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!

[Kleptomaniac]

Nice mod. Installed perfectly ... no problems at all here. Thanks. /Installed

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by wolf32

Great Mod!

I have around 20 different RSS feeds and have it set where a thread is created when a person chooses to talk about that feed.

When I want to create a thread for the feed a majority of the time I get a message saying "Redirecting" rather than "Your thread has been created!"

Once I "Force RSS Update" it will then create the thread, but only after I force the update.

Is there a way to fix this agonizing problem, to where whenever I create the thread, it will be created and I won't have to "Force RSS Update" every time?

Note: I didn't have this problem when I had around 7-12 feeds.

http://www.u-connex.com

That's a perplexing problem which I can't figure out how it could even happen. "Force RSS Update" should only create the threads if the feed is set to automatically create the threads when the feed is added. Can you PM me a site admin login so I can look at it in greater detail?

[sjcctan]

Hello,

May I know will this add-ons work on ver 3.53?

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by sjcctan

Hello,

May I know will this add-ons work on ver 3.53?

Yes, it will. :-)

[The Bish]

Simply put... this is freakn AWESOME!

Never mind... found the link to the vbadvanced thread. Greatness!

Prosper-Living

The Bish

[pscyhosis]

cannot read Chinese news rss feed?
Only one word was showed.
Please hlep

[Natercia]

I have vbulletin version 3.6.5, and have the option of using RSS Manager. I have entered my info for the feed, including RSS URL. How do I know or when will my site start producing threads on the rss i picked?

Thank you.

my website is

www.mamatales.com/forums

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by Natercia

I have vbulletin version 3.6.5, and have the option of using RSS Manager. I have entered my info for the feed, including RSS URL. How do I know or when will my site start producing threads on the rss i picked?

Thank you.

my website is

www.mamatales.com/forums

I'm a little confused. Are you asking about the AboutToday product or the built-in VB rss manager?

[YabbaDabba]

Very Nice!!

INSTALLED

Some questions:

[S]1 - Where is the template defined for displaying the feed content on the abouttoday.php page? I would like to move the [Start/Join Discussion] button to the bottom of the cell.[/S]
figured it out - see below

2 - On the Home page "Upcoming Events", is it possible to display the feed headlines in multiple columns? Two or maybe three cols would be nice. Most headlines are short and punchy and they don't need all that room.

3 - Is there a way for an admin to skip over some items in a feed, like a news article that's off-topic?

4 - What is the necessity of "Force Feeds Update"? Can't that be a query in admincp on a feed-by-feed basis?

5 - I would like to move the admincp menu for "About Today" next to the RSS Feeds menu item. Got a quick way to do that?

6 - Abouttoday page seems to default to "List View" and I prefer "Summary View". Can there be a way to force this in AT's admincp?

Some minor Suggestions:

1 - Preview Feed button (like vB's RSS Manager has)

2 - Replace the Edit Feed and Delete Feed blocks with a Feed list and Add/Edit/Delete buttons

3 - Optionally allow title-less feed items to be skipped.

4 - When editing an existing RSS Feed, the button at the bottom of the form ought to say "Save Feed" not "Edit Feed".

5 - In the Admincp > About Today > Settings > Reason Section is Disabled, "maintenance" is spelled wrong.

6 - The "Get Feed Now" button doesn't really "get" the feed. I'm guessing it just displays what is in the cache. Rename it "Display Articles". OR you could add real "Get Feed Now" functionality to that button.

Some Major Suggestions

1 - When clicking a [Start a Discussion] button (to start a new thread), it would be nice to optionally allow the user to specify the forum where he wants the new thread started. It could be a simple form with a forum drop down list AND a small edit area where he can append his (optional) remarks below the feed content.

2 - And while I'm dreaming, I would like to be able to have 2 of these apps on my site. One for news feeds and one for opinion feeds. Short of tweaking all the base files to avoid variable overlaps and database conflicts, it would be nice if this could do it automatically.
OR
3 - Short of multiple instances of AT, implementing your Category concept for rss feeds could achieve nearly the same result. But I'd like to be able to display each category of feeds separately on forumhome.

Feedburner Problems

Have a couple RSS2 feeds that abouttoday doesn't seem to want to parse. The vB RSS Manager does parse them properly. (I was using a bot before to post threads in my forums from these feeds). Any suggestions or fixes?

Update: I'm guessing the issue is Feedburner as I see others here are having a problem too. Both IE and vB RSS Mgr handle them just fine.

I tried experimenting with the available feedburner links and for one feed I was able to find a working alternative feedburner feed address that worked. For the other, no luck. The problem feed (which is only offered in feedburner format):
http://feeds.feedburner.com/wdtprs/ZDys (G-rated)

One useful tip: you can submit a blog url to feedburner and it will scan the code for other feed types and give you their url. That helped me in another case.

Of course, the best solution is for abouttoday to parse fb feeds regardless of the format.
You outclass VB on handling the other feeds.


Environment _________________________
vB 3.6.5
PHP 5.2.0-8+etch1
MySQL Version 5.0.32-Debian_7etch1-log
Server API cgi/fast-cgi

[YabbaDabba]

General Feeds Problem:

I have seen a couple situations where the article display on abouttoday gets messed up.
(See attached graphic)

Since the articles can contain upper chars and other content oddities, I assume that is what is causing this...but that's just a guess.

First article is fine.
Second displays above the table (missing table tags; it's just sitting in an unformatted part of the table).

<br />He cites St. Thomas Aquinas to defend abortion.</li></ul></td></tr>

Let?s Stand with Cardinal Mahony<br />If Fabian had an ounce of honesty, he would have left the Church long before he lent support to murder of the unborn. If he were a man, he would cast away his apparent fidelity to Christ before he set his hand to betraying </li></ul></td></tr></table></td></tr></table>

Article "#3" and beyond are not in the html.

This is another case where vB handles the feed without a problem.

Any ideas??