XenSpotlight: crown a member every week, from a race the whole forum follows 2.0.2

This update removes the "XenForo add-ons by ©XenSupport" line that XenSpotlight added to your forum footer, separator included. Nothing to configure: install the archive over the previous version from Admin CP > Add-ons and the line is gone once the upgrade has run.

The resource page now says so too: Visible branding: No.

XenSpotlight 2.0.1 fixes the upgrade from 1.0.x. On MariaDB servers it no longer stops with "Invalid default value for 'period_type'", and an upgrade with "Install/upgrade from archive" no longer stops on an "invalid callback" error on servers that cache PHP files (OPcache). The scheduled task and the API scope also have a proper name in the Admin CP.

If an upgrade to 2.0.0 stopped on one of these errors, nothing is lost: install the 2.0.1 archive over it, then click Upgrade next to XenSpotlight in the add-on list. The upgrade picks up where it stopped, and your spotlights, options and permissions are kept.

XenSpotlight 2.0.0 rebuilds the add-on on XenForo itself. Every 1.0 feature is still there, your spotlights, options and permissions move over on their own, and it is still free.

A fair crown, paid once

• Periods follow your forum's time zone: local midnight, Monday for weeks, the 1st for months, daylight saving included. In 1.0 they started at midnight UTC.
• The selection runs every hour instead of once a day at 02:15, so a daily spotlight is no longer decided on two hours of activity.
• Lock the winner from last period's activity, or run a live race and crown the leader when the period ends. Either way the alert, the broadcast and the XenLevel XP are given once; in 1.0 a live race paid them again on every change of leader.
• The ranking is exact: solutions count for every member, not only the top ten posters, and posts in deleted or moderated threads no longer count.

A race everyone can follow

• A podium and a top ten with posts, reactions and solutions, and the visitor's own row highlighted.
• Your standing: logged-in members see their score and rank, how far they are from the top ten, or the exact reason they cannot be featured yet.
• Members congratulate the winner with XenForo's reactions. The featured, broadcast and reaction alerts can each be switched off in alert preferences, and the broadcast respects them.

Seen across the forum

• An In the spotlight banner in posts, in the member tooltip and on the profile while the period lasts, at no extra query.
• A Spotlights count on profiles that opens the member's own hall of fame, Most featured in Notable members, and a user criterion for trophies, promotions and notices.
• A hall of fame with pages and a filter by member, and widget options to show the score and the top three contenders.
• The featured member edits their message and picks an accent color with a color picker; the text is censored and limited to 280 characters.

For admins

• An overview with the current spotlight and a live ranking without cache, with an eligibility column that explains every pick.
• A list of every spotlight to edit, recalculate or delete, an admin permission, a Rebuild XenSpotlight tool, style properties and a read-only REST API.
• Excluded groups, forums and members picked from lists instead of typed IDs, and weights that can be set to 0. Renamed, merged and deleted members are handled.
• Every page is built from XenForo's components and follows light, dark and custom styles; the stylesheet went from 22 KB to 5 KB.

Upgrading: install the archive over any 1.0.x from the Admin CP, after a backup. Spotlights, options and permissions are kept, typed exclusions are converted, and nothing is paid twice. If the upgrade stops with an "invalid callback" error, your data is safe: wait two minutes (some hosts keep PHP files in memory) and click Upgrade again. Requires XenForo 2.3.0 and PHP 8.0 or later.

1.0.15. XenSpotlight 1.0.15 keeps one Spotlight per period, counts solutions on MySQL 8 again, and fixes the missing icons, the broken options link and the default permissions.

• The Spotlight is now picked once per period and stays for the whole day, week or month, however many times the cron runs. It no longer flips between two members on each run.
• A member set manually from the manager now stays in place until the next period instead of being replaced by the next cron run.
• By default the winner is chosen from the activity of the period that just ended. The live mode, which follows the current leader, is still available by turning off "Lock the winner for the whole period". Boards left on the default setting are moved to the locked mode by the upgrade.
• Solutions are counted again on MySQL 8. They are now read from XenForo's question table.
• The history icon and the "Run selection now" button icon now display on XenForo 2.3.
• The "Open XenSpotlight options" button in the manager no longer leads to a 404 page.
• Guests and registered members can now view the Spotlight page right after install or upgrade. Existing permission choices are kept.
• The Spotlight page and widget now respect the "View the spotlight page" permission.
• Broadcast alerts now light up the alert badge and show the period correctly.
• The "you're in the spotlight" alert now shows the member's avatar instead of a blank one.
• The accent color field no longer shows a raw phrase key when XenStaff is not installed.

The full changelog, release by release, is on the version history.

The public page is no longer a flat profile card. The featured member steps onto a full-bleed stage with wash, orbs, beam, accent rail, avatar ring, optional quote, a stats dock, and CTAs that follow the active theme.

Contenders now use a masthead plus a top-3 podium and a ranked list from #4 onward, in the same visual language as Staff and Ping. History cards and the sidebar widget follow the same rules: a custom accent only when one is set, otherwise native XF tokens.

In the ACP, XenSpotlight is a standalone menu entry (no XenSupport parent dependency), with Manager and Options as sub-items for manual selection and add-on settings.

New

• Exclude members by username: you can now keep a specific member off the spotlight by their username, no need to deal with user group IDs. Handy for excluding yourself, or any member whose group is otherwise eligible.
• Excluded members are now also hidden from the Contenders list.

Fixes

• A member you just excluded who was already the current spotlight is now replaced automatically on the next run, even with "Lock winner" enabled (before, they could stay featured for the rest of the period).
• Clearer help text on the excluded groups field (reminder: group 1 is Guests, the Administrative group is 3).

New

• Top 10 contenders page with live ranking and podium styling for the top 3
• Broadcast alert to all active members when a new Spotlight is selected
• New option to lock the winner for the whole period (off by default)

Improved

• Spotlight stats now refresh on every cron run and always match the live leader
• More prominent "See top 10 contenders" link

Fixed

• Contenders page styling not loading after upgrade (CSS now rebuilds automatically)

• Top 10 contenders page at /spotlight/contenders/ : live ranking of who's in the running to be the next Spotlight, refreshed hourly
• Top 3 are highlighted with crown / silver / bronze styling
• Your own row is highlighted with a "you" badge if you're in the top 10, plus a "you're ranked #N" banner
• New Broadcast alert option : when a new Spotlight is selected, every active member can be notified with a one-click link to the page
• Audience can be limited to members active in the last N days (default 30) to avoid spamming dormant accounts
• Winner still gets the personal alert as before (no duplicates)
• "See top 10 contenders" link added to the main Spotlight page

Fixes

• Past spotlight cards rendering broken on some pages: fixed
• "Run now" in the ACP creating duplicate entries instead of refreshing the current one: fixed (existing duplicates are cleaned up automatically on upgrade)
• "Past spotlights" section disappearing when only one winner exists: fixed
• Missing tooltips when hovering cards and avatars: added
• Layout glitches on certain themes: hardened

Improvements

• Cleaner admin "Current spotlight" view
• More resilient styling that works across custom themes
• Better truncation handling for long usernames

Drop-in upgrade. No manual action needed.

• Fixed: Past Spotlights cards rendering with broken layout on certain themes
• Drop-in upgrade, no manual action required