Last XX Posts on non-vB page

UPDATED! Not a new version number, but a bug fix.
Fixed another bug with using forum titles and included forums.
New update: *Actually* fixed the bug with the forums this time.
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It's my best work to date (if I do say so myself ) and I think you'll like it and like all the configuration you can do.

This image shows the script with all of the columns on, and parsing [code], smilies, and the post icon, as well as showing the forum title before the thread title.


This image shows the script with all the columns off except $lastpostdate, and the $tw (table width) set to 600, and $showdate set to 0 (to just show the last post time).


This image shows the same as #2, except $tw is blank (allowing the table to compact and remove the empty space automatically).


Hack version: 1.0.1

Changes since version 1.0.0: Fixed small bug.

Changes since version 0.1.0: Parses [ b], [ i], [ u], [ code], and [ quote] within the "last post". Displays the icon of the post, or the thread if there is no post icon. Parses smilies. New option to convert new lines to <br> so the post appears as the author wrote it (note: may cause problems if there are large breaks in posts).

Changes since version 0.0.2: New option to show the text of the last post of a thread (also option to limit the number of characters of the post displayed). New option to set the table width, as a percent, a number of pixels, or just let the table size naturally. New option to show just the time of the last post, instead of the date *and* the time. New option to show a thin line around the cells (cell spacing).

Changes since version 0.0.1: Include only specific forums, or set to allow all forums except certain excluded forums. New option to display a "Last post date" column with the last post date and time, formatted with your board's date & time setting. Fixed a bug with font and font size. Split the config into a separate file to make editing easier.

For version: v2 betas 3, 4, 5, RC1, RC2.

Files needed: last10.php, last10config.php (see attached zip file).

Files to edit: last10config.php (see attached zip file).

Possible file locations: Anywhere, as long as the relative path to config.php and the URL to your board are correct. Also, you must put last10.php and last10config.php in the same directory!

Instructions
1] Unzip the files last10.php and last10config.php to your hard drive.
2] Open last10config.php in an ASCII text editor, such as Notepad (Windows), SimpleText (Mac), EditPlus, UltraEdit, TextPad, etc. (DO NOT use WYSIWYG HTML editors such as FrontPage, HotDog, DreamWeaver, etc. They will in all likelyhood screw up the file! I will not be able to support you if you edit the file in one of these programs.)
3] Edit the variables at the top. These are:

1. $path > path to your config.php file (usually in the /admin directory) - NO TRAILING SLASH! and DO NOT PUT config.php at the end of it! ( e.g. forums/admin )
2. $url > URL to your board - NO TRAILING SLASH! ( e.g. http://www.mysite.com/forums )
3. $urlimg > URL to your board's images - NO TRAILING SLASH ( e.g. http://www.mysite.com/forums/images ).
4. $maxthreads > max threads to show. will show less if $last24 or $last7 limits it to less results than this number
5. $ob > determines the sort order of the list. replycount and views are numbers, lastposter is a name, title is the name of the thread, and lastpost is the last posts' date. set to one of the following: replycount , views , lastposter , title , lastpost (lastpost is most popular. it's the thread most recently replied to, then the second-to-last most recent, etc.)
6. $obdir > set to "desc" or "asc". which direction to sort? "desc" goes from bottom to top (9 to 1, z to a, etc.). "asc" goes top to bottom (1 to 9, a to z, etc.)
7. $last24 > set to 1 to limit the possible results to the last 24 hours; 0 for no limit (must set this to 0 if $last7 is set to 1)
8. $last7 > set to 1 to limit the possible results to the last 7 days; 0 for no limit (must set this to 0 if $last24 is set to 1)
9. $bc1 > first alt color (for the alternating colored rows)
10. $bc2 > second alt color
11. $hc > head background color (title, last poster, etc.)
12. $lc > text link color
13. $tc > text color
14. $f > font face
15. $fs > font size in points. 6 is on the small side, 10 on the large side. Put only a number in this - no "pt", "pts", or anything else!
16. $lastposter > show the "last poster" column? 1 = yes; 0 = no
17. $views > show the view count for each thread? 1 = yes; 0 = no
18. $replies > show the reply count for each thread? 1 = yes; 0 = no
19. $lastpostdate > show the last post date and time for each thread? 1 = yes; 0 = no
20. $len > maximum number of characters of the title to show. e.g. if the title is 60 characters and this is set to 25, only the first 25 characters of the title will be shown (followed by ...)
21. $excludeforums > List certain forums to be excluded. Best used if you have a large number of forums you *do* want included and only a few that you want excluded. List them separated by commas, but without spaces - e.g. 1,2,3,4 - and DO NOT fill in both this and $includeforums! Use one or the other.
22. $includeforums > List certain forums to be included. Best used if you have a small number of forums that you want included and a large number you want excluded. List them separated by commas, but without spaces - e.g. 1,2,3,4 - and DO NOT fill in both this and $excludeforums! Use one or the other.
23. $showmessages > If you want to show the last post of the thread as well, set this to 1. You can limit the number of characters displayed in $lplen below.
24. $lplen > If you specify a number here, any post that has more than $lplen number of characters will be reduced to this number and "..." added to the end of it. If you don't want to use this feature, leave it blank e.g. "" - remember though that if $showmessages is set to 0, this won't do anything.
25. $tw > If you want to specify the width of the table, you can set it as a percent e.g. 95% or as a number of pixels e.g. 300 or just leave it blank and the table will size itself.
26. $showdate > If you want to show the date *and* the time, set this to 1. If you want to just show the time, set this to 0.
27. $cs > If you want a thin line around your cells, set this to 1 (or higher - experiment!). Set to 0 for no line.
28. $nb > if you want breaks in text to appear as such, set this to 1. otherwise set it to 0 (this may cause problems if there are large breaks in the text)
29. $showforumtitle > if you want to show the forum title, linked to that forum, for each thread also (forum title: thread title) then set this to 1. otherwise set it to 0.
30. $showicon > if you want to show the icon the author chose for their post, set this to 1. otherwise set it to 0.

4] Upload both last10.php and last10config.php to your website. You can include last10.php as follows. To include it on a PHP-parsed page (.php, .php3, .phtml, etc.):
<? include("last10.php"); ?>
To include it on a server-parsed page (.shtml, .shtm, .ssi, etc.):
<!--#include file="last10.php"-->

Instructions are also included in the zip file (last10.txt).

FEEDBACK WANTED! Likes/dislikes/modification requests all gladly accepted!

Please DO NOT contact me via IM or PM about this hack. Post your problem/question here and I will try to help you.

[TigerLily]

Jason- I'm having that problem too, and only in Netscape. The pages look GREAT in IE 5, but downright frightening in Netscape. I even upgraded my Netscape browser (I never use it, hate that program!) to see if that would fix it, but it didn't. The tables look all strange and don't go all the way across, plus the fonts are messed up. They will look fine in one post and messed up on the next. Really weird! I wonder if Netscape doesn't like the style settings in the table tags? Not sure!
TigerLily

[jdebler]

Originally posted by TigerLily
Really weird! I wonder if Netscape doesn't like the style settings in the table tags? Not sure!
TigerLily

Well, Netscape likes the style settings until you specify a width of the table. This is what is confusing to me.

Also, I notice that when I load the page in either Netscape or IE, it takes about 10 seconds to load the table with the information, but loading just the forum itself is lightning quick. Does it have to first parse it in the forum, and then does the hack have to parse it again?

I am not criticizing the hack in any way because I think it is very cool, but like I said earlier, I am just learning this stuff and would like to know why things work the way they do. Troubleshooting is one of the best ways to learn something, I think.

Jason

[dost]

xdam: Using this hack as a news script! Great idea, thanks man, I'll do the same thing.

tubedogg: As I told before, I'll use this wonderful hack as a news script. I don't know anything about php so I'll beg for a few customizations:
1)*Please answer this one, it's the most important one* How can I sort order of the list by "date posted" ?
2) This is not so important but I'll appreciate if you can answer. How can I display different messages by the number of replies? Like "Go Reply" if there are no replies, "1 Reply" if there is 1, "X Replies" if there are more ... I think you get the idea.
3) This is also not important. Don't answer if you don't have time. Is there any way to display the date once for the threads that are opened at the same day? Like:
26 June 2001
Thread 1
Thread 2
27 June 2001
Thread 1 ...

Thanks for the great hack!

[jarvis]

Great hack... Finally got it working on my IIS homepage at www.mhogaming.com . Darn all you Unix guys.

Thanks for the awesome hack!!

[Oystein]

tubedog:

the hack is nice... but as I've said some times now, it doesn't display posts made by unregistered users. The thread doesn't become visible in the hack until a registered user replies.

Any fix for this, and I'd be greatful!

[gmyachtsman]

I am having problems getting the last 10 to show up on my web page from my include file into the first page of my website harborsailing.com . I am hosted on an apache server at hostrocket.

I tried to include the last20.php file in a .shtml file, .shm file, and a .php file, all without complete success.


.htaccess

I was concerned that part of my problems could be due to .htaccess: I saw on a thread elsewhere that I could edit the .htaccess file to include the following:

AddType text/html .shtml .shtm .html .htm
AddHandler server-parsed .html .shtml .shtm .htm

and that maybe that would work for adding .php too.

See: http://forums.hostrocket.com/showthr...light=htaccess

My past experience with .htaccess indicated to me that as soon as it is loaded onto the website by ftp, it disappears. But I was able to set my Leap ftp going to options-->preferences-->view to show hidden files.

I created a .htaccess file with the prescription above and put it in my public_html folder (there had been none there).



What I tried:

1. In .shmtl type files

When I used

<!--#include file="last10/last10.php"-->

or

<!--#include virtual="last10/last10.php"-->

(with or without a first "/") and
placed them in files with a .shtml ending I got unparsed included files showing up as raw php code.

With .stm I got a directory index and when I clicked on the index file, I got the same as above.

Incidentally, this is the same thing I get when I try to access to included page directly:

http://www.harborsailing.com/last10/last10.php


2. In .php type files

Then I tried changing my own main index file name to end in .php (the include was on the first page). And I tried this code:

<?php include("last10/last10.php"); ?>

But when I did that nothing showed up for the include (with or without a first "/").

I also tried including the full http:// address with the same result of not showing up.

I tried putting the include in the header, in the body, and after the body. Did I need to call it? If so, maybe that is why I saw nothing.

[gmyachtsman]

OK -- I've figured out why I was getting the raw code showing up on my .shtml pages. It was the .htaccess file. The clue was that the Vbulletin forum wasn't being parsed either:

After I had named my index file index.php, I noticed that the .htaccss file in my public_html folder was preventing my VBulletin board from being evaluated. Instead all you saw on the forums page was a jumble of writing in the browser.

Deleting the .htaccess file solved that. Remembering that I had seen the same thing at the bottom of my .shtml page, I converted back to using that page (without the .htaccess fiel this time.)

The result was that the file was properly included in my browser with the <!--#include virtual="last10/last10.php"--> line as previously used above.

Now why were people saying to use the .htaccess file again?

One other change I had to make was because I was getting an error from the parsing of the included php file where it needed to access the config file.

I had to change the path to "../discussion/admin" since I had to go up one step from my last10 folder before going down.

Now it is all working fine. And it also works if I switch the index file to a .php ending. What a problem this .htaccess stuff caused me and somehow it seems that I did it all to myself!!!

Thanks for the cool hack!!

[tubedogg]

Originally posted by DoST
1)*Please answer this one, it's the most important one* How can I sort order of the list by "date posted" ?

Not sure what you mean by date posted. If you mean the date the thread was started, then you would use
thread.dateline
for the $ob variable. Otherwise I'll need a bit more explanation.

2) This is not so important but I'll appreciate if you can answer. How can I display different messages by the number of replies? Like "Go Reply" if there are no replies, "1 Reply" if there is 1, "X Replies" if there are more ... I think you get the idea.

Find

while ($threads = mysql_fetch_array($tr)) {
	// are we going to show the message too?

and replace it with

while ($threads = mysql_fetch_array($tr)) {	
	if ($threads[replycount] == 0) {
		$replyword = "Go Reply";
	} elseif ($threads[replycount] == 1) {
		$replyword = "One Reply";
	} elseif ($threads[replycount] > 1) {
		$replyword = $threads[replycount]." Replies";
	}
	// are we going to show the message too?

[NORRITT]

Hi,

is it possible to set the subboards you want to show in this hack?

[tubedogg]

Originally posted by tubedogg
$excludeforums > List certain forums to be excluded. Best used if you have a large number of forums you *do* want included and only a few that you want excluded. List them separated by commas, but without spaces - e.g. 1,2,3,4 - and DO NOT fill in both this and $includeforums! Use one or the other.
$includeforums > List certain forums to be included. Best used if you have a small number of forums that you want included and a large number you want excluded. List them separated by commas, but without spaces - e.g. 1,2,3,4 - and DO NOT fill in both this and $excludeforums! Use one or the other.