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!

[towermatt]

WOOHOO!!

Now that is the cherry on the cake there. Worked perfectly. Great mod, great support

[JeffreySmith]

Sick Mod I really love it.

I recently moved my forum from one domain to the other. The feeds are still pulling from the old site (which is fine for me) but the problem is I keep having to update the thread counters every time a new post is generated by About Today. Otherwise if I don't I just get the "invalid link, please contact the admin" message.

Is there something I can do, anyone?

oh yeah....

Also I got another problem with adding the $myfeeds variable. Do I just place that in the right side column code by itself or do I need some more code to get the feeds to show up?

Thanks

[Dave Hawley]

CyberRanger, I've using this on 3.5.4 for about 1 month now without any hitch. Now all of a sudden I'm getting about 100 lines of;

Warning: Division by zero in /global.php(334) : eval()'d code on line 140

I have even tried disabling all other plugins I'm using, but it still bugs out. The only way to stop it is to disable AboutToday.

Thanks for any help.

[wolf32]

Hmmm, I seem to be having a problem. I have Welcome Headers enabled and when I access 'AboutToday' as a member of my board then I get the standard guest welcome message. I'm trying to get rid of the welcome message.

Any suggestions???

Edit: In your first screenie how did you get "Latest Disucssion for AboutToday" to display? Thanks

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by wolf32

Hmmm, I seem to be having a problem. I have Welcome Headers enabled and when I access 'AboutToday' as a member of my board then I get the standard guest welcome message. I'm trying to get rid of the welcome message.

Any suggestions???

Not off the top of my head. One of my boards runs both and I'm not seeing that issue. Let me ponder it!

Originally Posted by wolf32

Edit: In your first screenie how did you get "Latest Disucssion for AboutToday" to display? Thanks

In the admincp -> AboutToday -> Settings -> "Talk About It Items to Display" controls that.

[wolf32]

Originally Posted by CyberRanger

Not off the top of my head. One of my boards runs both and I'm not seeing that issue. Let me ponder it!

Maybe a browser issue on my side?

In the admincp -> AboutToday -> Settings -> "Talk About It Items to Display" controls that.

Doh! why didn't I think of that. Thanks.

[amigos]

Excellent plug in.
I have some problems with some feeds containig greek characters. There seeme to be incorrect codepage, double characters etc. Is there any quick solution for that ?

[mrkiwi]

yup, same codepage problem, my forum is windows-1251 (russian) and all of the feeds are utf-8 )
so, if i do nothing, all the new autocreated threads go with a mess of symbols instead of names, if i make my forum utf-8, it becomes a mess of strange characters, but new blogposts become correctly displayed

p.s. sorry for my eng )

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by amigos

Excellent plug in.
I have some problems with some feeds containig greek characters. There seeme to be incorrect codepage, double characters etc. Is there any quick solution for that ?

sorry, no quick solution. I'm afraid this has been a problem for awhile and I'm not sure how to solve it.

[wolf32]

I seem to be having a problem. If you look here and scroll down to the forums "Newsroom", "TV Fans" or "Gaming News" and click on the thread (rather than the forum), it leads me to this page. These are the only forums that have "Automatically Create Threads" enabled.

Any idea?