XML News Feeds

[JJR512]

This hack presents to the user a list of news headlines from many news sources on the Internet. Each headline is a link to the full article on the respective news source's website. Headlines are available from a wide variety of news source types, such as business, entertainment, finance, society, sports, technology, and regional international and regional US news. There are, at this time, over 330 different news feeds in 15 categories.

All newsfeeds are pulled through Moreover.com. A list of all newsfeeds is pulled from an XML category list at Moreover.com and presented to the user as a checkbox list so that the user can select the specific feeds he or she wants to see. The user is also able to select how many headlines from each newsfeed will be shown.

User settings are stored in a new custom table in the database. When a user who has not yet selected any custom feeds views the news page, he or she is shown a default newsfeed. This is preset to "Top stories" but can be changed by the webmaster if desired. The user is also shown a message directing him or her to create his or her own custom list of newsfeeds. If a non-registered or unlogged-in person views the news page, he or she is also shown the default newsfeed.

Demo: A demo of this hack is currently available on my test forums here: http://www.jjr512.com/testvb/index.php There is a link below the vBulletin logo that says "News Page". This link takes you to the news feeds page. As a guest, you cannot change any settings. Feel free to login to a test-purposes registered account: Username: Test Registered User; PW: testpw.

This has been installed and tested only by myself on 2.2.2. Since I have not yet worked with 2.2.4, I cannot attest to the compatibility. However, this hack is entirely an add-on, not a modification of any existing part of vBulletin, so I do not believe there is any reason it shouldn't work on 2.2.4.

If you have any problems or questions, let me know.

[Lesane]

Looks great 'JJR512', i will install this one later. Well done, thanks.

[Gutspiller]

I installed this hack and I really like it. I was hoping I could get some help customizing it a little bit. In the instructions it says to change the default news things to:

"the easiest way that I would suggest is to set your own settings to what you want as the default, then copy the value of the sources field for your record to the sources field for the userid=0 record. Then set your own settings to whatever you want."

I don't know how to do this. I don't want to telnet, but I have a phpadmin thingy built into my admin control panel so if I could get some instructions on how to do it, that would be great.

The other question I had is, instead of having 1 column going down the page I would like 2 columns sharing the page 50% for each, with each being a percentage or two away from the outside (far left/far right) of the page.

Can somebody please help me with this?

I don't know what code I need to edit.

Thanks for any help you can provide me with. :(

[John]

This doesn't work for me at all :(

When I load the newsfeed.php file, it just loads and loads and loads - but nothing ever comes up. Seems to work on the demo site though...

[Gutspiller]

Originally posted by Gutspiller
I installed this hack and I really like it. I was hoping I could get some help customizing it a little bit. In the instructions it says to change the default news things to:

"the easiest way that I would suggest is to set your own settings to what you want as the default, then copy the value of the sources field for your record to the sources field for the userid=0 record. Then set your own settings to whatever you want."

I don't know how to do this. I don't want to telnet, but I have a phpadmin thingy built into my admin control panel so if I could get some instructions on how to do it, that would be great.

The other question I had is, instead of having 1 column going down the page I would like 2 columns sharing the page 50% for each, with each being a percentage or two away from the outside (far left/far right) of the page.

Can somebody please help me with this?

I don't know what code I need to edit.

Thanks for any help you can provide me with. :(

Bump!

[pgowder]

I also installed it with no success.

There is nothing on the newsfeed.php page???

Thanks

[pgowder]

Hello????

[lifesourcerec]

Works fine with me. Just takes a while for the articles to show up. Had to remove the images since they were not included in the zip file. Overall, nice hack. Now trying to figure out how to pre-pick the news feeds.

[Intex]

JJR512 - excellent hack. Installed perfectly. Just need to work on some customisation.

I notice you're running myvbindex on your site too and you have this display in the central area. Can you let me know how you did this? Thx :).

* Intex clicks install.

[Intex]

Sometimes this produces an execution timeout as its exceeded 30 seconds to display the page. I guess because of delays to the news server etc.

Where can I change the execution timeout. Would this be an overall PHP setting?

[PhoenixBB]

Hmmm what's happening with this hack, is it dead??

As only a few people seem to have installed it and it works for some and not for others, and the hacker has vanished since his initial posting I guess it's not a goer then?

Did the other xml hack supplant it?

Yeah I know, talking to myself here as nobody is likely to answer.