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!

[Nuguru]

Hello,

I was wondering if the page load speed is dependant on the number of RSS feeds going to this mod? The reason why I ask is because I have only 20 feeds going to AboutToday and it seems to be the slowest loading page out of all my pages.

Thank You,

Nuguru

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by Nuguru

Hello,

I was wondering if the page load speed is dependant on the number of RSS feeds going to this mod? The reason why I ask is because I have only 20 feeds going to AboutToday and it seems to be the slowest loading page out of all my pages.

Thank You,

Nuguru

When you load the AboutToday.php page, it does check to see if any of the feeds need updated. If you site isn't very busy, ie the feeds aren't getting updated very often via the vb scheduled tasks, then loading the page could be slow as the feeds update. Otherwise, it should load fairly fast.

[OrangeFlea]

Something is wrong. I've uploaded everything correctly, installed the product, ran the AboutToday.php (it was fine), and re-checked my settings. I'm getting no news. I've forced some feeds, but still nothing

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by OrangeFlea

Something is wrong. I've uploaded everything correctly, installed the product, ran the AboutToday.php (it was fine), and re-checked my settings. I'm getting no news. I've forced some feeds, but still nothing

PM me your site URL along with the username and password that can access the admincp and I'll check it out for you.

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by OrangeFlea

Something is wrong. I've uploaded everything correctly, installed the product, ran the AboutToday.php (it was fine), and re-checked my settings. I'm getting no news. I've forced some feeds, but still nothing

Thanks for the login info. You are up and running!

I made the following changes to your settings:

1. Under AboutToday -> Settings, I changed "Display RSS Feeds in "Today's Events"?" to YES. This makes a summary of the feeds appear at the bottom of forumhome. EDIT: I set this back to "NO" after I re-read your message and saw you don't want those to display.
2. Under AboutToday -> RSS Feeds, I modified the two feeds you have by changing "Display this Feed in "Today's Events"?" to YES. This tells the feed to appear in the summary RSS feeds at the bottom of forumhome.
3. Under AboutToday -> RSS Feeds, I modified the two feeds you have by changing "Include this Feed in $myfeeds variable?" to YES. This tells the feed to be read for your vba page.
4. Under AboutToday -> RSS Feeds, I modified the two feeds you have changing "Direct Link to Feed?" to NO. This way, when someone clicks on the link in vba or at the bottom of forumhome, they are taken to the abouttoday page instead of leaving your site and going directly to the story on another site. You may want it the way it was but I wanted to be sure you understood what that does.

[OrangeFlea]

You're great. Simply outstanding.

[OrangeFlea]

Hmm, is it possible to have little thumbnails or images on the vBa page, as opposed to having just text? If so, how?

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by OrangeFlea

Hmm, is it possible to have little thumbnails or images on the vBa page, as opposed to having just text? If so, how?

Do you mean if the RSS Feed has an image to include that image?

[OrangeFlea]

Exactly, and not for the Abouttoday.php page, but on the RSS list (vbA home page) itself. Also, is there a way to sort the feeds in a certain order?

[ILTK]

Great product

I was wondering if there was any plans of maybe adding filters to filter out items from feeds?

Sometimes some of the feeds include entries with links to cracks, serials and other questionable material and I'd like to filter out those sites somehow.