The members who answer questions, welcome newcomers and keep threads alive rarely get thanked in public. XenSpotlight does it for you: every day, week or month it crowns the member who helped most, from their posts, the reactions they received and their accepted solutions, and the whole forum gets to see it.
What it does
- One member, center stage. A spotlight page with the member's avatar, banners, period and stats, their own message in their own accent color, and buttons to view their profile, send them a message or see the race.
- A race the forum can follow. A podium and a top ten with posts, reactions and solutions, refreshed through the period. Logged-in members see their own score, their rank, how far they are from the top ten, or the reason they cannot be featured yet.
- Two ways to pick. Lock the winner from the previous period's activity, or run a live race and crown the leader when the period ends. Either way the alert, the optional broadcast and the XenLevel XP are given once. You can also feature a member by hand.
- Fair rules you set. Points per post, per reaction and per solution, a minimum number of messages and account age, excluded groups, forums and members, and never the same member twice in a row.
- Congratulations. Members react to the spotlight with XenForo's reactions, and the winner gets an alert. Every spotlight alert can be switched off by the member.
- Seen across the forum. An In the spotlight banner in posts, in the member tooltip and on the profile while the period lasts, a Spotlights count on profiles, Most featured in Notable members, and a Featured member widget with the top three if you want them.
- A hall of fame. Every past spotlight on one page, with pages, a filter by member and the most featured members.
- For admins. An overview with a live ranking that shows who is eligible and why, a list of every spotlight to edit, recalculate or delete, a user criterion for trophies and promotions, an admin permission, a rebuild tool, style properties and a read-only REST API.
New in 2.0.1
Version 2.0.1 fixes the upgrade from 1.0.x: it no longer stops with "Invalid default value for 'period_type'" on MariaDB servers, nor on an "invalid callback" error during an archive upgrade, and the scheduled task and API scope now have a name in the Admin CP. XenSpotlight 2.0 is rebuilt on XenForo's own components and follows your style in light and dark; the stylesheet went from 22 KB to 5 KB. Periods now follow your forum's time zone, the selection runs every hour, rewards are paid once instead of on every change of leader, solutions count for everyone, and the broadcast respects alert preferences. New: congratulations, your standing in the race, the spotlight badge, a paged hall of fame, and an Admin CP that explains every pick. Every 1.0 feature is still there.
Good to know
Requires XenForo 2.3 and PHP 8.0 or later. Free. Colors come from your style, and the badge in posts costs no extra query.
Upgrading from 1.0.x: install the archive over your current version from the Admin CP, after a backup. Your spotlights, options and permissions are kept, typed exclusions are converted to lists, and nothing is paid twice. If an earlier upgrade to 2.0.0 stopped on an error, install 2.0.1 over it and click Upgrade: it picks up where it stopped, and nothing is lost.
