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 \\=^))

[Logician]

Originally Posted by SVZ

The popup looks *really* bad in firefox...it's a huge red block

Here is the fix for this :

Edit template "dfh_announcement_popup" (in ALL TEMPLATE SETS YOU HAVE!), find :

top: 50px; bottom: 50px; left: 50px; right: 50px;

replace it as:

top: 50px;  left: 50px;

[Logician]

Originally Posted by Logician

Here is the fix for this :

Edit template "dfh_announcement_popup" (in ALL TEMPLATE SETS YOU HAVE!), find :

top: 50px; bottom: 50px; left: 50px; right: 50px;

replace it as:

top: 50px;  left: 50px;

Hack ZIP file updated for this fix.

[Allan]

Now, with firefox :

[Logician]

Originally Posted by Allan

Now, with firefox :

That darn firefox and its layer positioning!

Try this one to use as your dfh_announcement_popup template:

<DIV ID="ANNLAYER" STYLE="background-color: red; position: absolute; margin-left:5; margin-right:5; margin-top:5; margin-bottom:0;  top:25%; left:25%; height:50%; width:50%; padding: 10px; overflow: auto; border-color: 000000; border-style: solid; border-top-width: 2px; border-right-width: 3px; border-bottom-width: 3px; border-left-width: 2px;">

<table cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" border="0" class="tborder" width="100%" height="100%"  align="center"><tr><td>
<table cellpadding="$stylevar[cellpadding]" cellspacing="$stylevar[cellspacing]" border="0" width="100%" height="100%">
<tr>
	<td class="panelsurround" align="center">
	<div class="panel"><div align="$stylevar[left]">

$dfh_announcement_popuptopaste

<br /><br />

<input type="button" onclick="clearpopupannouncement('ANNLAYER')" name="clear" value="$vbphrase[closeannouncement]" class="button">
<br />

</div></div>

</div></div>
	</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td></tr></table>

</div>

I know it is still not 100% perfect for firefox but this is all I can do for you guys, sorry.. If you like, you can keep playing with HTML in this template tweak it further.

[Allan]

Thanks Logician, it's perfect for me

[Crazy Serb]

how hard would it be to incorporate this dynamic dropin ad window as the announcement popup part:

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamici.../dropinbox.htm

i can't get it to open up a popup window when I try substituting the code from the dhtml popup into the dfh_popup template, and adding the javascript code to the head tag...

plus I think it looks a lot nicer than the popup that is a part of the hack right now... no offence or anything, but someone's made a more sophisticated one, and it would be really cool to see it implemented.

[Logician]

Originally Posted by Crazy Serb

how hard would it be to incorporate this dynamic dropin ad window as the announcement popup part:

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamici.../dropinbox.htm

Does not sound so hard but please try yourself. I really don't have time to improve this hack further.. You should add the STEP 2 part into "dfh_announcement_headercode" template and STEP 3 into "dfh_announcement_popup" template.

Replace "SPECIFY YOUR CONTENT HERE. IT COULD BE TEXT, IMAGES, OR RICH HTML" with "$dfh_announcement_popuptopaste"

[Crazy Serb]

Originally Posted by Logician

Does not sound so hard but please try yourself. I really don't have time to improve this hack further.. You should add the STEP 2 part into "dfh_announcement_headercode" template and STEP 3 into "dfh_announcement_popup" template.

Replace "SPECIFY YOUR CONTENT HERE. IT COULD BE TEXT, IMAGES, OR RICH HTML" with "$dfh_announcement_popuptopaste"

exactly what I did, and it doesn't seem to be working... can anyone else try this out?


EDIT: I know what the problem was... the code for the popup itself. I've tried another dropin code from dynamicdrive and it worked just fine.

Thanks Logician...

[ambumann]

Great extension, installed here!

Isn't it possible to make a "easier to use" menu system for the conditonals so we don't have to remember/look them up every time a new announcement is in the making?

[womansnet]

Is there any way to put this on all the main pages of the forums? I have it working on the home page, but it would be great to be able to add it to other pages, especially for when someone uses a direct link to a thread.