AboutToday - Bring RSS Feeds and Daily Events to Your Site!

What is AboutToday?

AboutToday provides a central place to bring daily items of interest to your forum visitors. It includes two main components: an RSS Reader System and Local Events database System.

Please NOTE: This mod has been modified for vb ver 3.6.4. It should work on vb ver 3.5.4 and 3.6.x.

1. An RSS Reader system where the admin can enter RSS feeds that will then be displayed on the page. RSS feeds can be set to AUTOMATICALLY create threads or be set so that users can easily create a thread from a feed.. Feeds can be read via fopen or cURL.
   
   
   
   
   
   The RSS Feeds are fully intergrated with vbAdvanced and could actually be placed anywhere you want!!
   
2. A database system that can hold unlimited categories of "AboutToday" events. For example, you could have a history category (like a Today in History) with sub-categories for different eras in history. Or, you could have a daily joke or software tip of the day, etc.
   
   The "Add Event" feature is intended to help you if you want for example - Sports: Today in History. With the vb calendar, you cannot have categories and you are restricted with how far back the dates can go.
   
   
   
   
   So with the "Add Event" feature, you could have a category tree like:
   • Hockey
     • Professional
     • College
     • High School
   • Football
     • American Football
     • The Rest of the World (Soccer)
   • Baseball
   
   with the normal calendar feature, you cannot have categories. And with "Add Event" you can have any date. So, if you want an event like "Jan 1, 132 B.C. - the first ball was invented", you can do that. But, that isn't possible in the normal calendar. Also, the events in "Add Event" are fully searchable.

Installation

Copy the following files to your server in the forums directory:

abouttoday.php
includes/class.csv.php
includes/class_abouttoday.php
includes/cron/cron_abouttoday.php
includes/xml/bitfield_abouttoday.xml
includes/xml/cpnav_abouttoday.xml
admincp/abouttodayadmin.php

From the admincp, import the product file product-abouttoday.xml (Manage Products - Add/Import Product).

REFRESH your admincp window. You should now see a listing in the left column of the admincp for "AboutToday".

Getting Started

NOTE - if this is a new install, a Yahoo RSS Feed and CNN Entertainment Feed have been automatically added to give you a feel for how the product looks.

If you plan to use the RSS Feeds:

1. From the admincp, select AboutToday - RSS Feeds. Add an RSS Feed.
2. From the admincp, select Usergroups - Usergroup Manager. Add permissions so the Administrator group can use the product.
3. From your forum directory, bring up the file abouttoday.php.
4. If you want the feeds to AUTOMATICALLY create threads, go to admincp - abouttoday - settings. There you must set the userid of the account to use to create the thread. Then, edit the RSS Feed with the forumid of where the threads for that feed should be created!

If you plan to create your own "today in history" type of database:

1. From the admincp, select AboutToday - Categories. Add a category.
2. From your forum directory, bring up the file abouttoday.php. "Add" your first event to the category you have created!

Version Status
I've tested this product extensively but ... use this totally at your own risk!

Credits
I learned a lot about how to code this and used a lot of the code from what Ron1n did with ecDownloads. What I've learned from his code while helping to support ecDownloads has been invaluable.

Sites Using this Product
Visit www.armchairgeneral.com to see this product in action.

Click Install!
Please Click Install if you are using this product. Thanks!

[G_Man]

Originally Posted by westpointer

I couldn't have said it better myself! Note too that you can set how often a feed gets updated. So, even if you have a feed set to automatically create threads you can still decide how often that feed will be updated.

EXACTLY!!


I have a Random Quote RSS feed that I only update every 1440 minutes and have a post made from it. One post...

My Mods are stoked,too!! I had a seperate forum for all the news posts and made them clean it up before!! :lol:

[G_Man]

Originally Posted by Canis Firebrand

I can't figure out why I don't see the buttons like in this image.

I am guessing from this little info that your permissions in your UserGroups aren't set.

[Canis Firebrand]

Originally Posted by G_Man

I am guessing from this little info that your permissions in your UserGroups aren't set.

The buttons my post was talking about, I tried to edit it after I posted it, but that is when vbulletin.org/.com went down, were the Talk about it buttons on the right portion of the above image.

In my usergroup manager, all the options for AboutToday are set to yes for the administrators group, which my login into the board is using.

The registered users group has them all set to yes except

-Can edit all events
- Can view disabled about today
- Can load events from file
- Can force RSS update.

[gasxtreme]

I keep getting random errors when I try to add a feed.... The error is "XML error: Invalid character at line 20" and "XML error: Invalid character at line 76"

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You.
-steve

[G_Man]

Originally Posted by Canis Firebrand

The buttons my post was talking about, I tried to edit it after I posted it, but that is when vbulletin.org/.com went down, were the Talk about it buttons on the right portion of the above image.

In my usergroup manager, all the options for AboutToday are set to yes for the administrators group, which my login into the board is using.

The registered users group has them all set to yes except

-Can edit all events
- Can view disabled about today
- Can load events from file
- Can force RSS update.

Pretty much how mine are set up... the options you need are here:

AdminCP->AboutToday->RssFeeds


In the Add feeds area, third option from the bottom you will see a box where you can put a forum number in. Set that to the forum you want each feed to be posted in. That will cause the buttons to appear so members can post them.

You can use the Edit Feed Area to change this for the feeds you are already running.


Let me know if that is what you meant.

[Canis Firebrand]

Originally Posted by G_Man

Pretty much how mine are set up... the options you need are here:

AdminCP->AboutToday->RssFeeds


In the Add feeds area, third option from the bottom you will see a box where you can put a forum number in. Set that to the forum you want each feed to be posted in. That will cause the buttons to appear so members can post them.

You can use the Edit Feed Area to change this for the feeds you are already running.


Let me know if that is what you meant.

That did it.. Thank you much.

[G_Man]

Originally Posted by Canis Firebrand

That did it.. Thank you much.

You have no idea how good it feels to be able to actually help someone else around here! Glad it worked.

[Ambie]

Originally Posted by gasxtreme

I keep getting random errors when I try to add a feed.... The error is "XML error: Invalid character at line 20" and "XML error: Invalid character at line 76"

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You.
-steve

I am getting the same errors all the sudden. It worked good for a day or two and now I'm just getting these errors.

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by G_Man

You have no idea how good it feels to be able to actually help someone else around here! Glad it worked.

Thanks for helping out! I was off-line for a couple days so I really appreciate it!

Originally Posted by gasxtreme

I keep getting random errors when I try to add a feed.... The error is "XML error: Invalid character at line 20" and "XML error: Invalid character at line 76"

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You.
-steve

This kind of error always indicates a problem with the RSS Feed itself. I've struggled to develop a good way to handle this. For now, if you know what feed is making the error, copy the feed url into your web browser and see what happens. If you don't know what feed is causing the problem, I'm afraid you'll need to do that with each feed's url. What you SHOULD see in the browser is something like the included image.



You should NOT see a normal looking web page.

[gasxtreme]

They don't look like normal pages..... Here are the two that don't seem to work:
http://www.superchevy.com/rss/nonstandard_rss.xml
http://www.moparmusclemagazine.com/r...andard_rss.xml

Thanks
-steve