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

[robdawg]

Is there a way to NOT display the "activity" bar?

Thanks.

[wwolf27]

yes the points are being calculated (the first 5 columns) the last column which is the one they use to purchase things ARE NOT being calculated...the 3 members that do have points in that column I added over 2 weeks ago and they have never changed even though they should have.

So when members go to purchase something even though they have "points" it says they have "0"

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by robdawg

Is there a way to NOT display the "activity" bar?

Thanks.

yes, edit the template xperience_gfx and remove it.

Originally Posted by wwolf27

yes the points are being calculated (the first 5 columns) the last column which is the one they use to purchase things ARE NOT being calculated...the 3 members that do have points in that column I added over 2 weeks ago and they have never changed even though they should have.

So when members go to purchase something even though they have "points" it says they have "0"

The last column is misc, right? Check statistics to see if there are some points.

[Pegaso]

Hi Phalynx!

First of all, thanks for this mod, it's great!

And now one question:
We want to use the promotions system just for one group, but we want the promotion based on activity, not level.
In other words, if a user in that group (only in that one) gets more than 15% activity, moves to another group, and if his activity is lower than 5% will go back to the previous group.

Is that possible?

Thanks in advance.

[Phalynx]

Currently not.

[Pegaso]

Originally Posted by Phalynx

Currently not.

"currently" means it may be possible in future? are you thinking about promotions based on activity?

And thanks for the fast! answer

[Phalynx]

I'm re-working the complete promotion system to make it dependable on every data provider (yes, also Activity) in vBExperience. It will also have a GUI in the AdminCP.

[carubmun]

Originally Posted by Phalynx

I'm re-working the complete promotion system to make it dependable on every data provider (yes, also Activity) in vBExperience. It will also have a GUI in the AdminCP.

That would truly be awesome and be a real replacement for the standard vb promotions system.
As it is now it seems to not work well for all types of promotions one may want to do.

Ive encountered some sort of bug that awards one of my users nearly double the points or something.

Tell me if this makes any sense to you for a user who has 28,107 total posts.

Awards:  
Points: 60,371
Level: 76		
Level up: 21%
Points needed: 1,279		
Activity: 32%
				
Points for user
Points for User: 9,258
Reputation: 5,740
Use of reputation system: 366
Friends: 92
Referrals: 3,000
Filled profile: 60

Points for threads
Points for threads: 24,919
Threads: 23,153
Tags: 65
Replies: 641
Views: 1,061

Points for posts
Points for Posts: 26,194
Posts: 26,015
Discussion Ender: 179

Doesnt it seem odd that his "threads" total and his "posts" total add up to nearly twice his total posts for the site?

Its screwing up the curve and my next step is to just remove the moderator group in the admincp and leave it for the regular members only.

Also if i can put in a request for the next version...
I would really love it if i could exclude on a per thread basis.
Per forum is great, but things like a "Welcome New Users" thread that go on for years and years will end up making the "thread views"/"thread replies" feature have skewed results.
Whatever person is the guy that made that thread a bunch of years ago will be receiving points for eternity if i enable those features.

Thanks!

[EidolonAH]

Originally Posted by Phantasmagoric

Ahem, yup, here comes my plea, is there any chance of linking items in the shops to actual download files.

Originally Posted by Phalynx

Yes, this will be included in next versions, but I have no date for this.

Hello Phalynx, I was recommended to use your mod by Phantasmagoric on my own site, I have come here today to see what the fuss is all about. Whilst I can see potential for your mod on my site, until the linked download functionality is a part of this it is of no use to me. I saw this in action on Phantasmagoric's site and I must say it did look awesome, I would like very much to be able to use this mod myself.
Can you give some time frame with regard to linked downloads being incorporated into this, I haven't clicked installed yet as I haven't installled it. I will once this functionality is available.
Great work, kudos to you for this heavy going mod, and it's free too, amazing, well done.

[MrAgent]

I have a single user who is not receiving any experience. He is not ignored in any groups, nor is his userid ignored. Any suggestions on how to get him experience? He has a few posts etc.