Questions for product selection

[capflam]

Hi,

I am currently using vB experience and I am running into some serious problems with it.
I would like to find a system that:
1. Rewards users based on their activity.
2. Has a shop where users can exchange their points for prizes (like gift certificates that I would purchase and give them). It must be really controllable so that I don't end up in a situation with insane number of points for some users which is happening with vB Experience right now for me.
3. Displays user activity %.
4. Runs contests based on flexible rules. from date A to date B. I would also love to be able to create contests for users referring their friends.
5. is solid and won't break....
6. I can translate easily into French.
7. Is going to be possible to upgrade to vB 4 or 5 if I chose to upgrade me vB 3.8 forum.

I am struggling with the current addon that I have and I am looking for better

Please advise.
Thanks

 

[Holden]

Hello, capflam if you have read the forum before making a question you would of seen all the questions you have listed are already done.
1). vBActivity & Awards
2). vBCredits II Deluxe
3). vBActivity & Awards
4). Maybe vBNominate unsure by your question...

Finally,

All plugins are "solid and won't break" it all depends on the server you use and how much stress it can take so taking the cheapest possible hosting is a no go in my opinion but most plugins do support cheap hosting servers. Also all plugins here support VB3 but there isn't a french translation so just use google translate.

If you have noticed bugs with the plugin you are currently using report in the corresponding section where the plugin is allocated.

Thanks Holden.

 

[Fillip H.]

1. Rewards users based on their activity.

What kind of rewards are you looking for? Achievements and activity points can be automatically awarded in vBActivity.

2. Has a shop where users can exchange their points for prizes (like gift certificates that I would purchase and give them). It must be really controllable so that I don't end up in a situation with insane number of points for some users which is happening with vB Experience right now for me.

You'd need vBShop Pro in order to create custom items that users can fill out their shipping addresses for your gift certificates.

3. Displays user activity %.

vBActivity definitely has that, highly customisable as to what you can display

4. Runs contests based on flexible rules. from date A to date B. I would also love to be able to create contests for users referring their friends.

What kind of rules are you looking for? vBActivity currently supports "First To Reach X Points" and "Total Score" contests for contests that have a start and end date. Additionally, you can automatically grant points & Awards (separate from Achievements) as contest prizes.

5. is solid and won't break....

We've had no reports of vBActivity breaking - there's a slight performance concern on one of its pages if your forum is huge (tens of thousands of active members) but we provide a way to turn that page off.

6. I can translate easily into French.

vBActivity is fully phrased

7. Is going to be possible to upgrade to vB 4 or 5 if I chose to upgrade me vB 3.8 forum.

vBActivity currently doesn't have a vB5 version, but it does have a vB4 version

 

[Cosmic]

Just a note that the vB3 license includes the vB4 version for free, however if you updated to vB5 (and vBActivity is ported to vB5) you will have to pay a small fee to convert your license to a vB5 one - this is because the products essentially have to be re-written for vB5

 

[capflam]

Thank you Fillip H. and Cosmic for taking the time to answer my questions.

1. The rewards that I am looking for are for activity: number of posts, threads open, maybe reputation gained too, over a period of time that I can manage (date to date would be fine).

2. I probably didn't explain this one very well . I am not selling anything but I intend to reward my users based on the total number of points that they have accumulated. For example, a user who would reach 10,000 points would receive a $10 Amazon gift certificate.

3. Can the activity and points be displayed in postbit like in this example:

I am just trying to make a smooth transition between the current system and yours so users are not too confused.

4. The type of contest that I'd like to run would be based on the number of posts, threads, or maybe reputation (or just points if this is what vBActivity does only?) that users have gained during a specific period of time.
I understand that vBActivity would be the product for that. Is there an example of contest that I can take a look at somewhere?

...and a few more questions :

8. Do vBActivity or vB Credits use or replace (I don't want to replace it...) the core vBulletin reputation system?

9. Is there any possible conflict with vBSEO or the vBulleting mobile API?

10. Should I anticipate any issues with PHP 5.2.17 and MySQL 5.1.66-cll?

11. vBActivity activity % and points start from the moment on the product is installed correct? And when do cronjobs run: each hour, day?

I am not too worried about resources being in a dedicated X1270 server with 8Gb or RAM for a few 10s of thousands users but if there are things that I should be looking at closely please let me know.

Thanks

 

[Fillip H.]

1. vBActivity contests do indeed support that

2. Is the gift certificate physical or digital?

3. Click the right-most "dot" in the postbit here on DBTech to see how vBActivity displays its stats.

4. You can set what points sources do not count towards the contest goal in the contest page.

8. Neither

9. We've had no reports of any such conflicts.

10. We've had no reports of issues with that configuration either

11. You can make it re-calculate from the beginning of the forum, or from a specific point in time of your choosing

 

[capflam]

Perfect, thanks! I can't believe I didn't see the bars in postbit here on the forum the first time

2. Gift certificates are digital.
11. That's pretty cool!

 

[Fillip H.]

If they're digital then you can simply create an achievement for those users that reach X number of points and use achievement statistics in the AdminCP to manually award people those certificate codes.

 

[capflam]

I had one more question, apologize the delay:

Can your product import VB Experience points?
My users are getting nervous each time I talk about making change to the point system....

 

[Fillip H.]

There's currently no importer from vBExperience, sorry

 

[capflam]

Hi,

I wanted to know if the ability to import from vbExperience is possible now?

Thanks
Greg

 

[Fillip H.]

Sorry, there's no vBExperience importer at this time

 

[capflam]

Finally that's ok I decided to go with vBactivity anyway. I installed the lite version on a development server and it went fine.

I wanted to ask you:
1. I have 2 development subdomains. This is where I test my new implementations. Can I install vBactivity on the development subdomain for testing or should I request a special license?

Please let me know.

 

[Fillip H.]

No licence is required to install the Lite version on any server, and we do allow for the Pro version to be installed on development servers as well without any special requirements

 

[capflam]

Thanks, that's nice so I don't have to worry about mixing up development and live server licenses.

 

[capflam]

Hi,

I've installed vbActivity and Awards. Seems there will be a learning curve.
Unlike the Like version the Pro version reset all stats. For instance, users with 1,000's of posts achieve no level. How do I make their previous activity count?

Thanks

 

[Fillip H.]

You can use the Maintenance options under DBTech - vBActivity to recalculate points.


As this is no longer pre-sales I'll close this thread, please start a thread in the support forums if you are having an issue beyond this. Thanks