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 Dave Hawley

Some feeds work, some don't.

so far, the main difference that seems consistent is if the feed is an RSS 1 or RSS 2 spec feed. The RSS 1 feeds work, the RSS 2 don't. Still researching ....

[Harley D]

My feeds are showing, however the URL to the images are incorrect?

Example:

actual link from my About Today Page RSS feed

http://www.laserenthusiast.com/productimages/sku_10779_1_small.jpg

Should be

http://www.dealextreme.com/productimages/sku_10779_1_small.jpg

laserenthusiast is MY sites URL
dealextreme is the RSS feed

I'm using, vBulletin version: 3.6.8 Patch Level 2

What do I need to change to correct this?

Thanks

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by Harley D

My feeds are showing, however the URL to the images are incorrect?

Example:

actual link from my About Today Page RSS feed

http://www.laserenthusiast.com/productimages/sku_10779_1_small.jpg

Should be

http://www.dealextreme.com/productimages/sku_10779_1_small.jpg

laserenthusiast is MY sites URL
dealextreme is the RSS feed

I'm using, vBulletin version: 3.6.8 Patch Level 2

What do I need to change to correct this?

Thanks

My guess is that the feed above has the images as relative instead of absolute paths in the feed information. So the url to the image is coming as "productimages/sku_10779_1_small.jpg" when saved in AboutToday as a relative feed it's then output to the browser with your site's URL in front of it. I'm not sure there is a fix except for the other site to have absolute url's to the images.

What is the rss feed link you are using so I can look at it more?

[Harley D]

Originally Posted by CyberRanger

My guess is that the feed above has the images as relative instead of absolute paths in the feed information. So the url to the image is coming as "productimages/sku_10779_1_small.jpg" when saved in AboutToday as a relative feed it's then output to the browser with your site's URL in front of it. I'm not sure there is a fix except for the other site to have absolute url's to the images.

What is the rss feed link you are using so I can look at it more?

Here is the RSS feed that I am using.

http://www.dealextreme.com/rss.dx

[Harley D]

Originally Posted by Harley D

Here is the RSS feed that I am using.

http://www.dealextreme.com/rss.dx

I have contacted them and asked that they use Full URLS for their images.
Lets hope they comply.

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by Harley D

I have contacted them and asked that they use Full URLS for their images.
Lets hope they comply.

I loaded the feed up myself to make sure I understood the issue. Here's an example of the img tag:

< img border="0" src="/productimages/sku_10858_1_small.jpg" width="140" height="140" title="" alt="" >

See how the src tag doesn't have the domain name? That's what's creating an issue. I'm not sure how to have my program work around that.

[JCW]

How's the Google News feeds issue coming along? Do you expect a resolution?

Thanks.

JC

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by JCW

http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rs...lf&c=&eo=UTF-8

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ta...olf&output=rss

...

JCW

The google feed seems be working when put in AboutToday. Are you seeing that too?

[JCW]

Originally Posted by CyberRanger

The google feed seems be working when put in AboutToday. Are you seeing that too?

The google feed shows, but it is only updated every few days or so. I can use the same link to look at the google news and it is updated very often.

I wonder why it only shows update news a couple times a week.

I have entered "15" in the "How often should this feed be updated?" field in the rss settings for this feed -- so that it would update every 15 minutes. It doesn't. I've sent it to 30 too.

Any idea what is going on?

Thanks.

JCW

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by JCW

The google feed shows, but it is only updated every few days or so. I can use the same link to look at the google news and it is updated very often.

I wonder why it only shows update news a couple times a week.

How busy is your forum? The feed will update every 15 minutes BUT only if your forum is busy enough to call the scheduled task every 15 minutes.