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!

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by 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?

I'm not sure why this happens. I've seen it occasionally. Try doing admincp -> Maintenance -> Update Counters -> Rebuild Thread Information. I think that will fix it. If not, try rebuilding forum information.

[wolf32]

Worked thanks.

[vBFanJeff]

I'm having trouble with this updating my RSS feeds. I tried looking in this thread but there are so many posts I wasn't sure if any of them had a fix. The RSS updates are not working in BOTH vB and vBA areas so both my forums and the CMPS is messed up. It did work for a few days, but all of a sudden it's stuck now.

I'm using the most current versions of vB and vBA. Any thoughts on this or has anyone else had this happen. If I can't get it to work then I'll have to uninstall the mod.

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by vBFanJeff

I'm having trouble with this updating my RSS feeds.(

This is almost always related to a problem with a site you are trying to get a feed from. I'd suggest taking the url (that you've entered in AboutToday), pasting it into a web browser, and seeing if an xml output is returned.

If you want, post some of your url's here and I'll test them out for you to show you what I mean.

[vBFanJeff]

Thanks, I checked and some are updating OK now, others still having issues. They are big sites like MLB sports, News, etc. so I don't think they would have issues but you never know. Hopefully the others will update OK too, I'm only 1 day behind now instead of 5. Will keep you informed of any other issues.

Thanks for the help.

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by vBFanJeff

others still having issues.

Post one of the problem feeds here and I'll see if I can give you any pointers.

[Fungsten]

Installed on Test Server using 3.6.8. I'll tell you if any issues occur.

[Fungsten]

Works on 3.6.8. However my question is how do I get the Feeds displayed horizontally and not vertically on the forum home page?

So instead of:

News1
News2
etc.

I want it as:

News1 News2 etc.

Thanks.

[Fungsten]

When posting the article why don't the images show up?

Attachment 69389

Thanks.

[towermatt]

Hmmm...I was using this on 3.6.5 and my members loved it. Last night it went haywire for some reason though.

It was causing an error on the global.php and I was able to disable all hooks with a command in there. Then I systematically turned them back on and it was the one.

Just wondering if anyone else had the problem and if there is a fix. I suppose I could use the built in RSS but I love the idea of being about to showcase site events on the main page easily