DnP AJAX Custom News Link - Offer the best news to your forum visitors
 

What was the last time you were so excited to write an awesome topic for your forum then hopelessly watched it faded away and nobody cares? How about having some great threads, unique information that's only available on your forum, and you want all visitors instantly pay attention to them ? Think you would make announcements everywhere about those topics, then expect someone to click on the links? Maybe that isn't so good and professional at all. Even worse, you have to bump your own thread to get others attention. DnP Custom News may have a solution for you.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/What does this little MOD do ?

As the matter of fact, topics in forum are displayed by some formatted orders. Either it is arranged by newest first, oldest first, or last replies, etc...at some point these topics will not be visible in the view of members anymore. Especially, for new visitors to your forum since they have no clue whether yours is a good forum or just a random half-dead community with nothing interesting. How could you show them how great your forum is, what information it has and what kind of fun can be found there? What you need is a manual list that looks automatic, absolutely informative and interactive, totally content-rich to the guests and even search engines. DnP Custom News Link allows you to place your best topics and urls into an article block that appears on your forum home index and makes it looks like a section of online newspaper homepage. This way, it is almost guaranteed you will freshen up your forum look and feel, attract more members to articles or threads that give best of your forum! Even better, DnP Custom News Link supports AJAX for instant page change without refreshing the whole forum index page.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/Screenshots of different configurations


https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/Demo

Right on the forum homepage of DnP Network?

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/Feature Summary

+ Multipaging support.
+ Lightweight AJAX / SEO Friendly pages and links.
+ Three types of news : Image, Video, Article.
+ Option to track views.
+ Consume single query for fastest load.
+ Topic Thumbnail.
+ Topic Description. BBcode supported.
+ All settings and News manager under AdminCP.
+ Links are SEO.
+ Different style is not yet implemented in this version.
+ Able to act as a vB Advanced CMPS Module https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/Installation for normal forum without vB Advanced CMPS :

1. Upload all files and folders from the package to your forum_root folder, except product-dnp-custom-news-install.xml.
2. Use Product Manager to install product-dnp-custom-news-install.xml
3. Open your FORUMHOME template (or any templates that are used together for forum home index) , then place

to anywhere you would want DnP Custom News block to appear.

http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/2540/17567863.jpg

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/Installation for vB Advanced CMPS :

1. Upload all files and folders from the package to your forum_root , then upload dnp_news.php one more time into forum_root/modules folder, except product-dnp-custom-news-install.xml.
2. Use Product Manager to install product-dnp-custom-news-install.xml
3. Go to Style Manager ? Add New Template of your currently in-use style. Input
   
   Title : dnp_vba_news_output
   Template content : $dnp_news_output
   
   http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/6...pstemplate.gif
4. Go to vBa CMPS ? Add Module ? PHP File Module. Input the following information :
   
   Module Title : DnP vBa CMPS Custom News Link
   Active : Yes
   File to Include : dnp_news.php
   Module Parent : None
   Templates Used : dnp_vba_news_output
   Use Module Wrapper Template : No
   Leave everything else by default.
5. Save and load module to your CMPS page. Go to Plugin Manager and disable DnP Custom News : global_start

Management :
Now you can go to AdminCP to post some news link or configure the Dnp Custom News block :)

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/



Update :
Upload all files and folders in the package to your forum_root folder (or forum_root/modules if used vBa CMPS). Use Product Manager to install product-dnp-custom-news-install.xml to upgrade your current version.

History Log :
v1.3

1. Fix a minor bug
2. Add support for vB Advanced CMPS

v1.2

1. Cache Template fix. Performance optimized
2. Add List Order (Newest first, Oldest first, Views, Random). https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/

v1.1

1. Improve AJAX Compability.
2. Add Collapsible feature.
3. New option to hide description and thumbnail for small news.

v1.0

1. Initial Release.

Good ;)

nice work

Any comment or suggestion would be welcome :)

vBSEO compatible or does the mod have its own?

very cool, will be watching this one :)

Very good!!
Would it be possible to decide which Link is a "Big News" Link?
Anyway, very cool!
Greets,
Peter

This looks... kinda awesome. But I get the feeling it would make the top of your forum very busy, with less room to notice the forums itself. Is it possible to somehow choose how big this box is, so it takes less room?

Also, how easy or hard is it to add links and images the way you did? Is inline editing perhaps going to be added later on?

Thanks in advance, it looks like a really nice mod.

tagged and watching!! thanks!

great mod !! thx :D

Nice easy install and working well!

Thanks everyone for the positive feedback.

Regards some of the questions you guys have :

AJAX links to switch page are SEO friendly. :)

Big News block contains the latest links, you can only set more than 1 link for big news but not define a specific one to be in it, for the current version. :)

You can customize how many links to show per page, how many big news, how many per row,etc...:rolleyes: , all can be done via AdminCP

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/1338/60154649.jpg

I do not like the MOST current setup.. I do like the layout of the other latest news blocks.. I would just like those two only to be displayed without the most current block, so the text is not centered, only justified.

This looks great. I plan to use it immediately.

A possible addition would be to add tabbed features that can act as categories for the news.

Example:

Tab 1 (Sports) | Tab 2 (Lifestyle) | Tab 3 (Career)

And clicking each tab brings up different "featured" manually chosen threads.

EDIT: Also, where can I find the templates so that I might edit the look of the block? All I can see is dnp_news.

EDIT #2: Or do I need to edit the php file for customization?

EDIT #3: Specifically, I want to have 3 "BIG NEWS" aligned horizontally rather than vertically, and then have the small news come under the big news.

EDIT #3: Also better if we can define which big news are showed - sort of like a "Featured" section.

Also - a bug - the ajax page control doesn't seem to be loading properly. It loads the entire dnp_news.php file for me which means that the forums disappear.

I'm not sure I got the picture of what you mean, do you have a screenshot or drawing of how it should look like in your opinion?

Yes I have thought of category when I first code it, but it comes to be too unecessary so I dropped it. The reason is, if there is category for news link, members will be confused where they can actually find the topic and also, it brings more work to the admin if he has to create all the categories in this MOD corresponding to those current ones on the forum.
dnp_news is the cached main template, child templates are built-in until later, when I can add more style and layout for the MOD like your good idea in #3.

# 3 If we are to decide which link to be in the big news, we have to define different big news for every page the news block spans, and I don't think everyone would like to do that.

About the bug of ajax loading, verify all files have been uploaded and your server is ajax compatible because the ajax engine is pulled from DnP Instant! Musicbox and it's known bug-free.

here: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=223427 :D

I totally see your point there https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2009/10/8.gif

Yes I understand that it would create a lot more work for the admin of the forum, not to mention yourself.

Couldn't there only be big news on page 1, and the other pages just have small news?

Apologies if that is a stupid question - I actually know very little about coding AJAX and how the plugin works in general. Though it is running very well over at my site and I have managed to configure it to nearly the way I want it by editing the php file.

I see. I'll verify and try again - server definitely supports AJAX so it must be that I'm missing a file. Will let you know :) Thanks for the help.

How can I get this block to show up on vbportal rather then vbulliten home

suggestion and a request :

1. it would be very helpful if instead of inputing name thread and url and everything, just to define one or two forums which the "DnP AJAX Custom News Link" system will take the first new threads from there !

2. i have a request, how do i make it capable with VBADVANCED ? i tried to put the "$dnp_news_output" code in the "adv_portal" template, though, nothing happends, why is that ?

regards,
imiviortal.

Let me know if it works for you after the verification.

I have not any experience on vbPortal so I cannot tell you what to do , maybe you should contact the coder of vBportal.

1. It is definitely something I try to avoid. Because it loses the flexibility of having different kind of news from multiple categories at first, second if it automatically pulls new threads then a TopxStats MOD could do the same..
2. I believe you must include the PHP file in a PHP Module, I have not any experience upon vBadvanced installation though.

Silveryhat,

You are the coder of this mod.... this mod would be a nice addition to forums that have vbportal and vbadvance

Yes I am the coder of the MOD but not for the others. I can only provide support within my knowledge since I never touch vbPortal. I know it might come to be a great idea to add the support for vBadvanced and vBPortal but I mainly design it for the vBulletin forum only at this time.

thanks :) very good...

Turkish:
Teşekk?rler. G?zel ?alışma sitemde kullanıyorum

i gona w8 for that:D
if its possible to merge these two idea it's gonna be a great mod.
Features:

• marquee/Ajax
• with(out) image
• Moderator mark thread as news
• admin custom news/announcement
• get rss feeds URL as news
• get image/video from thread content

This is great. Can you make the table collapseable when you do the next update? :)

EDIT: Will this only work in forumhome because I would like to display it in forumdisplay also, but cannot at present.

thanks for AWESOME mod!

any way to resize the images it displays?

thanks

marked as installed

Some ideas sound pretty great and I'll include them in future versions. However, "get image/video from thread content" is definitely skipped because it will generate alot of problem and consume too much CPU resources since it has to goes through many different threads content. Look, the News Description supports BBcode, so if you have a flash bbcode tag, you can use it to embed some video clip already ;)

Yup I'll note that and I'll make collapsible block next version. However, the MOD is mainly for forumhom index at the current time, for any other additional locations I'll give detail instruction later to fit everyone's need.

;) you can change it in the AdminCP , look for Normal News Image Width and Latest News Image Width

Off Topic:

Can you share with us your custom quote div, on your forum. Looks great.

The rounded box when ppl quote members.

Could you maybe have a max height option too?

Nominated btw. :)

watching , anyone else want to give a link to there forum they have it installed on.

;) the height totally depends on the number of rows, which that again depends on the amount of news link per page you have set up. If you mean to have it cover by a div tag that has scrollbar, you could open up the dnp_news template to do so.

Thanks, I'll ask DnP and have the template posted soon on DnP Network if he accepts..

ok :) ... what is it for anyway :erm:

Ok I found one small problem. When implementing the mutilple pages, if I click on another page, it doesn't keep me on forumhome, it takes me to the dnp php location but on your demo, this does not happen.

Have you uploaded dnp_news folder to forum root ?

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at [path]/includes/adminfunctions.php:279) in [path]/includes/functions.php on line 3103

I have the same problem... and yes i uploaded the "dnp_news" folder to the forum root

If i want to put it before the header all over the forum ?

I am having the same problem at my site as well. It takes me to dnp_news.php rather than the ajax loading the information on forum home.

Have reuploaded all files and still get the same error.

Yep it's in forum root over here too. :)

I don't get it, where it happens to you ?

;) I made an update to improve AJAX compability. It's v1.1 now and I believe the problem you guys mention is no longer there.

Thanks for the quick work!! :)

I'll check it out now and let you know!