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

[yotsume]

Originally Posted by cooltechie

the small/big image you are referring to is the path to the award images you want displayed

So let's say you want to show 'award_activity_16' icon next to the members name, then you want to type in:
xperience/awards/award_activity_16.png

I don't think it was made clear in the instructions but I hope that cleared it up for you.

Of course if you create your own icon and give it a different name, you want to use your own name
xperience/awards/{your icon name}.png

Thanks! Finally a real answer! You need to put the path from now on and not the file name without the extension as in previous releases. My suggestion is to have an example of this in the description because the "Engrish" used is poor in many places, especially the instruction and documentation.

Absolutly awesome hack!

[SEW810]

I posted this some days ago.

There are some beers at my vbexperience shop.

Somebody just gave me a beer. After that a just buy a beer because i want to give it away to my buddy.
If I try to give away that bought beer you just can't, vbexperience says that I can't do that.

Are you considering to fix this "bug" in other versions?, I hope yes dude :S
Regars

[applebeef]

Yeah that's why I disabled gifting, because you couldn't sell your gift, much less give it away. (in 3.8.3)

[SEW810]

vb exp 3.4 beta 3 Issue:

At Ranking page the mod doesn't show awards images. Something is wrong with the path because it says

www.mysite.com/xperience/awards/award blah blah blah.png

instead

www.mysite.com/foro/xperience/awards/award blah blah blah.png

If you look at Awards page you can see awards icons perfectly
Please take a look:
http://www.seusers.com/foro/xperience.php?go=awards

and please compare image path with

http://www.seusers.com/foro/xperience.php


MODS: I don't mean to promote my site. Please delete links if I'm breaking the law
Regards

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by yotsume

All fields have text... but self explaining not a chance! I asked a question and you ignored it completely!

What goes in the small and big image fields please! An example of what goes in these fields in the descriptions is TRUE self explaining!

The descriptions are poor English at best.

So you see that I'm not an english native speaker.

Why not test it for yourself?!? Enter a filename and look if it works, if not try again with another combination. You can check what filename has been outputted. That would be far more FASTER than typing novels in multiple postings and rap me not knowing perfect english.
I will NOT answer anymore to your postings if you continue to strike a sour note on my work.

I like constructive critics, but not destructive ones. The fielddescription will be improved with next beta.

Originally Posted by feras

I installed the mod, but for some reason the postbit it is trippling the information... You can see what I mean at http://www.rapforums.com/forums/show...118#post141118

Any idea why this is happening?

Cannot see triple information. What exactly does not work?

Originally Posted by gigaenvy

Phalynx,

Are you going to fix this in Beta 5, because you had a chance to fix it going from Beta 3 to Beta 4, but you never did. I don't think default award and images need to be manually guessed or entered if you already had it coded and it worked fine in v3.8.3.

The identificator, like used with 3.8.3, is dead. You need to specify the full URL to the image now. Ask yotsume about it

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by cooltechie

Thanks for your continued support.

I replaced it and do not see any icon listed in the 'manage awards' section now. Was the fix to correct the path or to completely remove the icon?

It should correct the images. Will take a deeper look today and fix it for the next version.

Originally Posted by SEW810

I posted this some days ago.

There are some beers at my vbexperience shop.

Somebody just gave me a beer. After that a just buy a beer because i want to give it away to my buddy.
If I try to give away that bought beer you just can't, vbexperience says that I can't do that.

Are you considering to fix this "bug" in other versions?, I hope yes dude :S
Regars

This "bug" is by design as it was requested this way. To change this behaviour, I need to recode that part. It will be corrected with 3.8.5, not earlier.

Originally Posted by SEW810

vb exp 3.4 beta 3 Issue:

At Ranking page the mod doesn't show awards images. Something is wrong with the path because it says

www.mysite.com/xperience/awards/award blah blah blah.png

instead

www.mysite.com/foro/xperience/awards/award blah blah blah.png

If you look at Awards page you can see awards icons perfectly
Please take a look:
http://www.seusers.com/foro/xperience.php?go=awards

and please compare image path with

http://www.seusers.com/foro/xperience.php


MODS: I don't mean to promote my site. Please delete links if I'm breaking the law
Regards

Fixed in next version.

[yotsume]

Originally Posted by Phalynx

So you see that I'm not an english native speaker.

Why not test it for yourself?!? Enter a filename and look if it works, if not try again with another combination. You can check what filename has been outputted. That would be far more FASTER than typing novels in multiple postings and rap me not knowing perfect english.
I will NOT answer anymore to your postings if you continue to strike a sour note on my work.

I like constructive critics, but not destructive ones. The fielddescription will be improved with next beta.

Sure sorry for the tone... I will be better with my language as well! Love your work and the whole mod ROCKS! When I get excited about a mod that really brings life to a site I maybe get a bit too excited. hehehe MY BAD SORRY!

Having this mod do the link for giving points and also a vba block for activities will be great. I will try and give you as much helpful feedback as I can.

[Phalynx]

Originally Posted by Limode

@Phalynx
I reques bulk items shop featured .

Will be included in 3.8.5

Originally Posted by yotsume

I will try and give you as much helpful feedback as I can.

I'm looking forward to this. Thanks for understanding my point of view.

[Dutch_Boy]

Hey phalynx,

Im trying to get it online again and you sayd to this database error that i have to install the addons. I did but i didnt help:

Invalid SQL:
UPDATE vb_xperience_stats
SET
points_xperience=4359,
points_thread=1545.5,
points_threads=210,
points_threads_sg=4,
points_thread_votes=60,
points_thread_replycount=374.7,
points_thread_views=196.8,
points_thread_stickies=700,
points_post=2001.5,
points_posts=1782,
points_posts_sg=20,
points_user_activity=100,
points_user=633.600347222,
points_user_profile=100,
points_user_infractions=0,
points_user_reputation=15,
points_user_reputation_use=2,
points_user_online=391.600347222,
points_user_socialgroup=0,
points_user_friends=51,
points_user_visitormessages=9,
points_user_albumpictures=0,
points_user_referrals=25,
points_post_attachment=17.5,
points_post_attachment_views=0,
points_thread_tags=0,
points_misc=179,
points_misc_ldm=0,
points_misc_dl2=0,
points_misc_ppd=0,
points_misc_vbblog=0,
points_misc_custom=0,
points_thread_tnc=0,points_misc_v3arcadechamps=2.5 ,points_misc_v3asub=10.5,point s_user_law=40,points_misc_dla=166,points_misc_dsl_ vbexp=0,points_post_scp=182,
shop=0,
promoted=0,
dateline=1249318560
WHERE userid=1;

MySQL Error : Unknown column 'points_misc_dsl_vbexp' in 'field list'
Error Number : 1054

Maybe you got another idea?

I used the kill addon to delete everything. So its a clean version 3.8.4 beta 3 install.

Edit:

I get this database error when i hit Update Experience points.

[SEW810]

Thnx a lot Phalynx.
Such a great job !!!!

Regards