The Badges Add-on
The Badges add-on has received a complete re-write in order to accomodate some long awaited features. In this guide I will walk you through these new features in more detail.
Make sure you backup your website before updating to 1.7 in case something goes wrong during the update process. If you have any custom code that you have added to adjust how this add-on works, please remove them temporarily before updating to prevent issues during the update process.
New Badge Editor
With the introduction of all the new features for badges, the badge editor has been re-designed in 1.7. You can now set if badges are manually awarded, schedule badge publishing for the future along with better management of badge images.
Multiple Requirements
While you could only create badges for one specific event in previous versions, in 1.7 you can now select to set multiple requirements for each badge. This means you can combine different instances that the user has to fulfil in order to gain a badge. For example maybe a user has to have gained points for comments 5 times AND / OR gained points once for published content in order to get the badge.
Of course this is optional and you can select to just use one specific requirement for your badge.
When using multiple requirements, you can select to use either AND or an OR comparison.
Manual Badges
As of version 1.7, you can select to set a badge to be “Manually Awarded”. This will disable the automatic awarding of the badge when users gain points on your website. If selected, you will need to edit a user in your admin area and manually give the user the badge.
Badge Reward
You can now also select to reward your users with points for earning a badge or badge level. Just make sure you do not leave the log entry template empty! You can not create badges for earning badge rewards however!
Badge Images
In previous versions, each badge image were connected using the images URL. While this works well for most installations, it posed a big issue if you ever changed your websites URL, as the badge images would then no longer be found (as the URL would point to something that no longer exists).
In 1.7, badges connect images using their attachment IDs instead. This way, URLs can be changed at any time without any consequence.
If you experience issues with badge images after updating to 1.7, edit the badge and update the images by removing them then re-assigning them by selecting the image in the media library.
Updating to 1.7
Before updating, you must remove any custom code you have added to your installation that adjusts how the badges add-on works! This is because the badge add-on has received a complete re-write in order to add support for multiple requirements. Most custom codes I have seen or written myself are not compatible with 1.7! Once you have updated, you can test your installation by re-adding your custom code to see if it still works. If the code produces an error or a white screen, please remove the code and open a support ticket with the custom code so I can help you update it free of charge. This is only applicable for codes you got from this website. Third-party plugins that were written by someone else needs to be send to the plugin author of said plugin.
Once you updated to 1.7, I highly recommend that you go and edit each badge you have setup to make sure your setup is correct. Badge images should be removed and re-assigned for each badge to make sure no URLs are used. Even if you make no changes to the badge, you should save your badge.
Final Note
Finally I feel the Badges add-on now has all the features an add-on like this should have and I do not plan on adding any further features. You can however submit a request for a quote if you need further custom features and I will be happy to help you out.
Please do not post issues or code snippets in the comments as they will be deleted.
