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[emoney emoney]

Last week I released ibEconomy 2.0. This version has been completely updated to work with 3.2. Virtually every template was rewritten and many of the features were tweaked to provide a better experience and of course to work within the 3.2 framework. One goal was to keep the templates as “stock” as possible, to minimize any future conflicts with third-party skins (one problem ibEconomy 1.x had). So far so good on that front.

One thing that is particularly noteworthy is a new hook which displays a box of “shop items” (or whatever type of items your community might refer to them as) on the left side of posts, beneath the avatar and poster info. This was a heavily requested feature, so I hope it is found well. One example would be to show off your favorite video games. Your community could have a shop category titled “Video Games” and within this category could be dozens of instances of the “Blank Unusable Item” which could be named after a specific game and the box art or main character artwork could be used for the item image. Then in threads, next to posts, a specified number of those favorite game items would be on display, with the title viewable on mouseover in that new IPB quick info balloon.

 new_points_button_and_shopitem_displays.png   55.13K   24 downloads

Among the other new features is an optional setting to restrict users from viewing other’s transactions, while ibEconomy administrators can still view all. Also included is a new “dummy” shop item, called Send PM to ID, which could be used for all types of things, such as selling items in ibEconomy for points. For example, if you want the user to be able to buy something and you want to be notified when they do so (user Eric bought a coffee mug at X:YZ), and you want to allow the user to input information into that notification (e.g. a shipping address) then this new shop item would be perfect.

But, what might not be so apparent up to this point is that ibEconomy 2.0 now features its own plug-in system. In ACP the ibEconomy group settings include plug-in group settings. In the public ibEconomy settings page any extra plug-in settings will also be displayed. All the public-side tabs and left-side tabs are now generated dynamically based on the current plug-ins installed, in addition to the user’s permission level and the modules’ enabled/disabled state. So, for example, someone could write a plug-in to display the most owned shop items, and choose to display it within a Shop tab in a new Most Popular left-side tab.

Also, going along with the nature of plug-ins, there is now a cart_type folder which contains a file for each item that can be purchased through the ibEconomy Shopping Cart. Right now, it contains only the “primitive” types such as Shopitem, Bank, Lottery Ticket, etc, but because of this new modular system we have the opportunity to write plug-ins to sell other types as well.

Once I’ve released one or two of my own plug-ins (perhaps one with a new cart-ready type) and any issues have been ironed out, I will write documentation to show how to create an ibEconomy plug-in.

So, now that we are all caught up, I introduce the first of hopefully many ibEconomy plug-ins: (e32) Points Per Blog Beta 1. It is recommended to only install on test boards during the Beta period, however I plan on releasing version 1.0 relatively soon thereafter. Of course, you need IPB 3.2 and ibEconomy 2.0. Also, if you downloaded ibEconomy 2.0 before August 6th then you will need to re-download the latest version and re-upload the files (there was a hole in the plug-in system integration code in that initial release). Version 2.0.1, released just now, includes this fix and also makes it easier for members to purchase lottery tickets.


Thanks to everyone who donated during the ibEconomy Needs You donation drive. I was able to buy IP.Blog and IP.Download with the proceeds, which of course were needed to develop the corresponding plug-ins.

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[emoney emoney]

BTW, if anyone would care to test, Points Per Blog has been installed here. You can get 1,000 points for starting a new blog. Or 50 points per comment.

[Dream]

nice work

[Upgrade]

Thanks man for your work

[Thanks]

thnks =))

[ppfree]

thanks