AboutToday - Bring RSS Feeds and Daily Events to Your Site!

What is AboutToday?

AboutToday provides a central place to bring daily items of interest to your forum visitors. It includes two main components: an RSS Reader System and Local Events database System.

Please NOTE: This mod has been modified for vb ver 3.6.4. It should work on vb ver 3.5.4 and 3.6.x.

1. An RSS Reader system where the admin can enter RSS feeds that will then be displayed on the page. RSS feeds can be set to AUTOMATICALLY create threads or be set so that users can easily create a thread from a feed.. Feeds can be read via fopen or cURL.
   
   
   
   
   
   The RSS Feeds are fully intergrated with vbAdvanced and could actually be placed anywhere you want!!
   
2. A database system that can hold unlimited categories of "AboutToday" events. For example, you could have a history category (like a Today in History) with sub-categories for different eras in history. Or, you could have a daily joke or software tip of the day, etc.
   
   The "Add Event" feature is intended to help you if you want for example - Sports: Today in History. With the vb calendar, you cannot have categories and you are restricted with how far back the dates can go.
   
   
   
   
   So with the "Add Event" feature, you could have a category tree like:
   • Hockey
     • Professional
     • College
     • High School
   • Football
     • American Football
     • The Rest of the World (Soccer)
   • Baseball
   
   with the normal calendar feature, you cannot have categories. And with "Add Event" you can have any date. So, if you want an event like "Jan 1, 132 B.C. - the first ball was invented", you can do that. But, that isn't possible in the normal calendar. Also, the events in "Add Event" are fully searchable.

Installation

Copy the following files to your server in the forums directory:

abouttoday.php
includes/class.csv.php
includes/class_abouttoday.php
includes/cron/cron_abouttoday.php
includes/xml/bitfield_abouttoday.xml
includes/xml/cpnav_abouttoday.xml
admincp/abouttodayadmin.php

From the admincp, import the product file product-abouttoday.xml (Manage Products - Add/Import Product).

REFRESH your admincp window. You should now see a listing in the left column of the admincp for "AboutToday".

Getting Started

NOTE - if this is a new install, a Yahoo RSS Feed and CNN Entertainment Feed have been automatically added to give you a feel for how the product looks.

If you plan to use the RSS Feeds:

1. From the admincp, select AboutToday - RSS Feeds. Add an RSS Feed.
2. From the admincp, select Usergroups - Usergroup Manager. Add permissions so the Administrator group can use the product.
3. From your forum directory, bring up the file abouttoday.php.
4. If you want the feeds to AUTOMATICALLY create threads, go to admincp - abouttoday - settings. There you must set the userid of the account to use to create the thread. Then, edit the RSS Feed with the forumid of where the threads for that feed should be created!

If you plan to create your own "today in history" type of database:

1. From the admincp, select AboutToday - Categories. Add a category.
2. From your forum directory, bring up the file abouttoday.php. "Add" your first event to the category you have created!

Version Status
I've tested this product extensively but ... use this totally at your own risk!

Credits
I learned a lot about how to code this and used a lot of the code from what Ron1n did with ecDownloads. What I've learned from his code while helping to support ecDownloads has been invaluable.

Sites Using this Product
Visit www.armchairgeneral.com to see this product in action.

Click Install!
Please Click Install if you are using this product. Thanks!

[popmyzit]

AWESOME!!!!!! dude you rock.

[shanemcse]

Originally Posted by shanemcse

Awesome product. I love it!!!

I set the feed to update every 5 minutes but they are not updateing? Any suggestions??? It does update when I do it manually.

How hard would it be to schedule a task to delete threads over 10 days old with no reply? I know it's probably easy but I am still new to this.

I tested this on two of my forums and neither one is updating automatically. They are both set to 5 minutes.

Any suggestions ???

check it out here

http://www.emcforums.com/live-emc-news/

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by shanemcse

I set the feed to update every 5 minutes but they are not updateing? Any suggestions??? It does update when I do it manually.

ah ... you've discovered a little secret! I never envisioned having the feeds update that often. When the scheduled task "Hourly Cleanup #1" runs, a hook into that from AboutToday updates any feeds that have not been updated within the time specified by the individual feed. So, although you can set a feed to update more often than once an hour, it will really update no more than once an hour. If you really want it to run more often than that, I can tell you what to do.

Originally Posted by shanemcse

How hard would it be to schedule a task to delete threads over 10 days old with no reply? I know it's probably easy but I am still new to this.

That's a good idea. I'll look into that more.

[shanemcse]

Originally Posted by westpointer

ah ... you've discovered a little secret! I never envisioned having the feeds update that often. When the scheduled task "Hourly Cleanup #1" runs, a hook into that from AboutToday updates any feeds that have not been updated within the time specified by the individual feed. So, although you can set a feed to update more often than once an hour, it will really update no more than once an hour. If you really want it to run more often than that, I can tell you what to do.
That's a good idea. I'll look into that more.

If it is easy enough to explain then yes I would like to know how to update the news every 5 minutes.

The deleting of old news articles with 0 replies would be cool. I have one user account that pulls only RSS feeds so if it's easier to delete old threads that the user creates that would work too. Another option would be to delete news articles once the links no longer work.

I would like to donate some $$$ to you. Do you have a site with a donate button or paypal.

[CLKeenan]

Quick question: would it be possible to make it so that the threads posted by the plugin counted to the forums total? Or at least the ones that people request to start a discussion based on?

How would I go about doing this?

Thanks for the AMAZING plugin! It might be just what my forum needed!

-Chris

Edit: I would also love to see the deletion of old threads with no replies, or maybe the archival of them?

Edit #2: Would it be possible to make the image links that are included in some RSS feeds be automatically [IMG] tag?

[oberheimhaven]

And I cant figure out to save my life Im getting this error when I click on talk about it
You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 2
Error Number : 1064

could anyone please lend me a hand?
Thxs
MarkAnthony:banana:

[ohgenki]

clicked install and nominated for mod of the month!

west: is it possible for us to select which rss feeds to show on which styles? say $myfeeddetails will show all the rss that are added to it, but is there a way to show like $myfeeddetails2 to show another set of rss? etc.?

[mmackinnon]

Hey

I currently use 2 feed. I would like them to display side by side on the bottom. How can i make that happen?

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by oberheimhaven

And I cant figure out to save my life Im getting this error when I click on talk about it
You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 2
Error Number : 1064

could anyone please lend me a hand?
Thxs
MarkAnthony:banana:

that means one of the feeds is not working properly anymore. Go through each feed, making a small change for that feed like changing the number of items to display from 4 to 5. When you save the changes to the problem feed, you'll get the error in the admincp. Then delete the feed and try doing a force update.

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by mmackinnon

Hey

I currently use 2 feed. I would like them to display side by side on the bottom. How can i make that happen?

This this post. It contains links to three other pages that give brief tutorials on placing feeds at the top or the bottom of the page.