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.

[TheCaver]

Originally posted by HiroshiNanami


Anyone got any idea??

What's the point? On index.php, all the user has to do is click "New Posts" and he gets this info

JC

[Courage]

I keep getting an error

Fatal error: Failed opening required 'forum/admin/config.php' (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /apache/sites/softnews.totalnet.ro/htdocs/forum/last10.php on line 13

My settings are:

$path = "forum/admin"; // path to your config.php file (usually in the /admin directory) - NO TRAILING SLASH! Do not include "config.php"
$url = "http://www.softnews.ro/forum"; // URL to your board - NO TRAILING SLASH!
$urlimg = "http://www.softnews.ro/forum/images"; // URL to your board's images - NO TRAILING SLASH!

What can I do ?

I need this to include on a SSI page !

[FWC]

It looks like you might have last10.php and last10config.php in your forum directory. If you do, the path to config.php would just be /admin.

[Gutspiller]

Tubedogg, could you help me. I am using this hack for something a little different, but it works the best out of all the hacks that are out there and was hoping to tweak it a little bit.

First off, is it possible to get two (or more) different versions to run on the same page? When I have two different ones running on the same page, different meaning they are both using different files and different config files, one of them repeats the last thread over and over for each thread. So if I say I want it to show 15 threads, it lists the latest thread 15 times.

I don't know if it has to do with pulling the latest threads from a single forum in the php files for the hack or not. I have one forum in the include forum field, and no forums in the exclude field. The weird thing is, is that one works the way it's suppost to and onedoes what I mentioned above. Is it possible to get all of them to run normally on the page?

Another question I had, was is it possible to make one of them not bump a post to the top if it gets a reply? I want it to work more like a databasing list than showing the latest threads.

If you (or anybody really) could help me I would really appreciate it.

Thanks very much.

[Gutspiller]

Originally posted by wajones
Thought I'd share this, a few of my users wanted to include tubedogg's last10 hack on a vbulletin page and this is what I came up with...

In a copy of the last10.php script comment out or delete the following

require("$path/config.php");
$db=mysql_connect($servername,$dbusername,$dbpassw ord) or die("Can't open connection to MySQL");
mysql_select_db($dbname) or die("Can't select database");

now add this to the phpinclude template

ob_start();
include_once("./last10.php");
$last10 = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();

Then I was able to add $last10 into any vbulletin template to display the last10 table. Saved a lot of work trying to create templates and changing his code, plus if he changes it, it's simple to upgrade.

I tried this and when I put the $last10 in my forum header it limited the number of threads to show on a normal forum page to 10. How can I get it to show 10 in the $last10, but not limit the number of threads shown in a forum??

Please help.

[Gutspiller]

tubedogg can you help me with this hack, I am trying to run a few different versions on a page and I ran into a problem. It took me quite some time to troubleshoot it, but I narrowed it down to a single problem.

OK, the problem is that when you have two or more of this hack running on the same page, one of them works fine and the other shows the first thread that is in the forums you have marked for the hack to view. It only shows the one thread, but it repleats it however many times you set the hack to show how many threads.

I narrowed the problem down to the forum title option in the hack. When I turn it off so that it doesn't show the forum that the thread is in more than one version of this hack works fine on a page, but when you turn it on, on one of the hacks on the same page, it does what I mentioned above about repeating the same thread title over and over.

Can you (somebody) help me please? I really love this hack and use it a lot on my forum and if you or anybody could help me I would really really really appreciate it.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Thanks.

[ixian]

First, thanks for a great hack! I got it working no problem on my non-vb home page (test site - hasn't gone live yet)

Second, a formatting question - What do I need to edit to "tighten up" the table? Specifically, it appears as if each link to the latest posts has a line break in between it, so that all the links look like this:

Forum: Thread

Forum: Thread

Forum: Thread

etc, etc. I would like the text spaced closer together, but I don't see where to edit this. It's not in last10config.php and I couldn't find anything in the actual last10.php script either. I'm sure it's flying right over my head.

BTW, playing with the font point size has no effect

Thank you for a great hack!

[Sketch]

Originally posted by Oliver
we have this installed on a completly different server, when, as sometimes does our vb server goes down, so does the page on the other server. Is there a check that can be done before running last10.php to see if the vb server is up and running?

cheers
oli

Use the gethostbyname() function on your page prior to calling the top 10.

Sketch

[ixian]

Originally posted by ixian
First, thanks for a great hack! I got it working no problem on my non-vb home page (test site - hasn't gone live yet)

Second, a formatting question - What do I need to edit to "tighten up" the table? Specifically, it appears as if each link to the latest posts has a line break in between it, so that all the links look like this:

Forum: Thread

Forum: Thread

Forum: Thread

etc, etc. I would like the text spaced closer together, but I don't see where to edit this. It's not in last10config.php and I couldn't find anything in the actual last10.php script either. I'm sure it's flying right over my head.

BTW, playing with the font point size has no effect

Thank you for a great hack!

NM, figured it out. For those with the same issue - "show icons" is set to 1 (on) by default. I discovered that even if the thread starter didn't choose an icon for the thread the last10.php script will still leave a space for one. Turn this option off and you get nice tight spacing

[smleg]

I just installed it and it's working well, great hack!

www.ramprage.com

Thanks! :beard: