Integration with vBulletin - [ITECH] Inferno External Lite

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[ITech] Inferno External Lite
Created By Inferno Technologies (http://www.infernotechnologies.net)
Copyright 2004-2007
All rights reserved
Project Development Team: Zero Tolerance
Project Lead: Iain "Decado" Kidd
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Project Description

This product is designed to take data from your forum, and easily export it in a HTML format onto any type of website you have (note, the website must be on the same server as the forum). For instructions and features, read on.

Note
we can't provide screenshots of this in use as it would be completely unique to your website, but we have included the acp stuff

Features

Data Feeding
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Inferno External's main purpose is to provide you with the power to easily display data from your forum, to your website, without any knowledge of programming!

Module Blocks
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Creating a data feed has never been as easy, you can simply create a block by choosing what type of data you want to extract, customise it with options, and save, all through an Admin CP interface.

Previewing / Templates
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As with most development processes, before taking anything live on a website you want to preview how it will look. Inferno External gives you a snapshot of how the block will look exactly on your website, with exception to your websites style/css.Customising blocks is no problem at all, either if it's a setting, or how it's displayed. Inferno External employs ITS ("Independant Template System") that allows you modify templates for a block without effecting any other block!

Module: No. Users Online
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This compact version of users online simply displays the numbers of members, guests and hidden users online. You can configure this to only show members/guests or just hidden if you wish, and again hide certain usergroups!

Module: Threads
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This module block can give you a listing of threads from x, y and z forums, kinda like creating your own forum display page! It has all kinds of configuration to handle data exactly how you want: * Max Threads To Display
* Maintain Permissions (So users only see threads they're supposed to!)
* Forums To Scrape (Which forums to fetch threads from)
* Filter Results (Enter custom search terms to customise which threads are shown!)
* Ordering (How you want the threads to be ordered, such as date, poster name, thread title)
* Display Threads From (Ranging from Today to This Month to This Year and more!)
* Titles/Username Cutting (So a long thread title doesn't bombard your style)

Module: Thread Posts
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This is similar to the threads module, only instead of displaying a similar forum display look, it displays the first post of the threads! This could be used simply to show latest threads, custom blogs, or news! Also has extended configuration to meet your demands: * Max Posts To Display
* Maintain Permissions (So users only see posts they're supposed to!)
* Forums To Scrape (Which forums to fetch posts from)
* Filter Results (Enter custom search terms to customise which posts are shown!)
* Parse BBCode (The system cleverly makes sure images such as smilies and links work!)
* Ordering (How you want the posts to be ordered, such as date, poster name, thread title)
* Display Posts From (Ranging from Today to This Month to This Year and more!)
* Titles/Username/Post Cutting (So a long post doesn't bombard your style)

Tutorial On Usage

Inferno External as you know, provides you with the power to export certain data in a visual format to any part of your website. Ideally this is developed around the idea that you the user, wants to display data/information from your forum, onto your main website.

Where do you begin?
The first step is really to set up a new "block", the term block will refer to a set up you've configured in your ACP to export X data, in this example we're going to walk through how you'd set up an External Users Online. The users online has is a very simple interface, for users and guests.

To begin, go to your Admin CP, then 'Inferno External', and on this page you want to click 'Create New Block'. First you will see a drop down menu to choose what kind of block you want to create, select 'Users Online' here then hit 'Proceed'.

The next page takes you to the block configuration, now this block has a few custom options, you can decide what types of online data you wish to display (members, guests and hidden), additionally you can hide UGs from being counted here. There is also the default configuration which you get with all blocks:

Block ID
The block ID is an alphanumeric reference to the block you are creating, it can contain characters a-z, 0-9 and underscores (_). For this example, simply input 'my_users_online', which is a fairly useful ID to give this block.

Viewing Permissions
The viewing permissions is a global setting for all blocks, allowing you to create blocks that can be viewed by certain usergroups, or every usergroup. Don't touch this setting, for our example we want all usergroups to see our new block.

That's it for configuration, you'll find other blocks will have more settings depending on what they are, allowing you to customise them, remember aswell that you can create several blocks of the same type!

Hit 'Save Module Block' and this block will then be saved, and you'll be sent back to the main Inferno External admin page. Here, you should see your newly created block, and we can take a peak too, so click on 'Preview' for your newly created block.

The preview page will give you two things, one is the code you'd need to display this block on any page on your website, and secondly how the block will look. Note that how the block looks will differ, as it depends really on your websites style/css. In the preview here you'll be able to see the users online, all simple.

Hit 'Go Back' to return to the main admin page again, this time click 'Block Templates'. Inferno External employs an ITS ("Independant Template System"). This allows you to create a block, customise the templates for that block, and not have it affect any other block, even of the same types. So for example, if you have two user online blocks, and changed the templates on one of them, it would not effect the other!

If you want to in the future, you can come back to this page and change the templates as you see fit, if you ever make a mistake, simply leave the template blank and it will return to default.

Cool, I have my block, how can I put it on my website?
This is the main part of the system, putting blocks on your website. Firstly, you're website will need to be in php (don't panic!).

What if my site isn't PHP, but HTML?
Not to worry, let's say you have your main site file as 'index.htm' or 'index.html', simply rename the file to 'index.php' and your server will treat this file as php, and still parse your html!

Cool, it's php now, where do I begin?
You need to begin by 'loading' Inferno External into your website, to do this, open say index.php, or any other file on your website that's php and which you want to test (you could even create a test.php if you wish). At the very top of the file insert the following code:

<?php
require_once('./MYFORUM/infernoexternal.php');
?>

Please Note! You will need to alter this slightly, notice the 'MYFORUM' part, this needs changing to your forums directory, and assumes the file you're editing is one level above your forum directory. If that made little sense, not to worry!

Let's say your website is: mysite.com, and your forum is: mysite.com/forums/, and you're editing 'mysite.com/index.php', you'd use the following code:

<?php
require_once('./forums/infernoexternal.php');
?>

Another note, once this has been included in your PHP file once, you do not need to insert the code again, while it won't do any harm, it won't do anything either, this only needs to be at the top of your php files.

Okay, that's done, how do I display my cool new block?
You'll need to enter another peice of code to actually display the block, and that code is the one you saw when you previewed the block earlier in the acp, so run back there and copy that code. Now where-ever you want the block to display, place the code:

<?php echo $infernoexternal->display_block('my_users_online'); ?>

Two things to note here, one is the code I just showed has 'echo ', which the code in the preview doesn't, this command tells php to spit out whatever comes next to the page. If you know a bit about PHP, then you'll be able to tell this function returns the HTML rather than forcefully spitting out when called, so you can use it in other ways rather than just echo. Additionally there are the PHP tags, which are needed so the system parses this as PHP and not HTML/plain-text.

The second thing to note, is the 'my_users_online', and if you're asking yourself "I remember that from somewhere", then yes you do, it's the Block ID you gave to your block. So this is telling the system which block you want displaying.

Now that's done, save your file, upload, and you should see the block nicely sitting on your website where you told it to be, that easy!. You can now manage your block in your admin cp without having to come back to the code and modify it. I should point out that if you delete the block and you don't update the code on your website, your website will return an error message, so if you ever want rid of a block, it's better practice to update your files and strip the code which displays the block, before actually deleting it from the Inferno External admin cp.

Nice, my own block, that was easy!
Very much so!

If you have questions, issues, problems, or anything related, feel free to post and we'll take a look!

Enjoy everyone!

- Zero Tolerance

[pewp]

Does anyone here that has this installed get the issue that I'm getting? When you are logged out or not a forum member you are unable to view the outputs? I went back to the old v1.6 on one of my sites cause it was the only one I can get to display the output if you aren't a site member.

[sebiv]

This mods looks great - I just want to have a section on the front page of my website (which isn't run by vBulletin) that says "x active users on our forum".

Is there any way to make the mod display a TOTAL number of users online, instead of the seperate numbers for each group?

[CommanderFluffy]

hi i just installed this mod. and well i get an error every time i try and put it in my php.

Unable to add cookies, header already sent.
File: /home/username/public_html/inside/includes/glob.php
Line: 2

line 2 is just <?php and when its a blank document with the style css it give me an error on line 1 where the style is located.

[Warlord]

I will pay someone to mod vBexternal to display attachments. You can contact me on yahoo instant messenger at projectfanboy or email me at steven@projectfanboy.com if you're interested.

(I already contacted the author, but he said they didn't have time right now)

[pewp]

I can't even get this to display images or parse any other BBcode. Posted about it yesterday and it's been viewed a few times, but no responses. I'm sure the author will get to it eventually, but if anyone here has had this issue and figured out a way to overcome it some info would be appreciated.

[Neutral Singh]

Originally Posted by yahoooh

i still wait update for your quiz hack , i need it with more features because it is great product and vbulletin miss something like it

Same here.

[RedGTiVR6]

I'm interested in using the vBulletin Blogging component....but we need to be able to display these blog posts on our main page for a select number of users (or based on user group).

Would this mod allow us to do that?

[marcopolo]

I've tried this, created a blank index2.php, added the code and all I get is a blank page

Any ideas?

Thanks

[Warlord]

I ended up just using vbAdvanced instead, it's actually a lot more customizable then it used to be.

[marcopolo]

Originally Posted by Warlord

I ended up just using vbAdvanced instead, it's actually a lot more customizable then it used to be.

I tried vBA but I want the look and feel of my site only showing a few items of the forum, so I'm still trying other methods.