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

[jalliday]

with an upgrade, it works.i didnt tried with a new install.

[YoricksRequiem]

Can we get details on how to use it for vb3? It would be awesome !

[unit3029]

I still use this even now in vb 3.6.4 , Fresh install

the only problem i have with it now is the ability to hide the tags from people who use quote.

We used to have to edit the newreply.php and add a small drop of code, however cant see where to continue doing this as the newreply.php no longer has that code or at least has changed considerably.

OLD Instructions:-

Step 4: (Optional)
What if you use news tags in a message and someone replies this message by pressing "QUOTE" in the original thread? Your news tags will be revealed to him. IF he is not authorized to send news, this is no big deal but if you want to hide them anyway, you can apply this optional hack too:

Edit newreply.php and find

$postdate=vbdate($dateformat,$postinfo[dateline]);
$posttime=vbdate($timeformat,$postinfo[dateline]);
$pagetext=htmlspecialchars($postinfo[pagetext]);

Before that add this:

$pagetext = preg_replace("/(\[)(news)(])(\r\n)*([^\"]*)(\[\/news\])/siU", "" ,$pagetext);
$pagetext = preg_replace("/(\[)(options)(])(\r\n)*([^\"]*)(\[\/options\])/siU", "" ,$pagetext);
$pagetext = preg_replace("/(\[)(intro)(])(\r\n)*([^\"]*)(\[\/intro\])/siU", "" ,$pagetext);
$pagetext = preg_replace("/(\[)(summary)(])(\r\n)*([^\"]*)(\[\/summary\])/siU", "" ,$pagetext);

Save and upload newreply.php..

If you get the time, Id appreciate an update to this

also do you know if its possible to hide the buttons on the advanced wysiwyg editor from specific groups ?

[renalpha]

i get an error when i try this
mySQL error:Table 'squaddes_Vbulletin.post' doesn't exist
it is in the phpmyadmin stuff
code.

<?php
#######################################################################
##
##					Logician NEWS Script. \\=^))
##                       
## Pulls messages having NEWS mark from your vbulletin database  
##				and posts/inserts in your non-vb web page.
##
#######################################################################
##
## Please Edit the OPTIONS BELOW according to your config and needs:
##
#######################################################################

## Hostname or IP of your server where MYSQL database resides. 
$servername='localhost';

## Username and password to log onto your MYSQL database server
$dbusername='squaddes_vbullet'; //MYSQL username
$dbpassword='********'; //MYSQL password

## Name of the MYSQL database that vbulletin data exits. 
$dbname='squaddes_Vbulletin';
$dbprefix='vb1';