Show RSS Feed Icon in each forum

So I wanted to add an image link to each forum for its unique RSS feed. This would allow people to subscribe to their favorite forums with their favorite News Reader instead of email. It would always be up to date and accurate.

There are three steps to doing this.

First, I decided I needed a small plugin to determine if RSS was turned on within the forumdisplay template. Go to your plugin manager and add the following code to the "forumdisplay_start" plugin.

PHP Code:

if ($vbulletin->options['externalrss'])
{
   $show['rss'] = true;
} 


Next we will be editing the forumdisplay template itself.

Find:

<table class="tborder" cellpadding="$stylevar[cellpadding]" cellspacing="$stylevar[cellspacing]" border="0" width="100%" align="center" style="border-bottom-width:0px">
<tr>
<td class="tcat" width="100%">$vbphrase[threads_in_forum]<span class="normal"> : $foruminfo[title]</span></td>
<td class="vbmenu_control" id="forumtools" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="$show[nojs_link]#goto_forumtools" rel="nofollow">$vbphrase[forum_tools]</a> <script type="text/javascript"> vbmenu_register("forumtools"); </script></td>
    <if condition="$show['forumsearch']">
<td class="vbmenu_control" id="forumsearch" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="$show[nojs_link]#goto_forumsearch" rel="nofollow">$vbphrase[search_this_forum]</a> <script type="text/javascript"> vbmenu_register("forumsearch"); </script></td>
    </if>
</tr>
</table>

And replace with:

<table class="tborder" cellpadding="$stylevar[cellpadding]" cellspacing="$stylevar[cellspacing]" border="0" width="100%" align="center" style="border-bottom-width:0px">
<tr>
<td class="tcat" width="100%">$vbphrase[threads_in_forum]<span class="normal"> : $foruminfo[title]</span></td>
<td class="vbmenu_control" id="forumtools" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="$show[nojs_link]#goto_forumtools" rel="nofollow">$vbphrase[forum_tools]</a> <script type="text/javascript"> vbmenu_register("forumtools"); </script></td>
    <if condition="$show['forumsearch']">
<td class="vbmenu_control" id="forumsearch" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="$show[nojs_link]#goto_forumsearch" rel="nofollow">$vbphrase[search_this_forum]</a> <script type="text/javascript"> vbmenu_register("forumsearch"); </script></td>
    </if>
    <if condition="$show['rss']">
<td class="tcat"><a href="external.php?type=rss2&forumids=$foruminfo[forumid]"><img class="inlineimg" src="$stylevar[imgdir_misc]/feed_icon.png" height="14" width="14" alt="Feed Icon" title="Subscribe to $foruminfo[title]'s RSS Feed"></a></td>
    </if>
    </tr>
</table>

Finally the third step is to upload the attached image to represent your feed. If your site isn't set up to allow IE to view transparent backgrounds in PNG images, you will probably want to convert the image to a GIF format matted to your background.

Distibuted under the "Wayne License". You may modify to suit your needs, No Attribution Necessary, Redistribution allowed on sites which can verify legitimate vBulletin License Holders only.

[bada_bing]

Tried to install this on my vb 3.5.3 site and had no luck. I did exactly what the instructions say and I could not get the rss icon to show up.. Any one help me with this or experiance the same issue and how to fix this.. Really like to install this

[voteforbird]

Same, bada.

[coffee]

It's still working perfectly on 3.6.4

Could you please add this little icon to "Forumhome"?

[bada_bing]

Originally Posted by bada_bing

Tried to install this on my vb 3.5.3 site and had no luck. I did exactly what the instructions say and I could not get the rss icon to show up.. Any one help me with this or experiance the same issue and how to fix this.. Really like to install this

Anyone help with this?

[arena]

Thank you

[yj_enquirer]

Thanks for this.. its a wunderful hack and I wanted something like this.

Just one question, can this be modified such that only certain forums can have the RSS feed enabled for them..

i.e. there might be certain forums that you don't want the RSS subscription enabled

regards

[Wayne Luke]

What version of vBulletin are you using? With the better auto-discovery built into 3.6.X and auto-discovery support in Internet Explorer, I don't have a need for this anymore. Therefore I haven't incorporated it into newer styles.

[cmiller1014]

Originally Posted by Wayne Luke

What version of vBulletin are you using? With the better auto-discovery built into 3.6.X and auto-discovery support in Internet Explorer, I don't have a need for this anymore. Therefore I haven't incorporated it into newer styles.

Hi Wayne,

Can you elaborate a little more on this? Why wouldn't we want to use this in 3.6? I think the icon would be great but dont know much about rss.

Thanks!

[Dexter_kcd]

I think it is still nice to have in the forum display. Though both IE7 and FF have good auto-discovery for discrete feeds, lots of users still don't know much about RSS, and don't pay attention to the icons in their browser's menu windows. Having an RSS icon on the actual page brings it to their attention more, and with the hover text supplied with this mod it helps explain why the icon is there, and may lead to a user asking about trying RSS when they did not ever do so before.

Take a look at lots of major news websites. When you drill down into their news categories, they still provide an RSS or XML icon somewhere on the page. It helps provide a visual clue to the viewer right on the content of the page, rather then in the browser menu somewhere which many users instinctively tune out.

Dexter...

[gekko]

Installed it. Works great.

For those of you experiencing the problem with the icon not appearing for forums (only categories), you need to insert it twice in the FORUMDISPLAY template. Find the next instance of the code, and insert it again.