Suggestions To Enhance The Module (Supporters module) Reply to topic

Phoenix,
Loving your work on 9.1.2 and thanks for incorporating my suggestions on the currency symbols.

We've got a few other suggestions that you may wish to consider for future releases:

1. Quite a number of sites (including DFCMS & ours) link donations to some sort of user ranks. Currently this is done manually but we would welcome some sort of automation? Perhaps a page on the admin side which highlights users who are eligible for a rank upgrade. You could then select them in bulk or individually for their rank change ....

2. We also offer the ability for users to donate to our site via direct bank transfer and are keen to promote this method (no pesky paypal charges!). Currently we then add the donation manually using the admin interface. Whilst fine this does break the link to the username on the module page.

Both of these would be really useful for us and we'd be very keen to see them implemented but we're obviously aware that you're a busy man!

1. I did actually incorporate an automated group setup in another system I converted Treasury to, but removed it because the groups structure there wasn't as functional as DragonflyCMS. So I find it amusing that I have neglected to add it to DragonflyCMS - thanks for the suggestion.

A rough outline would be,
• in config, a choice to use an existing Group name, or for people to add a group that can then be selected in admin.
• a list of donors, with totals based on site currency, their existing rank, maybe just a link to where it can be changed.

It could be made a whole lot more interactive, but that would have to make the assumption that all ranks would be donation based, which mostly won't be true.

Come to think of it, if it falls into place easily, I may just build a separate complete Supporters summary, as a module packaged with Treasury, with automatic rankings there, which would highlight disparities and a recommendation for change in the official ranks system, linking in a newly opened page to their account, ready for change. User totals could also be displayed (admin/user only).

2) I'll check what breaks the link, maybe not picking up the user_id, or it needs a special status flag. hmm, maybe what is breaking it is the Tax Id which needs to be unique for each donation in order to be picked up in the block and the module summary?
(deep in the history of Nuke Treasury, it was setup to interface with a complete accounting package, which explains some of its apparent oddities - perhaps removing the Tax ID will resolve that issue)

EDIT: whew, blew me away, was just checking my email and noticed a Treasury advisory, then saw it on the main page - many thanks and much appreciated. Guess I have some incentive to fulfill what I just stated above It's kinda funny because, whilst I check the main page frequently, and the last posts block, I just don't look up a couple of inches.

Did I mention that this module is very important to us and hence we consider your continued support for it to be invaluable ....... Some of your posts on the main site have also helped us a lot.

Anyway, I love your idea of a supporters summary. Its definitely a great next step development for the module ....

I agree with you that the existing rank structure (based on posts) needs to be retained but a parallel 'supporters' rank structure would also be great. I'm not sure if you have had a look at the module on our site but I'm sure that will show you what we mean ......

aha, I understand now, and I had no idea of the extent to which you use it - a Supporters module does appear to be exactly what you need - the idea was that it would display in a similar manner to the existing Groups or even Members List module, not necessarily linked to Groups, but with sufficient real estate available so that a couple of extra columns will be displayed for admin use.

In any event, a rank generated through a Supporters module could be encoded into your forums as an extra rank for display there - I've seen the odd hack posted around the place for extra ranks.

Under that scenario, an automatic interactive module is ideal, which would negate the need for manual rank updates, since it doesn't need a relationship with Groups. At the same time, we don't want to add an extra database query onto your server load, so care is needed in how it's done. (for that matter, I do need to restructure Treasury to reduce the load from the block).

Sounds like it may be time for me to finish another little item on my ToDo list - the ability to provide selectable periodic summaries of donations.

Just to clarify, when you say "break the link to the username on the module page", do you mean it literally breaks the hyper-link to the Your_Account section, or that the name just doesn't appear? I suspect this little bit of code in the query, "GROUP BY txn_id", is the cause of your problem.

To clear up the easy one ....

The 'broken link' is on the module page - the users' name is displayed but the hyperlink doesn't work. I'm not sure that the txn_id is the problem as this is also an issue when the user closes paypal before they return to the site. In that case I always copy the email details (including txn_id) into the admin page. Looking at the DB it would appear that the only field missing is the email address ....

Having had another think about it I'm not sure about the separate rank structure - we try and keep our DF installs as vanilla as possible. Another field in the user table and non standard files is something I think we could live without. Much better (IMHO) would be a simple way to link donations to a series of special ranks ..... i.e < £10 = specialrank1, < £20=specialrank2, etc .....

The admin would then track when users had donated but hadn't been credited with their latest ranks. The admin could then select the rank to award them ..... (we have special ranks for moderators who donate too....)

Hope that is relatively clear?

Well, what a simple, dumb mistake that was

I generated the user_id okay - simply didn't add it to the database when the manual entry was processed.

Updated modules/Treasury/admin/index.inc attached.

P.S. I've settled on modifying the Memberslist as a Supporters module - minimal queries with maximum info.

P.P.S. your theme is using the wrong document header for 9.1.1, should be,
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

For xhtml 1.0, the main page generates quite a few compliance errors (338),
validator.w3.org/check...;verbose=1
Should you have some display problem, they may mask the real cause, resulting in delays in problem solving.

Well that fix works like a dream so thank you very much. Obviously I'm now awaiting with eager anticipation for the supporters module!!

Cheers for the spot on the theme - hopefully we should get that sorted in the next couple of days.

How does this look?
nukebiz.com/Supporters.html

(it currently shows what admin would see)

I like it (a lot!) but have a few suggestions:

1. I think the default sort order should be by date of last received donation.

2. You may also like to offer other navigation options such as jump to page x.

3. Would it be possible to have a bulk rank change option .... such as via a tick box and apply tpe system.

4. Currently I assume that the tick box/cross takes you to the individual's admin profile editor?

Oh BTW, I gather that your comment on the theme has just saved the other site admin quite a bit of frustrated hair tearing!

1. without thinking too much, maybe a little tricky, but I'll try

2. the pagination does work - I'll reduce it from 25 so you can see.

3. I'm reluctant to do a bulk option, but I could make the click do the change immediately, and return.

4. yes, in fact the link goes directly to the section where you change that user's rank, though I could make it do as per (3) above.

edit: oops, pagination did work - looks like I've broken something

edit2: pagination fixed, and what a bugger it was to fix

I like the modifications that you've made but believe that point 1 is likely to be pretty important once you get more than a few pages of supporters!

okay, point 1 is done, and in the sort
(lucky I dumped that extra column)

what's next?

Ermmm ...... looks good to go to me! Perhaps we could conduct a beta test and get back to you?

I just need to do the admin interface and some operational notes for a beta.

atm, the supporters ranks table is changed directly through the database, though once changed, it doesn't need adjustment. For a pre-beta the install does build the table, but you would need to initially edit via phpmyadmin.

The only other question is the link to change the rank - atm, it goes to the member privileges area for that user to select the proposed rank. The alternative is to actually change the user's rank in the database, bypassing that step. At this stage, the choice is yours.

Only 2 issues I can see with the latter:
a) it is irreversible once the button is hit, though I could introduce an alert pop-up, making it 2 clicks.
b) it's not much use for the special ranks for your moderators etc.

Okay, here's the beta, with admin and basic ReadMe file.

nukebiz.com/Downloads/...id=55.html

I'm about to head into the weekend, so I will only be online intermittently during the next couple of days - hopefully that will be irrelevant