ftp.wwiv.com/ftp.wwiv.com.zip/ftp.wwiv.com/pub/BBS/POSTER20.ZIP/POSTER.DOC

Text File | 1993-01-13 | 21KB | 496 lines

 ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
 │                      Poster 2.0  - (C) 1990,93 Bill Bolden                │
 └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

                               License Agreement

Poster is (C)1990,93 Bill Bolden. This program is offered using the shareware
system of program evaluation.  Using this system, the user is given the
opportunity to test this program for a reasonable period of time which I
consider to be one month. After that period, the user is expected to either
register the program as outlined in REGISTER.DOC or discontinue its use.
Poster is neither Freeware nor Public Domain.

                                 Distribution

You are free to distribute POSTER as long as no files are deleted or modified
in the .ZIP.  Poster can not be distributed by anyone who charges a specific
fee for the program or if POSTER is bundled with any other program in any way.

                                 Registration

Registration of Poster certainly won't break you as it only costs $6.00.
Please see the REGISTER.DOC that should be with the .ZIP that contained
POSTER.  I reserve the right to add features that are only available to
registered users.  Registration of POSTER is separate from TIME DOOR.
POSTER's prize function will not work unless you have a registered copy of
Time Door. However, the rest of the functions will still work.

                                    Support

Support of POSTER is done through Crown Jewel BBS in Lake Wales Florida
[phone].


                                What is Poster?

Long ago there was a local BBS run on an Apple using some software that I have
forgotten. This BBS was filled with messages mainly because the sysop had a
top poster list.  Well, shortly after, I wrote a program that would create a
Top Ten List for our BBS. Even though, I was asked to release the program I
never did because Time Door was taking up a good portion of my time. When
Wildcat! 3.0 came out, I decided to rewrite Poster with the intention of
releasing it.  Since Wildcat! 3.0 keeps track of the number of messages
posted, you may wonder why you would need this program. Well, there are two
good reasons to use Poster. First of all, Poster is a MONTHLY contest. The
advantage of a monthly contest is that new users have a chance and your better
posters are not allowed to rest on their past success. Second, Poster will
give your users PRIZES of time if you are a Registered user of Time Door. This
means you can basically set the program up, let it run and forget about it.

Make sure you read the section on "Running a successful Posting Contest" for
some hints on making this program do its job for you.


                                 Requirements

A REGISTERED copy of Time Door is required for the prize function to work.
Poster will still create its bulletins and keep track of winners even if you
don't have a copy of Time Door.


                         How to interact with Poster.

Poster is COMMAND LINE DRIVEN.  To get a list of command line options, just
type POSTER without any command line.


                                  POSTER EDIT

POSTER EDIT will allow you to edit user entries. This is to lower or raise
user's number of messages posted. You can also delete users using this option.
When you type POSTER EDIT, you will be shown a scroll window with all users.
Move the highlight bar to the user you want to edit and press ENTER. Follow
the prompts from there.

                               POSTER CONFIGURE

This will allow you to configure POSTER. Please see the section entitled
"Configuring Poster" for complete details on this option.

                              POSTER FILENAME.EXT

POSTER FILENAME.EXT will read the file FILENAME.EXT for messages. Of course,
you would replace FILENAME.EXT with your activity log names (with complete
paths). For example, POSTER ACTIVITY.001 will read ACTIVITY.001 and then
create all your bulletins.  If you don't want to create the bulletins after
you read the logs then add a /R after the file name. If you have a multinode
system, please read the section on Multinode systems for more information on
the /R switch.  You can use wildcards when specifying file names. For example,
POSTER ACTIVITY.* would read all your activity logs and create the bulletins.
WARNING, when using wildcards, be very careful to not include files that you
don't want read. For example, if a file called ACTIVITY.EXE existed using
POSTER ACTIVITY.* would cause POSTER to read the .EXE file.


                                POSTER BULLETIN

POSTER BULLETIN will create all bulletins as specified in CONFIGURE.


Poster assumes that you delete your activity logs on a daily basis and that
you are running a single line system. If that description doesn't fit your
BBS, don't worry as POSTER offers options to take care of multinode systems
and systems that don't delete their activity logs on a daily basis.





























                              Configuring Poster

To configure POSTER, you type POSTER CONFIGURE from the DOS prompt.  You will
then be given a MENU of configuration options. This section explains those
options.

                               General Settings

General settings is the most important part of the configuration. You should
check this section before running Poster in your event.  This section
describes all the configuration fields. To go from field to field you can use
the arrow keys. When you are done configuring the door, press ESCape to save
the changes.

Path to top 10 Bulletin: This is the full name and path to the bulletin that
will be created daily. This bulletin lists your top 10 posters and some
message totals.  It is recommended that you make this bulletin a HELLOX type
bulletin.  If this field is left blank, this bulletin will not be created.
Example: C:\WC30\DISP\HELLO1.BBS

Path to Bulletin #2: This bulletin contains a alphabetized list of all posters
on your system for the contest. This bulletin can get big and it is
recommended that you make this a bulletin available from your bulletin menu.
If this field is left blank, this bulletin will not be created.
Example: C:\WC30\BULL\BULL1.BBS

Path to Time Door: This is the path to your Time Door directory. Poster
reads and writes to your TIME.DAT and TIME.PRZ and it needs this directory to
find those files. If this field is left blank, time prizes will not be given.
If you don't use Time Door, leave this field blank.
Example: C:\DOOR\TIMEDOOR\  NOTE: the last "\" is important and necessary.

Before: Anything put in this field will be put before your Top Ten bulletin
and the Winner Bulletin. Use this field to add Wildcat! codes to your liking.
On our system, we like to clear the screen before the bulletin and make the
bulletin unstoppable by the space bar. So we use the example on our system.
Example: @CLS@@NOSTOP@

After: Anything put in this field will be put AFTER your Top Ten Bulletin and
the Winner Bulletin. Use this field to add Wildcat! codes after the bulletins.
On our system, we put a pause after the bulletins and use the example.
Example: @PAUSE@

Reset Day: This is the day of the month that the contest is reset. When this
day of the month is reached, the Winner Bulletin is created, the Time Prizes
are given (if applicable) and the contest is reset.  This happens whenever the
program is run for any reason on the correct day.  On our system, we reset the
contest on the 2nd so we set this field to 2.
Example: 2

Prizes: In the next 20 fields, you set the prizes for each position in the
final contest.  Prizes that are set to a zero amount. Prizes that are given
for more than 1 day will be Time Period Prizes. Prizes given for 1 or 0 days
will be One Time Prizes.

Last Winner: This is the last person to win the monthly contest. You can
change this field if you wish but it serves no configuration purpose.

Part of Log to read: This tells Time Door which part of the LOG you want to
read.  If you set this to WHOLE, the whole log will be read. If you set it to
YESTERDAY, only messages posted yesterday will count.  See "Using Poster on
Large Activity Logs" for more information on this field. Press the Space Bar
to toggle this option.



                            General Settings (cont)

Header: This is the top banner for the daily Top Ten bulletin.
Example: Crown Jewel BBS's Monthly Top Ten Poster Contest

Footer: This is the bottom banner for the daily Top Ten Bulletin.
Example: Win time in Time Door by just being on this list!

Ascii Winners List: This file is created on the reset day and contains
a list of the top ten names in ASCII format with one name per line.
You can use this as an import list for Dave Cody's Postmaster program which
would allow you to send a letter to every user congratulating them for
being in the top ten.  With a couple commands in your batch file, you
can do this unattended.


Path to Winner Bulletin: At the end of the monthly contest, Time Door will
create a bulletin listing all the previous winners. We suggest you copy this
to a HELLOXN or bulletin file.
Example: C:\WC30\DISP\HELLO1N.BBS

                             Conference Weighting

At times you may want to encourage users to post messages in a conference.
This section will allow you to set "weight" certain conferences heavier.
To do this, first select the conference weighting option. You will then
see a list of your current conference weights.  Pick the conference you
want to change and a window will appear.

When asked for the weighting, enter a positive integer value. For example,
0,1,2,3,4. Values like -1 or 1.2 will not work.  When a user posts a message
in a weighted conference, that message will be multiplied by the weight.
So if the conference weight is 2 and a user posts a message for 10 lines, they
will be credited with 2 messages and 20 lines.

You can also use the conference weighting to discourage your users to post
messages in a specific conference. For example, by setting the conference
weight to "0", you will be essentially making any message posted in that
conference worthless.   If you have a private mail conference, this is a
good thing to do that conference.

This option works best when Poster is run in the same directory as your
CONFDESC.DAT which is located in your node home directory.  So, you should run
Poster from your node home directory but its NOT necessary.

CAVEATS!

Poster has limits of about 32,000 messages and lines by a single user. I
recommend that the conference weighting set no larger than 2 possibly 3.

Also, be careful about setting too many conferences to zero. Your users will
get discouraged if every conference they post in starts to not count.


                    Excluding Users And/Or Security Levels

If you want to exclude certain users (like sysops) and/or certain security
levels (important on a TNET system), Poster offers a way to exclude users and
security levels. This option will give you a screen with 15 blanks that you
can use to exclude users and security levels in the following fashion.






For example, If I wanted to exclude Bill Bolden, David Waldrop and any user
with the SYSOP security level I would add the following lines...

BILL BOLDEN
DAVID WALDROP
SYSOP

Order does not matter in the file. Messages for any excluded user or excluded
security level will not be counted.



                         Register Your Copy of Poster

Use this option, to register your copy of Poster AFTER you have received
your code from us.

                        Multinode System use of Poster

If you are running on a Multi-Node system, you will need to read the activity
logs from all nodes using POSTER FILENAME.EXT /R over and over until all logs
are read.  For example on a 4 node system, you would add the following lines
to your event batch file...

POSTER ACTIVITY.001 /R
POSTER ACTIVITY.002 /R
POSTER ACTIVITY.003 /R
POSTER ACTIVITY.004    <───┐
 ┌─────────────────────────┘
 │
Notice that the final call to POSTER doesn't have the /R switch.  This will
mean that the bulletins will be written. You could write the bulletins after
reading each node but that would slow the process down considerably.

You can use Wildcards also. For example, you could also use

POSTER ACTIVITY.00? and accomplish the same goal.


                      Using POSTER on Large Activity Logs

It is suggested that you delete your activity logs after they are read by all
your statistics programs like WCPRO and POSTER.  Poster will run much faster
if you do this but its not necessary.  There is an option in POSTER CONFIGURE
that allows you to read either the WHOLE log or YESTERDAY's data.  If you
delete your logs daily, set the option to read the WHOLE log before you
perform the deletion. However, if you don't delete your activity logs, set
this option to read YESTERDAY's data. Its important that you run your event at
about the same time every day to be sure you don't miss messages using this
method.

Here is a quick tip that will let you keep all your logs while still while
still being able to delete your main activity.XXX on a daily basis. On Crown
Jewel BBS, we have a file called ACTIVITY.OLD. In our nightly event, we have
the following lines...

COPY ACTIVITY.OLD + ACTIVITY.001
DEL ACTIVITY.001

So we have one big file called ACTIVITY.OLD that has all our old data.






                                Using Templates
                               ─────────────────

NOTE: This is a registered user only option.

Some people may be less than thrilled with my ability to draw ANSI screens. To
allow sysops to create their own ANSI screens in place of Poster's internal
bulletins, you can create templates that Poster will use. You can create any
bulletin you wish with these templates.

First of all, the templates can only be made for the TopTen bulletin and the
winners bulletin. The template for the top ten bulletin is PTEMPLAT.001. To
create a template, you first draw our ANSI screen using '@' color codes using
any one of the many drawing programs for Wildcat! screens. YOU CAN'T have ANSI
codes in your template. Poster must know where to put the information, so the
following "@" codes are available. They are all replacement type codes that
will take up the exact amount of space both in the template and the final
product. Some of the codes act differently depending on the bulletin so be
careful.

                      @ Codes Available in the Templates
                     ────────────────────────────────────

@PLACEx    @: This code is replaced by the user who is in place x and the
number of messages the user has posted seperated by .... to fill the space
between the two @ marks. This may sound complicated but here is an example...

@PLACE1          @  would be replaced by  ....
@Bill Bolden....50

Note the information filled the space between the two @'s. You can put these
two @'s any distance apart and the program will fill the space between them.
This makes editing the bulletin easy because you KNOW what space is going
to be used. NOTE: you should seperate the two @'s so that there is enough
room to put a name and a number of messages.

@NAMEx   @: This is similar to the above but it simply puts the name of the
person in the xth place in between the two @ marks. Once again, you should
seperate the two @'s so that a name can fit.

@MSGSx   @: This is the number of messages posted by the user in place x. This
would usually be used in conjunction with the @NAMEx   @ and offers a little
more flexibility than the PLACE.

@TOTALINE@: This is the total number of lines posted by all users. No extra
spaces should be added and the data will overwrite this code completely.

@TOTALMSG@: This is the total number of messages posted by all users. Once
again, no extra spaces should be added and the data will overwrite this code
completely.

@LAST#1   @: This will be replaced by the name of the person who was first
place last month. It shouldn't be used in the winners bulletin and you can
seperate the @'s by any distance BUT (I'm sure you know the melody by now),
you should leave enough seperation for a name to fit into.

@COPYWRITE@: This needs to be at the beginning of one line. On that line, the
copywrite along with your registration will be displayed. Nothing else needs
to be on this line. If you leave this out, Poster will add it automatically.
You DON'T have to add a copywrite to the winners bulletin but you can if you
wish.

If you use a template, the configuration options that allow you to add a
header and a footer are not used.


A file called TEMPLATE.SMP is included with the .ZIP. This file is a sample
template that is similar to the internal bulletin created by Poster on a daily
basis. If you were to rename this file to PTEMPLAT.001, Poster would not use
its own internal bulletin. It would use the template which you can change any
way you want.

                             Files used by Poster

POSTER.EXE - The main executable.
POSTER.DAT - (DATA) The file that contain's the user's totals. Delete this
             file to reset the contest. The reset is done automatically on the
             reset day.
POSTER.CFG - (CONFIGURATION) The configuration file for Poster. This file
             must be present for Poster to run.
POSTER.EXC - (CONFIGURATION) The list of excluded users and security levels.
POSTER.WGT - (CONFIGURATION) The data file containing the conference weights.
             Erase this file to reset all conference weights to 1.
PTEMPLAT.001 - The template for the top ten bulletin.
PTEMPLAT.002 - The template for the end of month bulletin.



                        What happens on the reset day?
                       ────────────────────────────────

On the reset day, POSTER will create a special bulletin that lists all your
winners for the previous month. If you are running a registered version of
Time Door, it will then award special POSTER time prizes. The user will need
to go into Time Door to pick up their prize. Upon thier entry into Time Door,
Time Door will congratulate them for their posting and give them their prize.
You can create special screens to send your users when they pick up their
prize.  Simply create a file called POSTERXX.BBS where XX is the place in the
top ten. The file must be ASCII (NO ANSI is ALLOWED) and it must reside in the
Time Door directory.  For example, if you wanted to create a screen to send to
the top poster, create an ASCII file called POSTER1.BBS. You can create one
for every place if you want. In most cases, the message that Time Door sends
should suffice.





























              ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
           ┌──┘                                                └──┐
           │   Hints on Running a Successful Top Poster Contest   │
           └──┐                                                ┌──┘
              └────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

We have been running various version of POSTER for three years on Crown Jewel
BBS.  It has worked very well at times and has caused us a few head aches at
other times.  Here is what we learned

1) Give the program time to do its thing. At first, your users may have no
   idea what the top posters list is. After a while, they will get the idea
   and start competing.
2) Don't exclude heavy posters. Whenever you get a user who does well on a
   monthly basis, you may be tempted to exclude that user. Often the good user
   will ask to be removed from the list because your Top Posters tend to be
   your better and more humble users. Don't exclude your heavy posters!  If
   you do this, you will lower the goal your other users are trying to reach.
3) Keep the contest positive. This is very important! This program creates the
   exact opposite mood of programs like the ones that list users that drop
   carrier. If you treat this contest in an uptight manor, it will not work.
   This program uses positive reinforcement.
4) At times, some users will post small and stupid messages to get higher on
   the contest. Our experience shows that if you crack down on this, the
   users will quit posting altogether. If you ignore it, it usually stops.
   However, you always have the POSTER EDIT option if you want to take those
   messages off.
5) Set the program up and forget about it. It is meant to work on its own
   without your intervention.

We have followed these guidelines and the Top Poster List has helped our
small system have an active message base. It can do the same for you.