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!

[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: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=239 It contains links to three other pages that give brief tutorials on placing feeds at the top or the bottom of the page.

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by 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.?

Do you mean to have it display somewhere on a page besides abouttoday.php? If yes, you could do this with some conditional logic. See my post prior to this one and just warp the $myfeeddetails in template logic to test for the style. I don't have an example handy but I'll post one when I get time.

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by 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?

Adding to the user post count will be included in the next version.

Originally Posted by CLKeenan

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

The image links are already converted into [IMG] tags. However ... see the earlier discussion reprinted below.

but strange (minor) problem:

I have it set to create thread (talk about)....
but when it does it posts the link and some remnant code...
ie output to created reads like this:
--------------

Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 2007 - Ve3d.comurl=

--------------
the link works fine. but what's the "url="?
any ideas how to get rid of it...or what's it SUPPOSED to look like?

When the feed is created into a thread, any html img tags are converted into bbcode IMG tags. I find that the feed image tags tend to contain dynamic url's. Unless you have set vbulletin to allow dynamic img tags (admincp -> vbulletin options -> Message Posting and Editing Options -> Allow Dynamic URL for IMG Tags), vbulletin will convert the dymanic bbcode IMG tags to bbcode URL tags.

[CLKeenan]

Thank you for the detailed explanation WestPointer! Much appreciated!

What would be the negatives for allowing dynamic urls for images? I'm assuming some sort of security issue?

-Chris

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by CLKeenan

Thank you for the detailed explanation WestPointer! Much appreciated!

What would be the negatives for allowing dynamic urls for images? I'm assuming some sort of security issue?

-Chris

Correct. Vb states "This can prevent malicious use of the [IMG] tag." I'm not sure how malicious such use could be but I do set it to "Yes" on my boards.

[cddw.ltd]

Originally Posted by westpointer

Yes, that must have been something else. I'll include that as an option in the next release (probably today or tomorrow).

Any luck with enabling the RSS user to show a postcount?

I'd like to get an idea how many threads the RSS feeder is automatically creating without having to toal up the posts in the different threads!

Thanks

[mmackinnon]

as usual, excellent support!

Originally Posted by westpointer

This this post: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=239 It contains links to three other pages that give brief tutorials on placing feeds at the top or the bottom of the page.

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by cddw.ltd

Any luck with enabling the RSS user to show a postcount?

I'd like to get an idea how many threads the RSS feeder is automatically creating without having to toal up the posts in the different threads!

Thanks

Yes, I actually have that ready but I want to include a few more enhancements before the next release. If you want to add it manually, make the following changes to abouttoday.php

FIND (on or about line 1239)

PHP Code:

            $db->query_write("UPDATE " . TABLE_PREFIX . "histtd_rss
                                  SET `datelastupdate` = 0 
                                  WHERE id = ".$_GET['rssid'].""); 


ADD BELOW that:

PHP Code:

            // update post count for user
            $posts = $db->query_first("
                SELECT posts
                FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user
                WHERE userid = ".$postuserid."
            ");
            
            $newpostcount = $posts['posts'] + 1;
            
            $db->free_result($posts);
            
            $db->query_write("
                UPDATE " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user
                SET posts = ".$newpostcount."
                WHERE userid = ".$postuserid."
            "); 


That will about the post count of a user who creates a new thread from the feed.

To update the post count for the automatically added feeds, make the following change to includes/plugin_abouttoday.php

FIND (on or about line 344):

PHP Code:

$vbulletin->db->query_write("UPDATE " . TABLE_PREFIX . "histtd_rss
                      SET `datelastupdate` = 0 
                      WHERE id = ".$rssid.""); 


BELOW that ADD:

PHP Code:

                                                        // update post count for user
    $posts = $vbulletin->db->query_first("
        SELECT posts
        FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user
        WHERE userid = ".$postuserid."
    ");
    
    $newpostcount = $posts['posts'] + 1;
    
    $vbulletin->db->free_result($posts);
    
    $vbulletin->db->query_write("
        UPDATE " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user
        SET posts = ".$newpostcount."
        WHERE userid = ".$postuserid."
    "); 


[cddw.ltd]

Thanks,
I'll have a proper look tomorrow, otherwise I'll wait till the next release!

[hilfe-forum]

i allways have this error:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: curl_init() in /var/xxx/vbulletin/includes/plugin_abouttoday.php on line 179

can anyone help??

i dont hafe cURL but i have fopen....

Installierte cURL Version: Nicht installiert!
fopen Wrapper Status: Ein

This setting is "no"

If your host does not support fopen, change this to "Yes" to use cURL instead for reading RSS Feeds