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!

[lexx27]

Does anybody know the solution of the encoding problem (greek). I was using Atakan Rss before and I hadnt any problem...

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by lexx27

Does anybody know the solution of the encoding problem (greek). I was using Atakan Rss before and I hadnt any problem...

I'm afraid I'm not sure how to fix it. Can you post a pic of what it looks like and what it should look like?

[lexx27]

Ok, here is the pic, some letters have the problem, not all of them. τ for example.

[G_Man]

Originally Posted by lexx27

Ok, here is the pic, some letters have the problem, not all of them. τ for example.

I get that with a couple of my feeds, too.

[Mysticales]

Sorry to bump, but no one knows about the preview article thing with it linking to "more" and actually displaying correctly instead of just cut off parts etc or odd behavior when you set a limit and show more then 1 article?

[ubblite]

@Mysticales

Not sure what you mean but if I understand you correctly it depends on the feed as some display differently than others, which doesn't have anything to do with AboutToday. What is the XML to the feed you are referring to? Maybe you have a link to your site showing how it cuts part off as I'm not sure what you mean.

[Mysticales]

<a href="http://www.darkmystics.com/forums/abouttoday.php?do=rss&id=3" target="_blank">http://www.darkmystics.com/forums/ab...hp?do=rss&id=3</a>

I have a maximum of 1500 length set, 3 articles to show.

Now "Sometimes" it formats ok, sometimes it may give me a good partial article for the 1st and 2nd one, but the 3rd one may be all crumpled, then if you also look at the "links" that are shown, sometimes the url is messed up on things.

Basically lets say this... like the RSS Bot we all know about that makes posts, that one takes a arcticle, posts part of it, and sets rest to the "more" which clicks back to the source article.

Basically... looking for it to parse the articles better, say maybe give "x" chars per article then cut it off and link to the source. Vs one global length modifier.

This way I could do 5, 10 articles shown, whatever, and it would only show a preview of the article then link them to the full story.

[bandare]

I s there a way to add this as a module to vbadvanced?

[lexx27]

Add-ons...

[lexx27]

It would be great if there was a feature to categorize feeds.