I LIKE it. :) Very cool acronym.

It's a little nicer than referring to the ID 10 T errors ;)

Back on topic ;)

I've taken a look at this issue referred to by venomx and it's related to the instantaneous posting of multiple articles...

So: I'm intending on modifying the hack to cause the ArticleBot's to post with at least a 1 second separation between the items so there are no posts with identical timestamps.

OK - this will not work on Windows server prior to PHP5...

In articlebot/articlebot.php, Find:Insert ABOVE:

gr8 bit of coding, works really well :-) good job.!

Just a quick question...

I have everything set up fine on vb 3.03, and it pulls news from various feeds, but im now wanting to retreive via rss2, but looking at the rss2 url the varible "description" has been replaced with <content:encoded>

when i set the feed to rss2 it doesnt pull the short description, as the description tag has changed to <content:encoded> on the rss2 page and therefore on the posts, it then only adds the title & the link to the article.

is there any way to amend or add to the coding, so that i pulls <content:encoded> instead of, or aswell as <description> .? this way i can have the full post showing on my site when i select rss2 feeds, and not a short line of text etc....can this be done via the template.? or does it have to be code added to articlebot.php etc>?

any assist here would be gr8 folks.

Regards
Nick

anyone got a clue.? or has support ended for this hack.?

its supposed to be complient with RSS 2 but doesnt seem to be :surprised:

Nope the usleep(500); didnt work for me.. :(

Anyone found a way to keep Articlebot posts from spamming recent threads, and being returned when searching the forums via "New Posts"?

I'd love to re-enable this.

I have messed-up somewhere along the line as it is not working.

My webhost is running windows server and task scheduler is used instead of cron. So I have placed an include once in my index.php file and in articlebot.php commented out:

Code:

---

chdir('/path/to/forums/');
  require_once './global.php';

---

I then created an Article Bot user who should search for the rss feed:
http://news.yahoo.com/rss/

And set the post interval to 1 min and waited. So far nothing has been posted.

In my article bot manager the next feed is due at 7:01 am (despite having set the interval to 1 mins) and although I installed it last night, and 7:01 am has been and gone still there are no posts.

I must have missed something in "Routinizing your article bots" but have checked and re-checked.

Any thoughts?

you need to send it to a specific rss url i.e http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/topstories

any assist with rss2 not working.??

Thanks for the help. But I am getting a number of other errors now:

So I think it will just have to go onto the backburner until I have more time to configure it.

try attached.
just add your own server paths etc, and upload again :-)

then add an rss feed for the bot, try this as it works on ours

http://news.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline.../uk/rss091.xml

and make sure a forum is allocated for posts etc, and permissions set so reg user/bot can post etc

dont forget to add a template to the style you are using so that the post shows correctly..i.e

add template to current style, with the following

title: articlebot_post

template:


see if that works

Thankyou. I am no longer getting the error message, but I am also not getting any news.

I am not using a crontab (don't know how :o ) so am calling the ArticleBot via:

On the index.php page.

When doing this I am suppose to comment out

Or is this why I am not getting any feeds.

getting this error messages all over my forum

Warning: main(./articlebot/articlebot.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/.sites/70/site4/web/forums/index.php on line 419

Warning: main(): Failed opening './articlebot/articlebot.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php') in /home/.sites/70/site4/web/forums/index.php on line 419

Warning: Unknown(./articlebot/articlebot.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/.sites/70/site4/web/forums/includes/functions.php(1955) : eval()'d code on line 1

Warning: (null)(): Failed opening './articlebot/articlebot.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php') in /home/.sites/70/site4/web/forums/includes/functions.php(1955) : eval()'d code on line 1

I tried installing the Article bot for a while and can't get it to work. I would install using crotab but I don't know how to do this. It looks fine when I installed Article bot but it will not save any feeds and shows them as not valid in my admin panel.

Does one need to have the fopen wrapper on on the server. I need someone to install this hack for me using the crotab method, I will pay. contact me at SkorzGuy@allstarchat.com

ok i have this installed and running fine for rss feeds (see www.sellersforum.co.uk) live news etc...

but....the coding should accept rss2 type feeds..., but when i set them to rss2 it posts the title & link only..

it does this because rss text is inside "<description> </description>" tags

but rss2 is inside "<content:encoded> </content:encoded>

is there anyway, i could make it receive posts from rss2 i.e include text within <content:encoded> if so which files need editing.?

its supposed to be compatible with rss2, and may just need a small tweak, but im lost here folks, any point in the right direction would be gr8 :ermm:

I installed the Articlebot without problems and it works like a charm. Incredible!

I would like to make a contribuion to the programmer, anyone with a paypal link?

/Martin

well ours works like a charm apart from not receiving rss2 feeds (like its supposed to do lol)

ive tried adding content:encoded to the template to see if thats why it wasnt adding the text/post etc, but nope, that just makes more errors... o well...

im running out of ideas, and might have to call on an experienced coder to help me out....

so have you tried retrieving rss2 feeds>? do they show ok.? i.s full text etc not just one line...

I would love this to work, but I get a blank page at the articlebot.php page and I get these errors.

Mon Sep 13 14:16:35 2004] [error] PHP Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/theprcco/public_html/vb/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 141
[Mon Sep 13 14:16:35 2004] [error] PHP Warning: array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in /home/theprcco/public_html/vb/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 137
[Mon Sep 13 14:16:35 2004] [error] PHP Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to fetch http://uo.stratics.com/php-bin/rss/raw.php. (HTTP Response: ) in /home/theprcco/public_html/vb/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc on line 230

Running this via cron job.

Everything is running fine except I get the message titles posted ok, but nothing is posted in the message body (no link to the full article or description at all).

Yes I've added the articlebot_post template.

I've tried this with a bunch of different feeds with no luck. (Yes, I checked the feeds and they include a link and description)

Anyone else have this problem and come up with a solution?

I should mention that I have the same exact problem no matter what version of RSS feed I use and I also have the same problem when pulling from an Atom feed on my personal blog.

It's probably something right in front of my face, but I can't seem to find the problem.

Since this feed works on your forum I tried it on mine and still have the same problem as above.

I even tried changing the bot from it's own user to my account and still have the same problem.

I'm running out of ideas to get this working and am about to call it quits.

I just read through all 21 pages and don't see anyone with the same problem.

I am wondering where the articlebot_post template is supposed to grab the "description" and "link" variables from as I searched through the articlebot, articlebot_rss and articlebot_rss_cache tables and do not see those variables anywhere.

Maybe this is my problem?

Someone? Anyone?

I know this might sound silly....but have u added the articlebot_post template to all styles being used by the board.?

i.e we use default template with another theme integrated, therefore we had to add the template to both styles for it to show on the forum etc :-)

think the coding is in articlebot_parse & articlebot_fetch :-)

Nice hack! I installed it myself...

Ooh by the way, you can change this:
to:

Then you don't have to set the path (in case you don't know the exact path)

Count me in on that... very nice and just what I was looking for.

Also, for anyone that wants to do email2rss, try this:
http://wonko.com/software/mailfeed/

Works a stunner, much better than mailbucket (which truncates messages).

Only criticism for Article Bot is the lack of feedback on what it's doing when you're debugging, but that's minor as reading the code and adding some echoes is not a problem :)

We have our default style (and a mobile style for me when I am on the road) and it's added to both of them. :)

see my post before,
change in articlebot.php

to:

I am having the EXACT same problem as bitg. And from the looks of it, he didn't find a resolution either.

I know this is going to sound like +++++ing (and I guess it is) but come on. I know the author of this hack has a life (as do we all) but how can a hack that is having so many problems and no support for the last few weeks from the author be considered for a "Hack of the Month?"

Did you make the articlebot_post template, this controls the link.
That's for the link at the botom.

The other option is, that the source doesn't have a link propertie in there html.
Try to open the source xml (where you get the articles) with your browser and see if every news item has a <link> </link> propertie

Thanks for trying to help.

My problem is not that I am getting a "blank" message body in my posts, it's that I am not seeing a message body at all, only the subject line.

I've posted above that I have included the articlebot_post template in both of my styles and have also verified the xml source to be correct. It's not just one xml feed that I am having this problem with, but all of them. I have even tried the same feeds that others have posted that they use.

I'm not a newbie to hacking VB, I've been using it for about 4 years now (and created 5 hacks myself). I have also been using xml and atom feeds on my personal website for years as well.

I'm just at a loss as to what the problem is. I'd love to be able to use this hack on one of our forums, but the lack of support from the author has me frustrated.

I know the HOTM is now an automated process at vb.org But in my opinion is hacks like this (with no support from the author and trouble with it from almost 95% of the users) should not be eligible for the HOTM.

hmm, okay I didn't know your experience in vbb hacks (I have started with vbuletin some month ago)
I have installed the hack aswell and it works fine,
altough I used xml instead of rss
this is the link where I fetched the xml
http://www.synthtopia.com/rss.xml

Maybe it helps you a bit.
Maybe you could try that one out and see what that one does.

Nope, same problem with that feed as well. :(

Thanks for trying though.

hmm that's strange...
and no error when you start articlebot.php ?

well if you want to compare something let me know

No error from articlebot.php at all. It runs just fine.

Here is a screenshot of what type of posts I'm getting from the bot.

(Notice how the subject is fine but there is no message body posted?)

This is not a problem with the feed, but the script itself.

Strange, very strange..
Here it works fine, could it be that the author had change the code in a newer version and forgot to post it here?
So that my version of article bot is newer then yours. (would be strange if so, but who knows)

do you use word filters (the option articlebot provides)?

Nope, no word filters at all.