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

[Tannerman]

Are we saying that it does not work for 3.6 or 3.6.1?

For those of you who have had this hack working on 3.5 and then upgraded to 3.6, how did the transition go?

[aisais]

I really wish this hack would work for 3.6.2.

[mhamdi]

I really wish this hack would work for 3.6.3.

[TYorke]

To those saying that this doesn't work in version 3.6 then read and re-read all the posts in this thread. I am running version 3.6.3 and it works perfectly fine.

[Milez]

Originally Posted by TYorke

To those saying that this doesn't work in version 3.6 then read and re-read all the posts in this thread. I am running version 3.6.3 and it works perfectly fine.

..>Except it does not parse quote, img or pull posts from more than 1 forum. Would one of the above possters please show us their modified version that handles this? I have been checking every day for an update to this issue.

Thanks!

[TYorke]

Originally Posted by Milez

..>Except it does not parse quote, img or pull posts from more than 1 forum. Would one of the above possters please show us their modified version that handles this? I have been checking every day for an update to this issue.

Thanks!

Pulling posts from more than one forum (I'm assuming you are talking about the news part) is fairly easy. It requires one simple modification to the SQL statement and what do you know, the code is found within this thread.

Now I'll give you the part about QUOTE IMG tags and the like but to say that it flat out does not work with version 3.6 it's an outright misconception.

Consequently, if someone figures out the way to parse BBCODE then post it here

[Milez]

It does work in 3.6.x as I am using that now HOWEVER I just went through every post in this thread again and NO there is no mention of the SQL to get this to pull from more than 1 forum. A few requests for it however. Can you help with that?

Also if you give us the code to allow parsing of IMG and QUOTE I am sure many here will be thankful.

[TYorke]

Originally Posted by bhxtyrant

Hey worMatty,
I actually spoke to ZT a while ago,He said this feature may be avalible in a future release of his hack so there are hopes.Unfortunatly he isn't exactly sure when this new version will be released so if you do happen to find out how to include the time/date using vBexternal please let me know

This is an easy thing to add:

global $db, $Data, $vbulletin;

That's the variable missing for the time/date to work.

Then in the array just add the customary lines:

'date' => vbdate($vbulletin->options['dateformat'], $News['dateline']),
'time' => vbdate($vbulletin->options['timeformat'], $News['dateline']),

Also the fact that this hack is in two forums makes it complicated to keep all fixes together. I knew I had seen the 'fix' for multiple news forums. Jugo came up with it in the v3.5 thread

Unfortunately, I can't get the images to work. I am not too versed in vB programming to crack that one.

[Milez]

Originally Posted by TYorke

I knew I had seen the 'fix' for multiple news forums. Jugo came up with it in the v3.5 thread

Actually jugo goes ever pulling data into the array for multiple forums but only with the output_NewestThreads function. What many of us are requesting is that the function output_News be modified to pull from more than 1 forum ID. I have tried and failed to get this to work.

Processing QUOTE tags would be nice too.

Originally Posted by TYorke

Unfortunately, I can't get the images to work. I am not too versed in vB programming to crack that one.

For this I commented out this line but as I'm sure you know this disables smilies from working and will only process [img] tags not attachements, which was an okay trade off for me:

// $Data = str_replace('images/',"{$vbulletin->options[bburl]}/images/",$Data);

Jugo: Are you out there ?

[Tannerman]

Originally Posted by Milez

Actually jugo goes ever pulling data into the array for multiple forums but only with the output_NewestThreads function. What many of us are requesting is that the function output_News be modified to pull from more than 1 forum ID. I have tried and failed to get this to work.

Agreed. Still looking for a multiforum solution for the news stories themselves, not just the thread titles.