Logician NEWS: Drag Any Message to Your Main Page

This is a news script which will drag vb forum messages from your vb db to your non-vb main page/news page. There are a lot of good news script around but I needed a highly customizable main page news script with some special features and wrote it myself. I'm using it in my site's main page for a long time, but I was just too lazy to write installation/help documents to share it here, sorry!

FEATURES:

* This script simply pulls forum messages which you marked as "news" from your vb database and post them in your non-vbulletin (main/other) page.
* You can mark messages as "NEWS" in any forum you want (including private forums). You dont need to restrict your news to a specific forum.
* You can drag any message to your main page, regardless of its date. So news is NOT supposed to be the most recent messages in your board.
* You do NOT have to carry the whole message to your main page as news. You can import it all or simply take some part of it. So eg. you can drag a message's the first paragraph to your news page and link the thread for "Read More".
* Moreover you can insert invisible custom NEWS text which will be dragged to your main page to your board messages, but not shown in the original forum thread. So your original thread message and news text on your main page can be different than eachother.
* You can have sticky news in your main page (even if they are not sticky in your forum).
* News does NOT need to be the first message in the thread. You can tag any reply message as news and pull it to your main page either.
* Script parses ALL of your message icons/smilies (including your custom add-ons) and some of the important vBCode like: [url] [email] [img] [b] [i] [u]
* You can specify which members may post news.
* You can form your News' title seperately, apart from of the original thread/message title.
* You can set maximum number of news shown in your main page.
* You can set maximum number of characters that all shown news should not exceed. Some messages can be long and some can be short and if you set a character limit, the script will automatically compile enough news from your database to fit your web page's relevant part according to the limit you set.
* You can enable/disable:
News Poster Name
News Date
News Read Number
News 'Send to a Friend' Link
Comment number/Add comment button/Last commenter
Will viewing news increase the original thread's view count or not
News is sticky or not
for ALL your news INDIVIDUALLY.
* All news tags are invisible in the original thread. So forum readers do not notice any difference when you tag a message as news.
* Dragging a message to your main page as news is as simple as inserting a hidden [news]Title of My News[/news] tag to your forum message.

Well, these features are what I needed in my news script, so it should suffice to you too!

It's an easy to install script and will work with ALL vbulletin versions because it's an add-on, not a hack. I can give support as much as I have time, but please ask here, not via email or PM.

If you use the script, please click INSTALL. If you post the URL of your news page after installation, you can help other users see the script in action in different pages and in custom designs, thank you!

Logician

[Logician]

Originally posted by gopherhockey
I have a few non-vb hacks installed on our index.shtml file - last 10, recent images (from photopost) - this hack would be nice.. however, I cannot rename my index file to a .php extension as it ruins the other hacks.

Is there a way to run it under an index.shtml file?

I read the threads quickly and didn't see anything like this, which surprises me.

Since the script is in php, technically its extension is suppose to be .php. However using the same method your other hacks uses might work with my hack too (provided that they are in PHP too):
First create a second PHP file with a name like this: "secondindex.php" and use this as its context:

PHP Code:

<?php
include ("newsconfig.php");
echo news();
?>

Now you can include this new file in your shtml file as an include like you added your other hacks. Eg.

<!--#include virtual="/secondindex.php" -->

Whether this works or not, I still suggest migrating your index.shtml file to index.php in the long run. Because:
a) If you are on PHP, this is the default syntax and it may help you better in the future with other PHP add-ons.
b) This approach increases server load unnecerrarily. Your file is parsed twice (as PHP and shtml) while only 1 parsing would do the trick if it as .php..

[gopherhockey]

Wow, worked perfectly!

I have a huge debate going on right now (in my head mainly) as I am working to combine a message forum site with 2 other very large related static web sites (.html based only - users requiring front page to modify)

If I switch to .php, I lose frontpage abilities and editing the look of a page becomes a huge pain.. yet inserting code such as this hack works much better. If I switch pages to .shtml as needed I lose out on the things you mentioned.

So far I have about 6-7 nice hacks for my main .shtml page including your news, a calendar, poll, recent gallery images from photopost, user login, recent forum posts ... it is almost looking like a product like vbhome lite, yet retains its original web site look and frontpage capabilities. (not that I'm a huge fan myself of fp) The good thing is that the audience is local and the server is high powered, so I fan afford some amount of overhead until we find a better way.

Thanks for your help!

[Logician]

Originally posted by gopherhockey
If I switch to .php, I lose frontpage abilities and editing the look of a page becomes a huge pain..

Do you know that you can safely rename a .html page as .php and the page will work just like it was .html? (But you can now open a php tag in any place of this page and insert php codes). So migrating your .html files to PHP should not be a problem except editing their content and correct the link pointers.

Well this might not apply for .shtml though. You have to deal with its includes too..

Logician you da man :bandit: w00t 1/2 am hour from reading the first instruction to having the first news item posted up on our test board :smoke:

Just one minor problem (and is probably sitting in the html code somewhere), how do we cut out the gap between news items ?

Figure there must be a <br> tag lurking in there somewhere.

FYI this one works perfectly on 2.3.0.

Do we get to vote for hack of the month? If we do this get's my vote, big up respect to Logician.

Thanks Man.

Will post up url of it working when we get our home pages uploaded (still working on them)

[Logician]

Originally posted by Jethro

Figure there must be a <br> tag lurking in there somewhere.

You can customize the news look by modifying the "$newstablesample" variable in phpheader.php..

And the <br> is at the end of this part..

Excellent ! Thanks once again Logician :thumb:

Okay this one is installed live. Thanks Logician, very easy to install and use (once you remember to add the tags into the Admin CP) :speechless:

See attached for our first news item ....

[Malice]

I got a problem...
Of course it may be me...

I will exaplain and someone here can possibly clear this up for me.

In a new item.

I post this:

[news]This is a news item[/news]
[intro]THis is an intro, blah blah blah...[/intro]
The rest of the news item....

When I view the message (edit it again) the NEWS tags and the text within it is gone.

Am I lost here...am I missing some functionality here..?

[Malice]

Anyone have a thought about this one?

This problem keeps happening over and over, and the news from the front page then disappears....

[Logician]

Originally posted by Malice
I got a problem...
Of course it may be me...

I will exaplain and someone here can possibly clear this up for me.

In a new item.

I post this:

[news]This is a news item[/news]
[intro]THis is an intro, blah blah blah...[/intro]
The rest of the news item....

When I view the message (edit it again) the NEWS tags and the text within it is gone.

Am I lost here...am I missing some functionality here..?

If I understood correctly, when you post news, it is first ok, until you edit it. Then it dissapears, is this correct?

It seems that there is something wrong with Installation STEP 2, 3 or 4. Please check these steps are applied correctly..