[ashy]

This is all based upon the following hack.

VBSyndicate Hack V1
Dave Campbell www.cpfc.org September 2001

I dont write PHP so hack of a hack - only showing here as a working example that his given our site a great boost in popularity by ever changing content ie news headlines on our front page.

My activenews.php is as follows...

<?
require("/home/southpor/public_html/forums/admin/config.php");
//
$num_active = 10;
$num_chars = 50;

$db=mysql_connect($servername,$dbusername,$dbpassw ord);
mysql_select_db($dbname);

$fp = fopen("/home/southpor/www/news/latestnews.js", "w");
@flock($fp, 2);

// select the forums you want to pull the topics from

$querylatest="SELECT * FROM thread WHERE forumid='27' ORDER BY dateline
DESC LIMIT $num_active";

$resultlatest = mysql_query($querylatest,$db);

while ($latest_array = mysql_fetch_array($resultlatest)) {

// Get Forum Infomation
$query_forum = "select * from forum where forumid='$latest_array[forumid]'";
$result_forum = mysql_query($query_forum,$db);
$forum_info_array = mysql_fetch_array($result_forum);

// split the date up a bit
$datestr1 = substr($latest_array["dateline"],0,10);
$datetime = substr($latest_array["dateline"],11,8);

$querythread="SELECT * FROM post WHERE threadid='$latest_array[threadid]' ORDER BY dateline ASC LIMIT 1";

$result_thread_text= mysql_query($querythread,$db);

$result_thread_array = mysql_fetch_array($result_thread_text);

$newstitle = $latest_array["title"];
$newsposter = $latest_array["postusername"];
$newsposterid = $result_thread_array["userid"];
$newstext = substr(strip_tags($result_thread_array["pagetext"]),0,$num_chars);
$newsthreadid = $latest_array["threadid"];
$newscomments = $latest_array["replycount"];
$threadforumid = $latest_array["forumid"];
$threadforum = $forum_info_array["title"];
$threadiconid = $latest_array["iconid"];
$newsdate = date("D j M", $latest_array["dateline"]);
$newstitle = ereg_replace("'", "", $newstitle);

// echo commentary to browser
print ("<b>$newstitle</b><br>");

fputs($fp, "document.write(\"<font face='Verdana, arial, helvetica' size='2' color='#FF0000'><a href='http://www.southportforums.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=$newsthreadid'>$newstitle</a></font><font face='Verdana, arial, helvetica' size='1'> $newsdate $newsposter<br></font>\");\n");
}

@fclose($fp);

print ("<br><b><u>News Headlines Have been updated - Thank You</u></b><br><br>");

include ("news50.php");
?>

I have this set to run as CRON job every 15 minutes - though news reporters can call the script from their browser as well. The news50.php is the same except generates up to 50 headlines in a diff JS file.

The javascript is included on your own page by standard <script src="............" </script>

As you can see it generates latestnews.js that I simply include on whatever page I need - or other sites can use as well. Example as before at www.southport.gb.com

As said - this is other peoples hack - I am only showing here as my working example - something I was looking for myself earlier!