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!

[wfcmod]

I installed the product, everything seems to be fine but I cannot find were I should change the administrator permissions. When I go to usergroup manager...edit administrators there are no options to set for abouttoday. I'm using vb3.6. Any ideas what I miss?

[ubblite]

Originally Posted by wfcmod

I installed the product, everything seems to be fine but I cannot find were I should change the administrator permissions. When I go to usergroup manager...edit administrators there are no options to set for abouttoday. I'm using vb3.6. Any ideas what I miss?

You might want to re-upload the files to your FTP, something might be missing. Normally you can change all permissions within the usergroup area.

[wfcmod]

You might want to re-upload the files to your FTP, something might be missing. Normally you can change all permissions within the usergroup area.

Great! I de- and re-installed the product and that solved the problem
Thanks a lot!

[wfcmod]

In the standard calendar I can choose to post events that last a couple of days. Is it somehow possible to do this also for the abouttoday events? It would give me a great option to provide the users with some website news.

[xfaethorx]

has anyone created a batch file for histroical events...I was hoping someone had done a more global batch file of events as currently i don't have any on there. Please someone do one as an addition for this hack!

[xfaethorx]

also when you create a thread from an rss link is there a way to increase the maximum number of characters as I currently get a link to the story and half a sentance pertaining to the story.. can we increase this or change it so it either the link on its own and nothing else or a configurable limit of characters for the body of the message

[ubblite]

@xfaethorx

Are you referring to the thread title posted or the actual contents in the RSS feed? If it's the RSS feed, you can't change that part as you have to go with what the provider has and in that case I'd select a different RSS feed which contains more text.

[glorify]

Liked it, but had to uninstall. A lot of times I change the look of the templates, but this hack made it impossible to do that

[ubblite]

Originally Posted by glorify

Liked it, but had to uninstall. A lot of times I change the look of the templates, but this hack made it impossible to do that

I don't understand. How did this hack make it impossible?

[glorify]

Have you tried to change the templates on this?