Add-On Releases - vBExperience 3.8

vBExperience 3.8 (aka xPerience)

Created by Marius Czyz aka Phalynx.

Triple Winner of the "Mod of the Month"-Award (March 2008, September 2009, July 2010) on vBulletin.org.

A version for vBulletin 4.0 has been released! Thread: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=245023


vBExperience 3.8.6 is currently (August 2010) in development.


Description
vBExperience is your feature packaged solution for motivation and satisfying your users. vBExperience is an advanced Level/Promotion and Activity System with Shop, Awards and Activities. It will calculate an activity and experience score for every user based on their activites on the forum. Now your users will see how their level is increasing by participating on your forum.

This mod was developed by me because I was never satisfied with the post count. Communities are not only defined by post count, they need much more parameters: Are the postings the user creates helpful? Are his threads frequently read? Does the user participate on the community by posting pictures, attachments, leaving visitor messages, tagging threads? All this can be answered with this mod.

Comments, suggestions, translations, bugs, etc... are very welcome! Support is only given to people who have clicked Mark as Installed.


Compatibility
This mod will work with vBulletin 3.7.x and 3.8.x. For vBulletin 3.6 you will need vBExperience 3.7



Demo:
http://www.insideearth.net/xperience.php?langid=5

Demo 3.8.6:
http://www.insidetwoworlds.com/xperience.php

Other Demo Site:
http://www.insidesupcom.de/xperience.php?langid=1


There are mainly four things visible for the users: The users score, his level, his next level up in %/points and his activity in %.


Calculation of the score
Taken into calculation are these things:
Threads
- Created threads
- Thread views of own threads
- Thread replies of own threads
- Thread votes of own threads
- Thread tags
- Replies to own threads
- Sticky threads
- Socialgroup Discussions (Discussions, Posts)

Posts
- Created posts
- Views on attachments

User
- Days since registration
- Average posts per Day (for users who are on forum for at least seven days)
- Referrals
- Received infractions
- Reputation / Use of reputation system
- Visitor messages on profiles
- Members of own social groups
- Albumpictures
- Friends
- Completing Profile

Misc
- Calendar entries


Additionally there is support for 3rd party addons (some are already installed):
- vB Tournaments and Ladders (via CDP Addon)
- Post Ranking System (via CDP Addon)
- Helpful Answers (via CDP Addon)
- AWCoding-Donation System LITE and PRO (via CDP Addon)
- Cyb Paypal Donate (included)
- DownloadsII (included)
- ibProArcade Highscorer Points (via CDP Addon)
- LDM Links and Downloads Manager (included)
- PhotoPlog 2.1 (via CDP Addon)
- PhotoPost vBGallery (via CDP Addon)
- PhotoPost Pro (via CDP Addon)
- Post Thank You / Use of Post Thank You (via CDP Addon)
- QuoteIt! 3.16 (via CDP Addon)
- SAPR: Advanced Post Rating system (via CDP Addon)
- thanks via vS-Hide Hack Resurrection (Expanded Edition) (included)
- v3arcade Highscorer Points (via CDP Addon)
- v3arcade Submissions Points (via CDP Addon)
- vBulletin Blog (included)
- Who Downloaded This Attachment? (included)
- Other Addons can be easily added via CDP - Custom Data Provider plugins.

Additionally you can install these modifications:
- Thread Necromancer: Gives (minus-) points when a user is posting in old threads.
- Scrupulous Poster: Gives points for editing posts. Award users that are editing own posts instead of doing double post.
- Deletion Addicted: Gives points when an user/nod soft-deletes post, thread, visitormessage, groupmessage or picturecomment.
- Arm of Law: Give points for moderators who are using the infraction system
- Discussion Ender: Give points for people who are the last on a discussion
- RadioActivity: Reduce points for every day the user is not online

Also, there are already addons available that are working as Custom Data Provider (CDP). A CDP can extend vBExperience by collecting data and adding it to the vBExperience datastore. All point providers can be used for Awards and Shop.

You have to install these hacks for your own, vBExperience doesn't install nor touches these.


vBAdvanced
There are three vBAdvanced 3.0 XML modules: Most Active Users, Most Experienced Users and Last 20 Activities. Import them via vBAdvanced AdminCP.


Awards
There are six default awards: Most Popular, Activity Award, Posting Award, Community Award, Frequent Poster, Blog Award, Calendar Award. The awards are shown in Rankings and Profile. You can set them also to display in postbit near the username. There is a scheduled job running once a day (02:30h) to calculate them.
Via AdminCP they are completely customizeable and can also be assigned manually.
Awards can be created for every data provider.


Rankings
Showing User, Level, Awards, Activity Points (experience, thread, post, user, misc) - sortable.
Since 3.8.3, there is a also a ranking for Social Groups

Shop
A virtual Shop will motivate your users to earn more points. You can define categories and put virtual items with pictures in it. A currency can be defined seperatly for every item, e.g. 20 points from threads or 100 points from gallery. Users can purchase the items, they appear in their profile. The costs of the item are substracted from their xperience points. Additionally you can set quantity of the items.
The Shop will motivate your users to collect specific points to buy an item. Optionally you can show the last purchased items on postbit.
You can put virtual items in it, like WoW addons: Sell WoW Items in exchange of f.e. thread points. Great for RPG forums.
Non-Virtual Items like bold Usernames or Downloads for Points are already on my todo list.

Earn Points
There is an overview for the user on how points can be collected, with a list of users own points. All data is beeing pulled from the database (settings, phrases)

Statistics
The statistics is showing a Top-X list of the leading users. Usefull for optimizing points of the point provider. Only enabled point providers with results will be displayed.


Promotion system
To motivate users to do more on your forum I created the promotion system. By reaching defined xperience points the user will be moved to another usergroup - where you can set graphics, shadows, highlighting, etc... What is interesting in combination with this: you can give the user more possibilities f.e. larger avatars or bigger PM box. A log of the promotions is available.


Calculation of the activity
The system calculates the activity by taking the average post count/visitormessages/group discussion/Blog entries of the ten most active user and comparing it to own post count. This can be set to count only the last X days, f.e. 21 days.


Settings
You can control how many points are given to every calculation. For example you can give many points for creating new threads but only a few for views of that thread. Setting a value to 0 will disable a setting.
Additionally, you can set ignore users (f.e. for bot users), forums (f.e. offtopic forums) and usergroup id's.


Performance, Big Boards
vBExperience has been tested on smaller and also on some bigger sites. I know from boards with around 120k users running this mod smoothly. More about this topic can be read in the file readme_optimization.txt


Frequently asked questions
Q: How do I change the name Experience to something new?
A: You can change the name via phrases. Just search and replace all phrases that contains vBExperience.

Q: When installing vBExperience, does everyone start from scratch, or will it automatically configure everyone's points based on actions before the install?
A: If you recount, vBExperience will calculate ALL existing data since the beginning of the board.

Known Issues:
- Awards: On "Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread" awards are only shown for the user who is viewing this.
- Awards: If activated in with rich username, they are attached to the username. If the username is linked, the awards are also linked. If a link is underlined, the awards are also underlined. This behaviour is hardcoded in vBulletin and cannot be fixed.
- Settings are showing only a blank page, read here: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/proje...6979#note74140
- If you completely remove vBExperience, you need also to uninstall the product XML manually from the pluginssystem

Credits for icons
- FAMFAMFAM, http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/
- IconExperience


History
3.8.4.3 / 3.8.5 Beta 5, 10th July 2011
- Prio 1 security patch, please update just xperience.php!


3.8.5 Beta 4, 25th September 2009
- Promotions: Listing now also the last Usergroup. Please notice the new settings for nethermost/uppermost usergroups.
- Several minor cosmetic changes
- Clear Activities (except Shop)
- Fixed error with GetActivityAll() on profile
- Several Beta 3 fixes

3.8.5 Beta 3, 18th September 2009
- Fixed Promotions
- Fixed Notifications
- Added Activities to Promotions
- All Activities are not obeying limit
- AdminCP/Experience has a recount for Promotions and Achievements
- Fixed listing of Achievements with Firefox
- Several Beta 2 fixes

3.8.5 Beta 2, 02nd September 2009
- Just a short note: Condition in Achievements and Promotions are calculated in POINTS, not in counts of items.
If you choose 10 Day, you must enter the points needed for this.
For example: You have an achievement for 10 days. You have set 2 points for every day since registering. Calculation: 10*2 = 20
You will have to set 20 as the condition.
- New tabbed interface. If you want to change the style, edit the template xperience_navbar_css
- Promotions now showing usergroups and conditions for a promotion to the next group
- You can import old vBExperience Legacy promotions (that were created within level.xml)
- Achievements in Profile
- Achievements below Avatar
- Several Beta 1 fixes

3.8.5 Beta 1, 28th August 2009
- Achievements!
- Promotions!
- Notification on Awards, Promotions and Achievements
- GAP: Empty pointfields will not be displayed anymore
- Activity: Showing percent values with a decimal
- Activities now also for users
- Awards below Avatar
- Default Awards are now also creating new category
- Shop: Fixed issue in not returning cash on sells
- Reworked Edit Shop Items



For more see history.txt

[KURTZ]

hi Marius, i think there is a trouble, i've got 2 members without any point but they own the silver and bronze award ...

http://www.fniv.it/board/xperience.php

also i've some Social Groups with some members but i haven't any group in the chart ...

http://www.fniv.it/board/xperience.php?go=groups

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by Matrixthestar

yes
but the negative points
appear @ Points for threads

and it appears for my most active members

Did you entered negative points in the thread points settings?

Originally Posted by Theater

Has anyone experienced a problem when the Experience cronjob runs it taxes the server and causes the pages to load up blank? I've had it happen to a few times now, and actually made it worse when I messed with the update intervals to be offset at 15 minutes instead of 10. So I disabled the cronjob for now and the site is running fine.

I'm thinking of setting it to update at 5,15,25,35 etc intervals instead of the default 10,20,30 etc next. Was there anything in 3.8.3 under the "small fixes" notation that maybe optimized this update process? I would like to continue to use this great mod, but it's not playing nice with our servers.

Did you already read the file readme_optimization.txt? There are some optimization tipps.

Originally Posted by veenuisthebest

A bug I think.

I have just installed a fresh copy of this mod. Everytime I go to Manage Custom Points -> Add Points and then delete, it gives a database error.


Invalid SQL:
DELETE FROM xperience_stats WHERE userid=;

MySQL Error : You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 1
Error Number : 1064
Script : admincp/xperience_admin.php?do=savepoints
Referrer : admincp/xperience_admin.php?do=editpoints&id=2

You have entered a 0 into the UserID field, right? I will catch this and replace by Admin UserID in next version.

Originally Posted by veenuisthebest

Few bugs still left from 3.8.2 as listed in post #330 and #332.

1. Awards: phrase in profile under Experience tab still display when a user has no awards.

7. If "Only Active Users" is opted, the pagination does not display correct results in Ranking (xperience.php). It still takes all users into account, thus making all other sub-pages (page2,3,4) display empty results. The pagination should also adjust itself according to the number of active users.

8. There seems to be few minor xhtml errors in various templates that mainly includes closing of img tag without the slash /> and using <br/></br> instead of just one <br /> (which validates properly)

10. When a user has no avatar set, then on xperience.php?go=awards it displays the misc/unknown.gif which is actually just 60x60 in dimensions thus looks really odd as compared to the rest of the users who already have an avatar of normal size say 100x100. It would be a good idea to add an option so that we can give the path to noavatar image.

Thanks

Thanks for pointing me to this, I did not see it. All of them will be fixed in 3.8.4, beside of point 10 as the listing will be replaced by a new one.
Also, the unknown.gif is a return value that I get using vBulletin API.

Originally Posted by KURTZ

hi Marius, i think there is a trouble, i've got 2 members without any point but they own the silver and bronze award ...

http://www.fniv.it/board/xperience.php

Christian, which user do you exactly mean? All Users I can see have points.

Originally Posted by KURTZ

also i've some Social Groups with some members but i haven't any group in the chart ...

http://www.fniv.it/board/xperience.php?go=groups

Are there also groups which are not invite only?

[KURTZ]

i mean the)dreamer and feror ...

however, yes i've some public SGs with more than 5 members ...

[Phalynx]

Please provide me a temp..... ehh, you know what to do

[KURTZ]

Originally Posted by Phalynx

Please provide me a temp..... ehh, you know what to do

done

[Phalynx]

Your Groups are either under the limit (5) or Invite only. By setting the limit to f.e. 2 (and executing the scheduled task for calculation SG's) it's showing some groups.

[KURTZ]

Originally Posted by Phalynx

Your Groups are either under the limit (5) or Invite only. By setting the limit to f.e. 2 (and executing the scheduled task for calculation SG's) it's showing some groups.

OK, but what about the posting awards? those users haven't any point in the ranking ...

[Phalynx]

As for your Awards... This is not simple, but explainable:
http://www.fniv.it/board/xperience.php?go=stats&do=post

Feror is the third person in stats. As you have also set a limit of 3 awards per user, an award can be passed because a user has already 3 awards. The award is going down to the next in the ranking.
Feror has only 0 points in the ranking because the hack "RadioActivity" sets the sum to 0. The Award is using other fields than the sum.

[bigcurt]

Wow Phalynx, you are working super hard on this mod and I sure do appreciate it. I don't know if I have ever seen a coder so active after 36 pages of this haha. Good luck bud, and I will be installing soon.

[Bexter]

How are the points per user worked out?

We're looking into exchanging the points for prizes but wanted to check all points were awarded correctly.

One user who joined Nov 2007 and only logged in the day he registered, posted once and has 803 user points. Where as an active member who logged in today and has almost 200 posts, and logged in regularly since joining the site, has 132 user points. The second user has more points for threads and posts, but the total for him is 612, where as the non active 1 post member, has a total of 805.
The option for points per day online, then says underneath days since registering, and there is 13 months difference between join dates, so I set that to 0 to see if that corrected the user points and it only lowered it slightly.

The product needs to reward active members and with those stats it leaves it very confusing and I may have to uninstall vbexperience.