Awards Plugin for Vanilla Forums is now available!

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You can buy it from Awards Plugin page.

The Awards (Badges) Plugin for Vanilla Forums is now available. RC1 phase has been completed, and the plugin is available for use on  your Production websites. Great care has been taken in testing it in multiple environments and configurations, and you can finally introduce Badges to your Community based on self-hosted Vanilla Forums.

As usual, plugin comes with professional support and a full year of free upgrades. To celebrate the release, plugin is now on sale for a limited time. Grab your licence before the special offer expires!

Awards/Badges for Vanilla Forums (RC1) is available!

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You can buy it from Awards Plugin page.

It took longer than I thought, but the Badges/Awards Plugin for Vanilla Forums 2.0 is now in RC1 stage. This means that Beta testing phase was completed for the existing features, and the plugin is now ready. Latest version includes many bug fixes, an improved User Interface and the ability of exporting and importing Awards and related data with just a few clicks. Also, plugin comes with a set of pre-configured Awards and Classes, to help you getting started with your Community. To view a full list of plugin’s current and upcoming features, please visit the Awards Plugin page in the shop.

More good news: Release Discount!

To celebrate this important release, you can avail of 10% discount on the regular price by using the coupon code awds-10-0513. The code is valid for the first ten orders of the plugin, and it expires on the 15/05/2013, so make sure you get your licence quickly!

Some screenshots

As they say, pictures are worth a thousand words, so here are some screenshots from latest version, showing some of plugin’s great features. The target was to make something that looked great and worked great, and I think we got it!

Awards/Badges for Vanilla Forums (Preview Release) has been released!

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Kind of a late update, as the Preview Release was distributed on 07/04/2013 to the Users who registered their interest in becoming early adopters. Just a couple of days passed, and I already received tons of valuable feedback from them. The response, so far, has been enthusiastic, and I’m working to make the Awards Plugin even better.

What’s next?

Next release will be ready soon, with several bug fixes and new features, one of which will be the ability of importing and exporting Awards/Badges and Award Classes in a couple of clicks. This will introduce the possibility of creating Awards sets that can be shared with other Vanilla Forums owners.

Also, the Awards plugin is just the first step in the creation of a complete Reputation Management System for Vanilla Forums, which will include highly sought after features, such as Reactions and Ranks (currently in development).

The date of the Preview Release 2 will be announced soon, so keep an eye on our site!

Vanilla Badges – Update

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Due to an issue beyond my control, I could not meet the deadline for Preview Release for Vanilla Awards (Badges). The release is now scheduled after Easter, on 06/04/2013.

I will use the additional time to fix some issues I found and to add some more features to the plugin. One of them, the Awards Leaderboard is complete (screenshot below).

I would like to thank all the readers who registered for the Preview Release and apologies for the delay. I wish all of you a great Easter!

Awards Leaderboard screenshot

Awards - Leaderboard

Badges Plugin for Vanilla Forums is coming!

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Vanilla Awards Announcemente PostIt took a lot of time and effort, but the first version of the Badges/Awards Plugin for Vanilla Forums 2.0 is coming out soon! This plugin was developed following the requests and feedback of several Users, and it has be named Awards to avoid confusion with the free Badges plugin released recently.

Based on current schedule, the Preview Release should be available by 29/03/2013.

Some of the features

Here are some of the features that this first version will include:

  • Fully customisable set of Rules.
  • Support for virtually unlimited Badges, each with its own image.
  • Support for virtually unlimited Badge Categories, each with its own image and CSS style (for advanced Users).
  • Ranking Points (to be used with Ranking Plugin, in development).
  • Tracking and notification of awarded Badges.
  • Convenient Admin interface.
  • Badges Widget, to show everybody your achievements.

New features are being added as you read, so stay tuned for the big day! 🙂

Sneak peek

Here are two screenshots of the plugin in its current status. Just a bit more polishing, and it will be ready to go!

Preview Release

Initially, a Preview Release of the plugin will provided at a discounted price to a few selected Users who agreed to become early adopters, and who are aware that, due to the plugin complexity, there may be some minor issues still to be solved.

If you would like to be considered for the pilot, please register your interest using the Contact page.

Thanks for your patience, and see you soon on release day!

The base image for the badge is courtesy of digitalart/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

New update for Post Scheduler plugin!

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I’m happy to announce that now Post Scheduler plugin also delay the delivery notifications of New Discussions to the scheduled date and time. It wasn’t easy to implement such feature on both Vanilla 2.0 and 2.1b, as none of them are designed to allow stopping a notification before it’s sent, but it’s now done.

How to upgrade

To get the latest version, simply use the links you received when you purchased the plugin. Please note that the new version requires the Cron Jobs Plugin, available free of charge, and the configuration of a Cron Job to deliver the scheduled notifications.

Before you install the new version, please make sure you read the instructions contained in the readme.html file included in the zip file.

Important

Due to recent developments, price of Post Scheduler and other plugins is due to increase from the 11th of March, 2013. If you are interested in any of them, make sure you get them before the price go up!

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Mrs Taylor of KHT Montessori for providing the feedback that led to the development of this new feature.