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 \\=^))

[Mike Gaidin]

Excellent, I love this one.

/me clicks install.

[dsotmoon]

i have it working great but it isnt following the colors of my forum and it just doesnt look right, is something wrong?

[Logician]

Originally Posted by dsotmoon

i have it working great but it isnt following the colors of my forum and it just doesnt look right, is something wrong?

Please double check you applied STEP2 correctly. If you are sure you installed that step correctly but it still does not work for you, I can check it in your board if you give me admin cp access.

[Bellinis]

I'm so glad I found this hack!

One question though...
My forum uses two official languages. It would be great if I could write personal announcements in the users' preferred board language.

Is this possible with this hack? And if not... does anyone know how I could accomplish that?

[Logician]

Originally Posted by Bellinis

I'm so glad I found this hack!

One question though...
My forum uses two official languages. It would be great if I could write personal announcements in the users' preferred board language.

Is this possible with this hack? And if not... does anyone know how I could accomplish that?

Not tested but should work:

[[($bbuserinfo[languageid]==1)]]
Tell me something in language 1
[[/($bbuserinfo[languageid]==1)]]

[[($bbuserinfo[languageid]==2)]]
Tell me something in language 2
[[/($bbuserinfo[languageid]==2)]]

[Billspaintball]

Just installed.
I was running this hack with my vB3.0.8 board which I upgraded to 3.5 tonight.

There is one small side effect of upgrading to 3.5 then installing this hack, in the announcements section of the ACP, there is two windows for the forum home announcement, and 2 windows for the popup announcement.

If you put the announcements in the bottom windows all works fine, but I guess I should work out how to delete the two old windows so noone else gets confused

[dreck]

Logician,

I just love this hack. I do have a question? I am trying to get this to display on my cmps_index.php page.
I edited the adv_portal template from:

</head>
<body>
$header
$navbar

To:

$dfh_announcement_headercode
</head>
<body>
$dfh_announcement_popup
$header
$navbar
$dfh_announcement

But I couldn't get to work. Do I need to edit anything else?


Thanks, dreck

[Logician]

Originally Posted by Billspaintball

Just installed.
I was running this hack with my vB3.0.8 board which I upgraded to 3.5 tonight.

There is one small side effect of upgrading to 3.5 then installing this hack, in the announcements section of the ACP, there is two windows for the forum home announcement, and 2 windows for the popup announcement.

If you put the announcements in the bottom windows all works fine, but I guess I should work out how to delete the two old windows so noone else gets confused

Please see here:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....7&postcount=37

I am trying to get this to display on my cmps_index.php page

I'm sorry but I'm really not familiar with cmps. I have never used or even installed it.

[dreck]

Originally Posted by Logician

I'm sorry but I'm really not familiar with cmps. I have never used or even installed it.

Ok, thanks!

[Crazy Serb]

Originally Posted by dreck

Logician,

I just love this hack. I do have a question? I am trying to get this to display on my cmps_index.php page.
I edited the adv_portal template from:

</head>
<body>
$header
$navbar

To:

$dfh_announcement_headercode
</head>
<body>
$dfh_announcement_popup
$header
$navbar
$dfh_announcement

But I couldn't get to work. Do I need to edit anything else?


Thanks, dreck

I have the same problem...

since cmps_index.php removes anything above the </head> tag in forumhome template, we should be adding that code to the adv_portal template instead.

however, it doesn't work wherever I put it... I just don't get any code from the dfh_ templates... weird.