XF 2.2 How to update this 2 lines of code? (neat trick to increase registrations)

[sbj]

Hey,

once a nice dev helped me to build this very small addon. Basically it has 1 phrase, 1 permission and 1 template modification.

This neat trick helped me to increase my registration numbers like 500% or more. It disallows people to see attachments if they are not logged in and forwards them to the login page when they click on an attachment.

Here are my stats for the whole year of 2020 for registrations (weekly).





Sadly, the attachment_macros template did change in the new 2.2, which is why this doesn't work anymore. Does anyone know how to update this for 2.2?

I'm quoting the xml file because it has every information one needs.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<template_modifications>
  <modification type="public" template="attachment_macros" modification_key="bs_all_attachment_macros_replace_link" execution_order="10" enabled="1" action="str_replace">
    <find><![CDATA[{{ link('attachments', $attachment) }}]]></find>
    <replace><![CDATA[{{ $xf.visitor.hasPermission('forum', 'bsAllGuestAttachmentLink') ? link('login') : link('attachments', $attachment) }}]]></replace>
  </modification>
</template_modifications>

If needed I can attach the whole addon. Thanks.

 

[Ozzy47]

Hey,

once a nice dev helped me to build this very small addon. Basically it has 1 phrase, 1 permission and 1 template modification.

This neat trick helped me to increase my registration numbers like 500% or more. It disallows people to see attachments if they are not logged in and forwards them to the login page when they click on an attachment.

Here are my stats for the whole year of 2020 for registrations (weekly).

View attachment 243245



Sadly, the attachment_macros template did change in the new 2.2, which is why this doesn't work anymore. Does anyone know how to update this for 2.2?

I'm quoting the xml file because it has every information one needs.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<template_modifications>
  <modification type="public" template="attachment_macros" modification_key="bs_all_attachment_macros_replace_link" execution_order="10" enabled="1" action="str_replace">
    <find><![CDATA[{{ link('attachments', $attachment) }}]]></find>
    <replace><![CDATA[{{ $xf.visitor.hasPermission('forum', 'bsAllGuestAttachmentLink') ? link('login') : link('attachments', $attachment) }}]]></replace>
  </modification>
</template_modifications>

If needed I can attach the whole addon. Thanks.

Send it to me in a PC and I’ll do what I can.

 

[michael.s]

Did you see a real increase in any other stats except the registrations?
Were people really staying and participating or just registering to get the attachment and leaving again?

I’m curious if it’s worth the hassle.

 

[sbj]

@michael.s

First things first, for every forum it is hard to convert visitors into participating users. Basically anybody is on his phone all day long and they leech content. Having a small screen is not helpful either for forums. We all struggle with that, me too. So this trick is not a solution to that problem.

To answer the question, the reactions slightly increased but the posts just a tiny bit. Not much else. But don't underestimate registrations.

You have to hear me out on this. My forum's content is basically 90% attachments. I have not much content going on for discussions. So in my case it is expected that this trick won't boost activity. Other forums with other setups might see more increase than me most likely.

Secondly, considering my target audience (30-60 year olds), considering my niche and my setup, I had before no real evidence if my forum is becoming successful or not. Now with all the registrations I clearly can see that people bother to register on the site. And they return back again. So my setup is successful in that regard. My forum is slowly becoming the number 1 in the scene. I have a lot of university professors and professional musicians making use of my forum and many people are citing my site as a source for their papers and dissertations. So, I can clearly see who in the scene knows my forum or not. And getting old people to register is huge actually...

Thirdly, having them registered means in future it will be much more easier to turn them into active users. One hurdle is overcome already. So they will be more inclined to write a post. Now I can send mass e-mails (like weekly digest) and automatic private conversations after successful registrations to welcome them and introduce stuff. Now one can make use of usergroup promotions and maybe some hidden content will be usable for them. I could actually make them to post at least x posts before they can download stuff, but I won't do that because I want an organic growth, not forced. And my board is not ready for activity anyway. Crucial things like a Wiki and some stuff are missing. I am not finished with my preparations after 2 years. So, once all things are finished, I can start with pumping out content which will turn into activity. That is the next big thing I will tackle on. Right now I need the registrations to establish my community. It is a huge difference if you have only 10 registered users versus now 2500 users. It shows at least that I am doing something right.

 

[wedgar]

@michael.s

First things first, for every forum it is hard to convert visitors into participating users. Basically anybody is on his phone all day long and they leech content. Having a small screen is not helpful either for forums. We all struggle with that, me too. So this trick is not a solution to that problem.

To answer the question, the reactions slightly increased but the posts just a tiny bit. Not much else. But don't underestimate registrations.

You have to hear me out on this. My forum's content is basically 90% attachments. I have not much content going on for discussions. So in my case it is expected that this trick won't boost activity. Other forums with other setups might see more increase than me most likely.

Secondly, considering my target audience (30-60 year olds), considering my niche and my setup, I had before no real evidence if my forum is becoming successful or not. Now with all the registrations I clearly can see that people bother to register on the site. And they return back again. So my setup is successful in that regard. My forum is slowly becoming the number 1 in the scene. I have a lot of university professors and professional musicians making use of my forum and many people are citing my site as a source for their papers and dissertations. So, I can clearly see who in the scene knows my forum or not. And getting old people to register is huge actually...

Thirdly, having them registered means in future it will be much more easier to turn them into active users. One hurdle is overcome already. So they will be more inclined to write a post. Now I can send mass e-mails (like weekly digest) and automatic private conversations after successful registrations to welcome them and introduce stuff. Now one can make use of usergroup promotions and maybe some hidden content will be usable for them. I could actually make them to post at least x posts before they can download stuff, but I won't do that because I want an organic growth, not forced. And my board is not ready for activity anyway. Crucial things like a Wiki and some stuff are missing. I am not finished with my preparations after 2 years. So, once all things are finished, I can start with pumping out content which will turn into activity. That is the next big thing I will tackle on. Right now I need the registrations to establish my community. It is a huge difference if you have only 10 registered users versus now 2500 users. It shows at least that I am doing something right.

Are you seeing an increase in uploads and/downloads of attachments? I think it is very good people are citing your forum in dissertations and papers. Kudos!

 

[sbj]

Are you seeing an increase in uploads and/downloads of attachments? I think it is very good people are citing your forum in dissertations and papers. Kudos!

Thanks. That is a bit tricky to answer. One must understand that in this day and age the users won't provide the content for you. You have to provide it yourself. And of course I am doing that. So an increase of uploads also includes my uploads, which influences the numbers. I can't really meassure it just for the members excluding myself.

This is how it looks:



In 2019 there was not much going on for the whole year. In 2020 with the addon activation the attachments increased as one can see. But that is also due to me having a campaign to enhance the collection of our attachments. It means I, myself uploaded stuff, as well as my mods and users. I still have 20k attachments to be ready to uploaded, but it is so tiresome to do that. Anyway, after the addon was deactivated, there was a decrease as one can see but than a quick growth. That's because randomly some musicians decided to upload of their stuff. (Btw. 99% of the attachments are PDF files as in music sheet/scores). Than in August because of personal reasons I stopped frequenting my own forum and any other website I was active. Was not motivated and one can see that once the captain left the site, the numbers decreased dramatically. Now, since I am back again in action, a small growth has started again. So, not sure of how much of this can be addressed to the neat registration trick, or to myself or to just random occurences. Sadly there are no advanced metrics about new registrations and attachment usage, so I can't definitely tell.
And there are no stats about downloads at all, except for this stat I have from my addon which includes bots sadly:



If I had to make an educated guess from my own experience, I can say that the number of downloads increased very much without a doubt. Covid hit all of us hard but my niche got the better side of the things, at least on the web. Due to musicians being at home most of the time, they spend more time on the internet. In April I had 1000 members (the start of covid). Now today I have over 2500 members after 9 months. I also get more inquiries about specific attachments and asking me to correct some wrong information. My main target audience sits on Facebook actually. So, I have lots of private convos on Facebook which don't show in the stats.

To sum it up, in my opinion there is no downside for this neat trick. A registration is a registration. Even if it doesn't turn into activity, it enhances the chances it might do in the long run.