What happens when...

[ryancbarnes]

you set your "Max Featured Members" to say... 10... and an 11th wants to become "Featured"?

 

[Mark]

I think you mean "Number Of Premium Members To Feature"

This function is only for plugins that display premium members, its up to the plugin how to select the members. Some might order by random, others might order by rank or premium start date. This setting has no effect on a "vanilla" list.

 

[ryancbarnes]

Okay, maybe I'm thinking of this wrong then.

Two questions spawned from your answer...
1. If I add $featured_member in my skin, does that list all the featured members first?

2. Also... what happens if lets say, in January I have my premium user price at $5/week. Someone purchases 20 weeks worth. Then, in March, raise the price to $10... does the person who has 20 weeks get changed at all, or do they keep their remaining number of 20 weeks?

 

[Mark]

1) featured member = 1 randomly selected site. Featured member has nothing to do with "premium members" which are "paid". Infact this should probably be renamed to "Random member".

2) all transactions are prepaid. Raising prices will have no effect on existing premium accounts.

 

[ryancbarnes]

Okay, that makes more sense. Next question is:

Do Premium Members get listed first, or do they just get a pretty border around them with a bigger banner?

 

[Basti]

Nope, not listed first. They recievee more visibility throughout the list. Highlighted ranking box, possibly bigger banner, listed in sidebar, listed into carousel plugin ( rotating premium screenshots, 3+ premium required )
As of 0.7 Beta you can also set "Hits In Boost" for premium. xx Hits in daily, weekly, monthly. You can set them independly or all 3 together

 

[ryancbarnes]

Oh wow, this should be pretty amazing stuff then.

1. So the boosts are like, auto-hits to bump up their rankings?

2. When you say 3+ premium, are you referring to 3 weeks of Premium bought?

 

[Basti]

1. exactly
2. The current version of the carousel plugin requires 3+ premium members on your list, and the screenshots.
Since its a rotating screenshot plugin it requires 3+ premium, else it stays hidden, as 3 is the breakpoint where rotating kicks in

 

[ryancbarnes]

That's awesome! Do we know when 0.7 is coming out?

Also, do we have a tutorial or what-not for skinning yet?

I saw a site that was running ATS/Visio that had their membership listing, with banners 300x300, and 3 members wide so it was like
#1, #2, #3
#4, #5, #6 etc...

Is that a plugin they wrote/have or is that some fancy skinning?

 

[Basti]

That is just normal html/css coding using a fixed width left floated div in the ranking html files

Creating/modifying is also quite simple, but does require some html, css knowledge. A full tutorrial on creating a skin does not exist, as plently html turoials are all over the web. However a few hints are listed here http://visiolist.com/docs/styles-design

Basicly code your html, then input the VL template tags ( looking through parabola is the easiest, as it have all the currently used tags )

EDIT: 0.7 Beta was sheduled for 12th feb. but this version requires heavy testing on our side before we release it. Thats why it was delayed again, an error came up.

 

[Anna]

What a nice little discussion we have here! Have to add some q though about premium membership, since we are talking about that: Had a look at the settings for PM's. There is a setting as said above for "number of PM to show" - I suppose that is for the numbers of PM to show in the sidebar, correct? And in such case, is the carousel affected as well? What is the maximum PM shown by the carousel plugin? And what happens with these two plugins when you have say 20 premium mebers but only selected to show say 5? Mark wrote that it is up to the plugin how to handle it - so how the premium membership and carousel plugin handle this?

 

[Basti]

Hmm i think that feature is a little misplaced/misconfigured in the core if its just for plugins. Not that any plugin make use of it till now. If a plugin needs such settings it should be added to the plugin itself.
Carousel is currently hardcoded to 5 random premium. Personally i think it should show all premium, ppl who buy it might not like it if they dont see their site on the first load and have to reload a few times.
Or we remove that setting out of the core and put it for the carousel plugin so the admin can decide how many to show.

As for the core premium sidebar list, it lists the latest 5 premium members


My personal thought on this is:
core sidebar list: let the current setting handle that. 0 to show all, 5 or whatever to set a fixed number on latest premium
Plugin settings: each plugin for premium gets their own setting, same as above

Gotto have a talk with Mark before we release 0.7, either way is easy to handle but needs some conversation

 

[Mark]

lets not overthink this the logic of this setting is simple:

1) We can use this setting in the admin for the number of premium members to show, this can be used by plugin creators if they want.
2) a plugin can include its own setting for this, there is no reason to force all plugins to adhere to this setting.

basically this setting is just a "base", but that doesnt mean it needs to be applied to all situations.

the original question was about the sort order and what happens beyond that setting, again that is up to the plugin author how to order the members.

i see no reason to change this, its setup for ease and maximum flexibility

 

[Basti]

Yet it simply does nothing and properbly confuse a lot of admins. Properbly some more clear info text is needed. That it is some sort of presettings for possible future plugins and has yet no effect

 

[Mark]

indeed, I will add to the language definition explaining this better, I had assumed every list would display the premium members in the sidebar or elsewhere on the site where this setting would be important.

 

[Basti]

Properbly they display them there, but then we should make use of that config variable. Thats why i found it strange in the first post. Nothing makes use of this. sidebar is still hardcoded

 

[Morus]

How can I can display more than 1 Featured members?

I'm trying modify that line in /sources/misc/skin.php but no luck.

    // Featured member
 
    if ($CONF['featured_member'] && $TMPL['num_members']) {
      $result = $DB->select_limit("SELECT username, url, title, description, banner_url FROM {$CONF['sql_prefix']}_sites WHERE active = 1 ORDER BY RAND()", 1, 0, __FILE__, __LINE__);
      $row = $DB->fetch_array($result);
      $TMPL = array_merge($TMPL, $row);

 

[Mark]

Need to make a plugin for this because editing the core files is a no no if your feeling adventurous take the newest members plugin and use that as a base for your new plugin, use this query to select a random member:

the example below would select 55 random members, cahnge this to the number you want to show.

$result = $DB->select_limit("SELECT username, url, title, description, banner_url FROM {$CONF['sql_prefix']}_sites WHERE active = 1 ORDER BY RAND()", 55, 0, __FILE__, __LINE__);

if this is beyond your abilities, please post in the plugin request section.

 

[Morus]

I changed it in core the numbers to 55 but it didnt show me 55, still 1 (just to check). I was looking at newest members plugin to modify it to my needs. need to just understand it

 

[Mark]

you cannot just edit that number in skin.php it wont work, you need to make a plugin.