vBExternal v1.6

Alright, the people waiting for the quiz hack are gonna kill me for making this while i'm supposed to be developing v2.. heh.

Anyway, welcome to vBExternal, the answer to all your questions of "how can i get this to show on my website from my forum?"
vBExternal provides you the user with the availability to include several forms of information from your own forum, on your own website, with minimal work required!

UPDATE - 1.5:
This update provides more stability, the vBExternal file will only call 1 query for $vboptions and 1 query for the action, a maximum potential of 2 queries (some may execute 3 dependant on functionality used)

UPDATE - 1.6:
Several minor bugs fixed, 2 main one's were users online (repeating names) and emoticons (being red x's).
Also using vBExternal is completely different as to before (the download contains instructions on how to set up vBExternal the new way)

To update: Re-upload vBExternal.php

Features:

• Newest Members
  
  • Description: Outputs X members onto your website, ordered by newest first
    
  • Available Parameters/Options: Change amount shown (default is 5)
    
• Top Posters
  
  • Description: Outputs X members onto your website, ordered by # of posts
    
  • Available Parameters/Options: Change amount shown (default is 5)
    
• Newest Threads
  
  • Description: Outputs X threads onto your website, ordered by post date
    
  • Available Parameters/Options: Choose all/1/several forums to pick from (default is all forums), Change Amount shown (default is 5)
    
• Newest Replies
  
  • Description: Outputs X threads onto your website, ordered by newest reply
    
  • Available Parameters/Options: Choose all/1/several forums to pick from (default is all forums), Change Amount shown (default is 5)
    
• News
  
  • Description: Outputs X posts onto your website, from a specific forum, ordered by post date
    
  • Available Parameters/Options: Choose which forum news is pulled from, Change Amount shown (default is 5)
    
• Users Online
  
  • Description: Outputs all your users online on your forum, onto your webpage
    
  • Available Parameters/Options: N/A
    

Installation:
All you have to do is upload a few files, no running an installer, no file edits, no template additions/edits, nothing!!

Resources:
The system uses the default 1 vB queries onload, and then only ONE additional query (if action is successful)

Using vBExternal:
First of all, your site will have to be php, if your site is say .htm/.html, no worries, just rename the file type to .php, it will all be the same. Then read 'Usage Instructions' contained within the download to see how to set it up


Customizing HTML Output:
Go inside yourforumdir/vBExternal/
You'll find a few HTML files, these files are the template "structure" for each action, you can change the HTML to your own liking, however leave in the macro's --> {bla} (These are swapped with data called from your forum)

I think that's it really, really simple, really easy to use, so there ya go

PS: Feel free to send me any donations, my paypal is: webmaster@gzevolution.net

Enjoy,

- Zero Tolerance

[juanchi]

This is just great, Zero Tolarance this hack should be consider a contender for hack of month. The only I will like to see is an option to put polls in other pages, can this be done?

[b00k]

great hack, works flawless...

BUT, is it possible to force CSS style on the output?

If anyone can advise, please do.

Thanks for the hack!

[Thug]

sorted my problem now
edited:

[Thug]

Originally Posted by Zero Tolerance

Screenshots wouldn't apply since its adding stuff to your site from your forum, heres the best description i can give which is in the main post:


If you want an example, go to my site: http://gzevolution.net - Look at the left menu bar, you will see a list of all users online, this is done using vBExternal

- Zero Tolerance

Hi i notice you made it into a good looking table
everytime i try add a table it messes up
How can i make a good table for the newest members
a table just like top X stats
well not the vb style but the table sizes and stuff
please let me no

[Chris_D]

Love your work Zero Tolerance, but I have limited space in my menu bar and it looks as though your hack extends my menu bar too big.

Any chance you can maybe release a new version that will limit the output to a certain width, to save it from stretching the page or menu it sits on?

EDIT: Using the online users on my home page now so I've clicked install

[Chris_D]

Just thought I'd let you know I made a small modification to the vBExternal.php file... I wanted it to display a message if no users were online so I've changed:

PHP Code:

unset($cache);
    doOutput();
        } 


To:

PHP Code:

    unset($cache);
    if( $Data ) {
        doOutput();
    } else {
        echo "No Users Online";
    }
    } 


[skogen]

If I use the BB-code for images (the img tag) I get the picture with the script.

But on one forum I have I'm allowing html and when I try to post images it dosen't show up with vBexternal.

vBexternal just paste the html... is it a bug?

/Fredrik - that really loves vBexternal

[Milez]

I think this hack had great potential as many of us wanted to start building external pages. It's really a shame ZT has abandoned the hack as it was really close to being quite usable. Maybe some of us can get the features we want coded in ourselves...

Im trying to display news items as well as many of us and displaying the date is really essential to a news posting. I mean without a date its really pointless displaying news items.

I wasted about 3 hours trying to format the date properly. I managed to pull the data from the 'dateline' field but when trying to format it with vbdate() is just doesn't do anything. The output is whitespace. Here is the change I made to vbExternal.php:

		while($News = $DB->fetch_array($NewestNews)){
		$Data .= ParseTemplate($Template,
							array(
								'threadid'     => $News['threadid'],
								'threadname'   => $News['title'],
								'postuserid'   => $News['postuserid'],
								'postusername' => $News['postusername'],
								'post'         => parse_bbcode2($News['pagetext'], 0, 1, 1, 1),
								'comments'     => vb_number_format($News['replycount']),
								'date'         => vbdate($vboptions['dateformat'], $News['dateline']),
							)
			);
		}

I added the line in color above. If you add the variable {date} to your news.html template you should see the properly formatted date...But you don't. I wish I knew what I was missing here.

If you leave the line as just:

'date'         => $News['dateline']),

you will see the data is in fact in the array but it looks like a unix timestamp (kinda): 1125843563

Secondly images posted in articles do not work which for my applications really make the hack unusable.

I think if these 2 issues were cleaned up this hack would be the best and only one of its kind...And extremely useful for many of us. Not sure why the author is releasing the same hack for vb3.5 with these rather minor yet glaring issues but I sure hope someone is willing to pick up the reigns.

[Milez]

Did not really want to have to take this road because using vbdate() will keep in mind the users time location options BUT as a work around you can use this line:

								'date'         => date("d M Y h:i a" ,$News['dateline']),

Ok now who is going to tackle the rest?

[bhxtyrant]

Has anyone tested this version of this hack with vB 3.5?Just wondering because this hack will be an essential part of my site and i am thinking on upgrading to 3.5.Thanks to anyone who can answer this question for me