Add-On Releases - CinVin vB Forum Feed Listing

[ BY REQUEST ]

This nifty little utility will present a list of all of your forums RSS feeds on one page! Your users can then easily pick & choose which forums they want to subscribe to via RSS, Google, Yahoo, or Bloglines.

Ever go to a big site like CNN and view their page of RSS feeds that you can subscribe to? This is the same thing but for your vBulletin forums!

In addition to your users, the search engine spiders will love this!

We went out of our way to make sure that this CinVin vBulletin add-on was quick & easy to both install and modify!

• Automatically adds an RSS button to your footer template.
• Correctly shows where your visitors are when viewing the Who's Online page.
• Forums can be specifically excluded from being listed.
• Ability to specify which usergroup to use for permissions when viewing the list of forums.
• "Link" forums can be turned off from showing.
• All options are configured through the vBulletin ACP.
• All descriptions and names are completely phrased so you can quickly add alternate lanquages or change the existing wording.
• All display output is handled through vBulletin templates so you can quickly change the output appearance.
• All templates and phrase are installed as a vBulletin product through your ACP which means there are no file edits!
• Compatible with vBSEO.
• Easy integration with vBadvanced CMPS.
• Debug mode to help you with any problems you may be having.

Installation only take a few moments...

• Unzip the .zip file that you downloaded.
• Upload the single PHP file and single folder in the upload_to_your_forum_folder folder from the download to your forums folder.
• Go into your ACP and select Plugins & Products => Manage Products => Add/Import Product => {Select the CinVin_vB_Forum_Feed_Listing.xml file from the download} => Import

You're all done! Just point your browser to http://www.yoursite.com/forums/cv_rss_feeds.php to view your new RSS feed listings.

DEMO #1: CinVin RSS Feeds (this is the 'stock' version)

DEMO #2: Cool Sci-Fi RSS Feeds (this one has been integrated with vBa CMPS)


FAQ's
- What vB versions? This should work with all versions of vB 3.6.x and above. It should also work with vB 3.5.x but I have not tested it on that version.

- Can I remove the "CinVin" text at the very bottom? NO! Believe it or not that little text is what allows us to work on hacks like this for free and, more importantly, to continue to support them. You are free to move the notice to your footer template, for example, if you would like to keep your notices all together but for removing it entirely a Branding Free license is available through CinVin.

[princeedward]

Installed: Thanks!

[RedGTiVR6]

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Does this work for vb 3.7?

I'd be interested in knowing as well.

[DoB Rhapsody]

Originally Posted by RedGTiVR6

I'd be interested in knowing as well.

Also wondering, has anyone tried it?

[Icy]

Works for me on 3.7 beta 5

[NashChristian]

Hey Kevin,

Does this work for multiple vBa Dyna instances, as well as with vBa Links Directory?

Thanks.
Jeff

[MissKalunji]

Originally Posted by imported_silkroad

I found the error....

Line 195 of cv_rss_feeds.php should read

vbseo_get_forum_info (not get_forum_info)

PS: We are running the lastest version of vBSEO

Thanks that did work. Only happened once i upgraded to 3.1

[KW802]

- Should work fine on any of the vB 3.6.x & vB 3.7.x series.

- The vBSEO function name was changed with the newer releases (I think 3.0.0 Gold). The manual edit will take care of it and a future update (actually already code, just not packaged) will handle it automatically.

- I have not looked at including the Dynamics feeds but that's a good idea. Since the original version of this script there have been some third party scripts, such as Dynamics and some of the PhotoPost posts, that now offer RSS feeds as well. I'll see what I can do about including something with them.

- If anybody is having a problem with the forums exclusion option, please let me know. The early versions did indeed have a problem but the last few releases should've taken care of it.

[BadgerDog]

We've been looking for a "brand free" mod that will enable us to make specific forums only available as RSS feeds. This one was recommended from another site, so before we get oo much further, I wanted to ask a question for clarity.

We would like to only have "Registered" members be able to select those forums and receive the feeds. Does this mod allow us to restrict the RSS feed access by usergroup?

Thanks ...

Regards,
Badger

[BadgerDog]

Ok, decided to try it anyway ...

I'm able to get it to use Yahoo (as an example) and bring in threads that seem to be readable by unregistered users only. When I select a forum that requires a user to be registered, I get this error from Yahoo?

There were some problems while loading your page:

Sorry, we were unable to add this feed. Please try again later.

I also tried a free newsreader program from "Tristana" and essentially I get the same thing. Even though they provide data fields for the feed to enter a username and password to log into our site as a registered user, it also returns an error when trying to read in a forum as a feed.?

Tristana Error:

Error parsing content data channel. Document is either invalid or unsupported.

Any help or guidance as to what I'm doing wrong would be appreciated.

Regards,
Badger

[KW802]

Originally Posted by BadgerDog

We would like to only have "Registered" members be able to select those forums and receive the feeds. Does this mod allow us to restrict the RSS feed access by usergroup?

Just to clarify... this mod gives you a nicely formatted list of your available RSS feeds. When you click on the RSS button you are taken to the stock vBulletin external.php script. For what you are describing you would need the stock external.php script to be modified (likely could be done with a plugin).