Champ › Guides › Points & leaderboard
Points & leaderboard
Who needs this: Points are optional. Use them if you want to reward active members and show a ranking of your most active customers.
Members earn points automatically when they post, start topics, get upvotes and fill in their profile. You choose how many points each action is worth. You can also show a public leaderboard, a page that ranks members by points.
Turning points on#
- In the Champ dashboard, open Points.
- Tick Enable the points system.
- To show the ranking page, also tick Enable the leaderboard.
- Click Save.
Champ adds up points once an hour. Wait about an hour before you check the numbers.
What earns points#
On the same Points page, set how many points each action is worth, then click Save.
| When a member… | Setting |
|---|---|
| Writes a post | Points for new post |
| Starts a topic | Points for new topic |
| Gets an upvote | Points for upvote |
| Joins the forum | Points for new users |
| Uploads their own avatar | Points for custom avatar |
| Adds a signature | Points for signature |
Set any of them to 0 to switch it off.
Choosing the numbers#
What matters is how the numbers compare to each other. Members will do whatever earns the most.
- Make an upvote worth more than a post. If posting pays best, you get lots of posts. If upvotes pay best, you get good posts. This is the most important setting here.
- Keep a new topic close to a new post. If topics pay much more, you get lots of topics that nobody answers.
- Keep one-time rewards small. Avatar, signature and joining are there to nudge people to fill in their profile. They should not decide who tops the leaderboard.
A good place to start: post 1, topic 2, upvote 5, joining 5, avatar 5, signature 5. Watch it for a few weeks, then adjust.
The leaderboard#
The leaderboard is a public page that ranks members by points. The Points leaderboard section of Settings shows its address, and has two options:
- User name format — how names appear. Type one of
{{ nickname_or_name }},{{ nickname }}or{{ name }}. - Display user avatars in the leaderboard — shows each member's picture next to their name.
Note Think before you launch a leaderboard. It motivates the top ten members a lot, and most others ignore it. If you remove it later, you upset exactly the members you most want to keep. Decide before you launch, not after.
Points and spam#
Points make posting feel rewarding, so they also attract spammers. If you use points on a public forum, turn on the anti-spam settings too. The most important one is the wait between posts.
When you delete a spammer's posts, the points those posts earned are removed too.