Competitions for XenForo [Deleted]

[Chris D]

Chris Deeming submitted a new resource:

AVForums.com - Competitions - Invigorate your community and engage your website sponsors with competitions

Invigorate your community and engage your website sponsors with competitions.

• Easy to set up competitions
  
• Competition pages have a sidebar in which competition images are displayed
  
• Automatically close competitions on the end date, pick the winners and notify them by alert
  
• Optionally create a discussion for a competition in chosen forum
  
• See what competitions a user entered/won in their profile
  
• Home page competitions sidebar block displays random selection of...

Read more about this resource...

 

[Sheldon]

I noticed the alert does not ever go away above the COMPETITIONS tab.

I read the thread, entered the contest, opened the alert... yet the balloon is still there. Is there a way that it would be able to be gone?

 

[Matthew Hawley]

Top stuff!!!

 

[3rd AnGle]

btw if several members get the answer right.. how will we choose the winner? Is it discretely decided by the forum owner/sponsor or is their any methodology (like based on their response time) built in this add-on?

 

[Chris D]

btw if several members get the answer right.. how will we choose the winner? Is it discretely decided by the forum owner/sponsor or is their any methodology (like based on their response time) built in this add-on?

I need to flesh out the documentation a little bit, I think.

The winners are chosen automatically and at random when the competition closes.

The winner can only be a valid user. If someone is banned after entering then they are excluded from winning.

First the winners are chosen which just selects a random X number of correct entries based on the number of winners you specify when creating the competition.

Then the same thing happens for runners up.

Each winner is then alerted of their win (via the alerts system). The competition page also lists all the winners.

Also when a competition is closed, the competition creator also gets an alert.

 

[Chris D]

I noticed the alert does not ever go away above the COMPETITIONS tab.

I read the thread, entered the contest, opened the alert... yet the balloon is still there. Is there a way that it would be able to be gone?

You can turn off the count completely with CSS, though I may make it a configurable option in the future.

Also its the number of current open competitions so it will stay at that number until the competition closes or increase when others open.

I think I actually might be able to change it so that it is a count of the competitions that you have not yet entered.

 

[Allan]

Do you have screens of ACP ?

 

[Chris D]

Do you have screens of ACP ?

I definitely need to write better documentation.

This is cool: There is nothing in the ACP aside from a few options and permissions.

Everything is driven from the front end.

I will get some screenshots together or maybe a video of how to create a competition so you can see the features.

 

[Dakis]

This looks really cool! Since the competitions setup can be run from the frontend, I can see a lot of applications for this, giving to sponsors access to run competitions for the members directly, etc.

Nice stuff !

 

[Chris D]

That's exactly right

 

[Stuart Wright]

I want to thank Chris for the brilliant job he has done on creating this competitions addon for us.
It's based on the competitions system which has been running at avforums for a number of years (which I wrote). We took this opportunity to enhance it and he has spent along time getting it working just right.
I want to chip in on the discussion here as I can lend a hand with how the competitions addon works, and also how to successfully use competitions to grow your community.

We often get organisations wanting to run competitions on our site. And competitions are also an inexpensive way for organisations to get publicity on your site. It only costs them the prize, although you can, and in many cases, probably should charge them for the privilege.
This addon gives you the opportunity to create something good for your community, create reasons for people to come and join your site, create new opportunities for sponsors to get involved with your site, and create the opportunity for you to make some money.

It's all extremely cool

 

[RobParker]

It's like an early Christmas now you've started to release these addons ;-)

Great work by Chris and a massive thanks to Stu for making these available.

 

[QenTox]

I just love this one!!! Awesome add-on I have to say

I couldn't find information about three things which I really need there and then you definitely have my money!

1. Is there a block for XenPorta? My homepage is portal and it would be awesome to ha have a block (sidebar) for XenPorta showing the active competition(s).

2. I want to have for each competition entrance fee. So only members with enough collected money (points) via resources like Banking by @xfrocks or xfPoints by @Mythotical or Credits by @******* can enter the competition. The required amount will be then deducted from users account. This will be of course just an option and not required for all competitions. I am sure by doing this the site activity will increase a lot. As you will need collected money (points) to enter competitions.

3. I am not sure if I got it right this add-on is £25 and the branding free version is £50 or £25 + £50?

I have few more questions.

1. In all your screens I can only see one Question with few selectable answers. Can you have for one competition more than one question?

2. What type of Questions you can make?

Question: What is...?
a) First Possible Answer
b) Second Possible Answer
c) Third Possible Answer

(Can you select one or more correct answers?)

Question: What is model number...?
PS3

(Answer here is simple text and should be ok to accept more correct answers like PS3, PlayStation 3, PlayStation three, ps3, playstation 3, PLAYSTATION 3, ...)

Question: Could you please share your experience with...?
My experience with...

(basically anything entered here is just for collecting opinions of your contestants so all answers should be right, if they are for example at least 50 characters long).

3. Can you ask contestants to enter somewhere their Name and Address, so you don't have to ask them for this later? And by this you will also see if someone is not abusing the system and trying to enter the competition more than once.

You can turn off the count completely with CSS, though I may make it a configurable option in the future.

Also its the number of current open competitions so it will stay at that number until the competition closes or increase when others open.

I think I actually might be able to change it so that it is a count of the competitions that you have not yet entered.

@Chris Deeming please do so If there are any new competitions, then alert box with number will be displayed in navtab showing how many new competitions were created since your last visit and alert box will be there until you enter the competition. If you entered that competition, then the number in alert box will be -1. In case the number is zero, no alert box will be shown.

At the same time, you might not want to participate in that competition (the prize is jut not something you want to win). In this case there should be at the top, bottom or anywhere (your choice) an option (notice box) to click "I don't want to participate in this competition. By doing this the red alert box showing the number of active competitions will be decreased by 1. Entering the competition will decrease the number by 1 too."

For guests it will always show the number of active competitions.

 

[Chris D]

1. No. There is not a XenPorta block, nor is there plans to add one. What you can do, however, is include the template avforums_competitions_sidebar anywhere. The data it calls upon is all completely cached so the template will work and display the correct data anywhere you put it.

2. You can restrict competitions on a per usergroup basis (viewing and entering). So the best you can do here is restrict the competition so that only premium usergroups can enter. Of course if you have a points system add-on that promotes and demotes users dependent on their balance then that could sort of work. Anything beyond that would be custom development which, unfortunately, I won't have time to do for quite a long time.

3. The price for the branding free version is £50 total.

4. There's two types of question. Multiple choice (only one answer) or text input (the answer has to be exact, though it is normalised to lower case so Playstation PlayStation and playstation would all be the same... but sadly Playstation 3 and PS3 would be different answers and only one of those can be correct). Comma separated answers, @Stuart Wright? You can only add one question and I'm pretty sure it will stay like that without some custom development.

5. The ability to add custom fields to the entry form could be interesting. That would allow more flexibility. But no, right now it only captures the information that's already there for the user (email address, age, etc.).

I have just finished Competitions 1.0.1. It allows the Admin to turn off the count completely in the Admin CP options. But, also, the count now only reflects the number of open competitions that haven't yet been entered. There's no immediate plans to add a dismiss feature... depends what @Stuart Wright thinks really.

 

[QenTox]

Too bad, this was looking so good and promising and I was really looking forward to this I will have to wait then with the purchase until one really needed features will be added:

Option to have more than one question for a single competition. This is very common in competitions to have more than one question.

Also I hope I won't be the only one, who don't want to restrict competitions by usergroups, but I really want competitions to be for active members only. They get rewarded for activity (creating threadings, making posts, getting likes, ...) by money (points) and this Competition add-on could increase the activity so much. I am sure this will make their lazy asses to sign-in and be more active.

 

[Stuart Wright]

Comma separated answers, @Stuart Wright?

Having a comma separated list of possible correct answers is an easy solution to the issue of having a free text entry match to the correct answer, @Chris Deeming.
However, it's because there is possible ambiguity in the answers which can't be handled by the winner picking script that my preference is to make all of our competitions multiple choice. It's just so much easier for us and for entrants.

@QenTox there is nothing stopping us from adding multiple questions and answers further down the line, but most competition sponsors aren't interested in more than one question so this is fine for us for now. Chris needs to get on and work on his media gallery, so I'm not going to ask him for extra stuff right now. Later on, definitely.
Re permissions, I am making a video now which should explain them. In a nutshell, you can limit the ability to view and enter competitions to specific usergroups on a global and per-competition basis.
For example, usually I don't want the standard registered members (new members) to be able to enter competitions, so I will not be granting them the permission to enter. New members must earn the ability to enter competitions by getting 3 likes to advance to the next usergroup. The next usergroup up the ladder has permission to enter. In this way, users are motivated to create content which people will like in order to advance up the ladder to be able to enter the competitions.

Except on occasion, to encourage people to register, we will also have competitions with lesser prizes which new members can also enter. This is achieved by allowing new members to enter a competition in it's individual permission settings. This overrides the global competition permissions.
In this way, you can set up competitions which are open to active members only.
Interesting because we intend to use competitions in exactly the same way as you.

 

[Chris D]

This is very common in competitions to have more than one question.

I have to disagree on this point. I really do not think this is very common at all.

I enter competitions quite regularly and have done for years... I can't actually recall anything where I've had to answer multiple questions...

But, as Stuart says, all suggestions will be considered for the future but for the most part you should only buy this if it does what you want right now.

 

[Cees50]

Maybe a silly question, but i use BD banking from xfrocks. is it possible to use those earned banking credits so the users can "buy" a ticket in stead of a question to answer or both?

 

[Chris D]

Not currently but someone already made a similar suggestion.

 

[QenTox]

Few more questions from me again

1. Are the competition entries stored somewhere? So the organizer can see how many (which) members entered the competition so far and what were they answers?

2. Is the list of contestants visible for public or for competition creator (members with permission) only?

3. When the competition closes do you get some kind of results?

Example: 95 members entered this competition. 91 of them answered the question correctly.

And then the list of winners goes below this? Is it working this way?

Sorry for asking so many questions, I just find this add-on so awesome and I can imagine few other features which could make it even better, if they are not already included