Coming soon to v11: Achievements

Hello everyone,

I thought I would give you all a look at a new non-bundled addon in the works for Composr CMS v11: achievements.

Achievements are badges that members and staff can earn (on their profile and forum posts) for meeting certain requirements. The achievements system is very flexible; you can define your own achievements and their settings and requirements (called "qualifications"). A "qualification" is a piece of logic defined as a hook which returns a number completed and a number required.

For each achievement, you can define multiple qualifications ("AND"… must meet all of them), or you can define sets of qualifications ("OR"… you only have to complete one of the sets to earn the achievement).

Achievements can also be marked read-only (you cannot earn them if you did not already earn them), permanent (once you earn it, it cannot be revoked if you later no-longer meet the requirements), or hidden (not publicly visible, like a secret achievement).

You can use your own image as the badge… either as an absolute URL, relative path, or theme image code.

The entire configuration of the achievements system is defined as an XML file. A default set of achievements will be included for you when installing the addon to help you get started.

A tutorial will also be written and put up on composr.app .

Achievements module showing available achievements and the member's progress towards earning them

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XML configuration for achievements

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Now, the achievements system is VERY complex. And calculating progress requires a lot of calculations and queries. As such, progress is not real-time. Instead, it is calculated for a member on each day they log in. And the system scheduler will randomly re-calculate achievement progress for 5 members on every cycle.

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Why did I decide to develop such a complex non-bundled addon? Actually, this is primarily for composr.app . As we are switching to a Bazaar (community support) model, I wanted to come up with more ways to encourage members to interact and contribute. And I felt an achievements system is a huge way that can be done.

The idea of achievements actually originated from Chris Graham: 0000871: Admin achievements system (gamification) - Composr CMS feature tracker . The original premise was to encourage webmasters to explore the full range of Composr features; they would earn achievements for setting up certain content / pages and doing different things. I plan to implement these as well, but they will be "hidden" achievements since particularly only staff would get those. Most would be easy to implement because most log an action in the actionlog when completed. And there is a qualifications hook for counting the number of a specific action in the actionlog done by a member.

Additional screenshots to showcase how the achievements will be displayed… just a simple flex grid of achievements a member earned both on their profile and on their Conversr forum posts.

Hovering over an achievement will display its title and the date/time the member earned it.

Clicking one will take you to the achievements page and scroll down to the achievement you clicked.

Profile

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Forum posts (Conversr only)

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(Karma is a separate non-bundled addon new to v11 as well… it is already available for use)

I've made a few adjustments to the styling of the achievements screen…

• Progress bar has a border; no seeded background by default because it clashed with the zebra stripes of the table
• I put each requirement in a box, and the box is color-coded according to if the requirement is met (red = no, green = yes)
• I made the "or" more visible to clearly indicate you do not have to complete all requirements, and to separate the groups of requirements

Achievements screen

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