Competitions for XenForo

Have you guys seen this competition mod for xenforo yet?
http://xenforo.com/community/resources/competitions-for-xenforo.2344/

I'm looking it over and will likely add it here to help start up our competitions again on Admin Talk.



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 competition thumbnail images
• Permissions to view/enter/create/open and publish competitions

The basics include

• Rich text editor for competition details
• Set the date the competition runs from and to
• Set the number of winners and runners up
• Easy set up of question and answer with optional multiple choice options
• Image upload with crop tool with optional Alt/Title text, caption and link URL

Restrictions and conditions include

• Set usergroup permission to view, enter, create, open and publish competitions globally and on a per competition basis
• Optional age restriction to enter
• Optional country restriction to enter (requires GeoIP for PHP)
• Optional additional restriction rich text
• Optional opt in/opt out tick boxes with marketing message to create a marketing list for the competition sponsor

Options include

• Orient the sidebar on the right or left (the competition images are displayed in a sidebar)
• Force a competition's thumbnail image on the home page sidebar block (when there are several competitions, they are normally picked randomly)
• Optional forum specified for the creation of an associated discussion

 

What do yo like about it?

 

Basically all of this, especially the 3rd bullet.

• 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 competition thumbnail images
• Permissions to view/enter/create/open and publish competitions

 

I've picked up a copy of it already but have not had a change to install it. I like all of the options it offers and that it is, for the most, automated once the competition is configured. The only weak part that I can find fault with it is the user eligibility criteria is pretty basic and I would've prefered that it be more flexible along the lines of XF notices to be able to say that only users with X amount of posts can enter and/or only users registered for X amount of days can enter. As it is now a new usergroup would need to be set up for the criteria you want and then restrict the eligible users to that group.

 

This is the type of thing I need to research a bit more. I'd like to use it for a posting competition and be able to count post, threads and likes.
Is that currently possible?

 

Same for my sites.

Have you watched the video Stuart created? It is lengthy but gives a good idea of what to expect. In my head, at the moment, what I can see happening is that I create a new user group with the selections I want, run the cron job to promote users to the new group, and then select that group as being eligible for entering. Then for the next competition clearing out all users from the group, resetting the group criteria, and repeating. Running multiple competitions at the same though could be annoying.

 

I watched it last night but I was pretty tried at that point.
I need to watch it again.

 

I don't think it counts posts and such. Most big sites just run entry competitions. It looks like this is what it is. You enter for a chance to win.

 

boo!

 

Yes, install it! I'd like to see it run from a user point of view before I jump in and install it on my forums.

 

No, it doesn't allow for posts counts or anything; that is what I was alluding to about the eligibility criteria. The work-around I described is feasible but for larger sites could be annoying.

 

Brandon is referring to contests that count peoples posts, threads, and referrals during the contest. This won't do that.

 

{Looks back in thread....} Yep, it won't do that either.