the exisitng webtepmaplte section alone

.. my dreams come trough .. if you manage to port webtemplates

you are my hero

..EDIT:
uhh sorry..thought i was posting in your annhouncment Thread .. delete this post..