@rdn,
Let me clarify how Top Contributors of the Month works with M2N/TrophyEssentials for awarding points and ranking users.
When M2N/TrophyEssentials is installed, the add-on awards cumulative trophies for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place each month. If a user keeps getting 1st place, they’ll earn the points set for the 1st place cumulative trophy every month they achieve it. The same goes for 2nd or 3rd place—they’ll accumulate the points for those trophies each time they rank there. These points show up on the user’s trophy page under the “Cumulative Trophies” section, so you can see their total points for each ranking over time.
For determining who gets 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place each month, the add-on uses the “Ranking metric” you set in the add-on options. If you choose “Trophy Points” as the metric, it only counts the standard XenForo trophy points earned by users in the past month (the same points displayed in the Top Contributors widget). It does not include the cumulative points from M2N/TrophyEssentials for ranking purposes. For example, points from actions like best solution or new thread (as shown on your trophies page) won’t affect the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place rankings if you’re using the “Trophy Points” metric.
If you want to rank users based on post count instead, you can set the metric to “Posts” in the options, and it will use the number of posts from the past month, as shown in the widget.
Hopefully, this clears up how the points and rankings work!
