Slashdot.org-style news posting system

I'd like to have certain memebers of my forum, Admins, moderators and SuperModerators, be able to post news to the front page of my site, and have a 'comments' link at the bottom of the summary that links through to a new thread that was generated when the news article was posted. Then other members of the site can comment on the story from within the regular vB system.

Stallion and others talk about it in the Suggestions forum: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...?threadid=2746 and he says it would be a pretty easy hack to do.

One other thing about the initial news post. I'd like it to show a small mugshot of the news poster (here's mine: ) much like the ones used at http://www.highervoltage.net.

Also, since my forum is based on individual games, it would be cool if the news thread was created in the corresponding forum. Quake news goes to the Quake forum and such. Plus, a special icon, color or title should distinguish the news thread from the regular threads in the destination forum.

What do you think?

-Nathan

You'd do better to learn a little PHP - it's similar to Perl anyway.

I heard that some of ya'll were having problems locating the BFC weblog that I wrote a month or two ago...sorry about the problems, I had to go offline after I lost my hosting provider and have just now been able to get back on. I have put the "official" BFC weblog zip back onto my site, but I can't find the instructions page I had on the site so you will have to make do with what is in the zip. It's all the same thing anyway. I actually posted it to a thread awhile ago, I'll see if I can dig that up... There is a readme in the zip that goes into egregious detail about the whole install. Here is the link:

http://www.eternityproductions.com/d...ble/bfc_ws.zip

The BFC Weblog System provides the following:

• A slashdot-like interface
• simple* integration into your already exisiting vB
• easily meshes with other PHP pages (ie, you can add it to your homepage quickly with the addition of one line of code)
• highly extensible output in bfc.php

I get good use out of it and maybe you can too. It's also released under the GPL to you can play with it (only my code, not the vB libs).

if there are requests I'll provide support or more info in this thread.

-- Paul

Hey, cool - thanks man!

Just DL'd it and will give it a go a little later...I guess I'll post the results here.

Dagnabbit! Still corrupted.

I'm using Pauls script on my site at http://oldamigos.com I've made a few changes, I have hid the news forum from view in the main forum so you just see the news on the front page, but that's controllable with vBulletin as to however you want to implement it. I also added a Introduction field, the only field that shows on the frontpage, the readmore takes you to the thread and main text. This keeps the front page text to a minimum, I set it to 250 char. as it's done with Slashdot.

The only thing I'm lacking now is members, I have hesitated seeking out members until I got it all up and running. Then I had to change Hosts. I was using Cihost and got tired of the lack of service. My email was down for over a week and my service ticket request wasn't even assigned to a tech. yet.

So who wants to be the first member, how about helping out a fellow vB'er get started. At least let me know what you think about my site design and check out Pauls hack. I grabbed a few of the new icons from here. But I'm color blind and only see blue and bright colors. So Blue it stays for now.

Sorry for rambling off into a topic that should be in another forum... So YELL at me if you must.

Paul, i was wondering if you might want to add these extra feautres I need for my site to your code. There are only a few:

1. The ability for the news thread to be posted to any forum, instead of a designated news forum (Quake News would be added to the Quake forum). Plus, a special icon, color or title should distinguish the news thread from the regular threads in the destination forum.

2. automaticly insert the author's logo into the news post.

3. would it be possible to track how many news stories a member has posted?

4. Would it be possible to list the 5 previous stories in a box on the side of the front page?

If Paul's not interested, does anyone else want to help me by adding to his hack? Is anyone else working on a system like this?

BTW, this is for a new gaming community site at http://www.tournament.com (nothing there right now, check in a few days).

Just installed the BFC weblog and it went in quite smoothly.

I did hack in a summary field like wajones did so I can have a short intro on the front page, then the main story in the forum.

The only two suggestions I would make is to put the above summary field into it, and to use something besides the prinf() for the output of the article listings.

I changed it to echo statements and it made it much easier to move things around to where I wanted them, without having to worry about the order in the comma list below.

Anyway just my .02 but a great script... THANKS!!

I had toyed w/ the idea of limiting the front page characters in but decided to wait on it until I had a more elegant solution than just gutting the story after 255 chars or whatever... Did ya'll solve this problem so that the script can cut it at an arbitrary point or just chops it @ 255? I didn't want to lose it in mid sentence...maybe I'll have it parse for \n\n or something, but that would limit pagination in the news script...that's no good either. I'll have to think about it.

Also, to the person who had asked about the additional hacks...

1) Yes it would be *possible* to have the script search through all the threads in all the forums for specially designated news threads but IMHO it would be a bad idea, because it would be a HUGE strain on the server as opposed to how it is now, where it just grabs the first X amount of threads from X forum. I could probably advise you on how to do it, but I don't really want to. sorry.

2) Logo like a picture or an avatar? Yes that would be a very simple and easy to add hack. If there is a "standard" avatar hack for vB could someone please point me to it and I'll add the code for the BFC, otherwise it would be a unique hack for every vB according to the mySQL field you added for your avatars...

3) I think so...I'll look into it.

4) Possible, and probable! In fact, here is the code:

<?php

require("bfc.php");

$footer_sql = "SELECT * FROM thread WHERE forumid=$newsforum ORDER BY dateline DESC LIMIT $bfcnewslimit,5";

$footer_result = mysql_query($footer_sql);

while($myrow = mysql_fetch_array($footer_result))
	{
	$threadid = $myrow["threadid"];
	$subsql = "SELECT * FROM post WHERE threadid=$threadid ORDER BY postid LIMIT 1;";
	$subresult = mysql_query($subsql);
	$posts = mysql_fetch_array($subresult);
	   	
	printf("<a href=\"%s/showthread.php?threadid=%s\">%s</a><br><br>",$forum_url,$threadid,$myrow["title"]);
	   }
   	
?>

Add that to your PHP file, I wrote it off the top of my head so if it doesn't work play w/ it or let me know...you'll obviously have to change your db settings.

Regards,
Paul

AC-3

What I did (and what I THINK that wajones did) for the front page abbreviation, was to add an additional column in the post table for a summary.

Granted you have to type your info twice, but sometimes and intro might be better written a different way then just the first sentance of the story.

I did hack the create a post template to add the additional text field as well.

Hope that sheds some light on what I did.

Can someone please post a full hack for this one, so I can implement the slash with VBB like the one used on http://www.disneysites.com
I really appreciate your help