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!

[Maagic]

Originally Posted by bandare

Is there a way to add this as a module to vbadvanced?

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=108274

[Mysticales]

Hey I am having a issue, just went to fully put this in for my users and well... ForumHome and the main RSS feeds are not showing anymore. I could delete them and they get removed, but if I add a new feed, it does not show up in the home page of abouttoday.php

I DID check the SQL DB, it is putting the feed info there just fine from adminCP.

My "Guess" it has something to do with the SEO url rewrite, which is a htaccess file and so on.

Any suggestions what I can do to get feeds showing again?

[Chicago_VLNU_4s]

can some1 tell me what i have to edit out the .xml file or anything else so it doesn't show up on tha FORUMHOME template? i made a link for it in the navagation menu and only want it there.. help??

ALSO, can someone provide me with some RSS feed links?? i really don't understand how to work this. Maybe some1 can make a good list for us or somethin? Thanks

[GrendelKhan{TSU]

how would I make this a completely separate page?

Its too big at the bottom of the forumhome...but I'd love to have it be a page members could go to get all their news in one place.

[Nuguru]

Hello Everyone,

Well I gotta say that this is a pretty cool addition, however I am finding the spacing at the top a bit of an issue (see attachment).

Does anyone know how to delete atleast a line of spacing at the top. Possible just deleting a <br> or something like that?

Any help would be appreciated.


Thank You,

Nuguru

[Mysticales]

That might be from your navbar template.

But yea.. would be nice to get my feeds showing again. >.< Had uninstalled and reuploaded it all again.. so not sure where the fix could be.

Ok I think I found out.. seems our other site staff did something with the RSS feeds again.. making them useless it looks... Have to get on them about it.

Which left one issue tho... seems when I did "Force Update" now, it redirects it to a bad url does a /./abouttoday.php

Which that part I can fix if I rename all the ./abouttoday.php in the file to remove the ./

But not sure if it was set that way for a reason or not.. not to mention still wondering if SEO and abouttoday conflict some still.

[Nuguru]

Originally Posted by Mysticales

That might be from your navbar template.

But yea.. would be nice to get my feeds showing again. >.< Had uninstalled and reuploaded it all again.. so not sure where the fix could be.

Hello,

No my navbar is great everywhere else. I don't think it is that. Are you talking about the histtd_navbar in abouttoday templates?

I looked through every Abouttoday template and could not find the spacing fix.

Good luck with your project.

Is there anyone else that may know how to fix the spacing problem?

Thank You,

Nuguru

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by Nuguru

Hello,
...
Is there anyone else that may know how to fix the spacing problem?

Thank You,

Nuguru

I see what you mean about the spacing issue. I'll take a look at that.

Sorry to all for not providing much input lately. Real life has really been kicking my butt the last month. By the 2nd week of September, I should be able to really start contributing again.

[Nuguru]

Originally Posted by Nuguru

Hello Everyone,

Well I gotta say that this is a pretty cool addition, however I am finding the spacing at the top a bit of an issue (see attachment).

Does anyone know how to delete atleast a line of spacing at the top. Possible just deleting a <br> or something like that?

Any help would be appreciated.


Thank You,

Nuguru

Hello Westpointer,

I was wondering if you were able to come up with a fix on how I can delete a line above the mod so that it is in portion to normal spacing. It basically just seems like <br><br> or something. If you could give me some advice on fixing this issue, I would greatly appreciate it.


Thank You,

Nuguru

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by Mysticales

http://www.darkmystics.com/forums/ab...hp?do=rss&id=3

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.

The "Maximum Length" property is, I'm afraid, fairly stupid. Right now, it just yanks the first x characters from the feed. This can mean that tags are cut in the middle, etc. I think that's why your formatting looks so bad. I may need to re-look how I do that. Maybe strip all the tags first, then add the "more" at the beginning of the feed. I think that would solve the problems you're are seeing.