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!

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by kofoid

GOT IT!! Thanks!

Great! Enjoy.

[TitanKing]

CyberRanger, this is truly and awsome idea. I love it and it really brings excitement to my site. Thanks for the good work. I voted it for MOTM !

Great work...

[yonglvnv]

Great mod and is working well except for one issue. When I click Talk About It button to create one thread, it creates multiple threads of all headlines, sometimes up to 30 threads. Checked all settings, but I must have missed something. What did I miss?

[dead7]

Fantastic hack, excellent work! Works like a charm.

I have one question. When it actually creates the thread based off of the RSS feeds I'm wondering if I can get the RSS Feed Name to show on that thread?

In some instances i combine sources into a forum for automatic news posting and it would be helpful if i could put the source (Rss feed name) on the thread itself by the link to the whole article.

Thanks again if you can help me w/ how to do this

[TitanKing]

Hey guys,

I seem to have a problem with the automatic retrieval of RSS feeds, I need to do it manually with Force RSS feed updates. Even if I run the cron file directly it doesn't update.

I am running Vbulletin 3.5.4,
does anyone have any ideas? I must add that the rest of my cron's are running perfectly.

Regards,
Titan

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by TitanKing

Hey guys,

I seem to have a problem with the automatic retrieval of RSS feeds, I need to do it manually with Force RSS feed updates. Even if I run the cron file directly it doesn't update.

I am running Vbulletin 3.5.4,
does anyone have any ideas? I must add that the rest of my cron's are running perfectly.

Regards,
Titan

When you run the cron file directly (via scheduled tasks in the admincp) what does the log file show?

[theczech]

Hey guys,
I'm trying to get this up and running on my 3.5.1. I'm following the instructions to the T, I upload the files to the FTP, but right after i upload the xml file in Product manager, it "crashes" my site - noone can log in or out, and part of the database (all of my calendar events and users) become unretriavable. I closed the Admin CP and couldn't log back in, my site was pretty much hosed. I found a way to disable all custom plugins/products through editting config.php so I was able to log back in and uninstall abouttoday, which brought my site back up.

Anyone had a similar experience? Is there something I'm doing wrong? Any ideas?

This product sounds like an awesome mod and I'd really love to use it, and from what I'm reading in this thread it hasn't caused anyone such instabillity.

I hope it's just something trivial I'm overlooking during the installation and someone here can point it out to me.

Thanks!!

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by theczech

Hey guys,
I'm trying to get this up and running on my 3.5.1. I'm following the instructions to the T, I upload the files to the FTP, but right after i upload the xml file in Product manager, it "crashes" my site -...

That's odd. The product file hasn't been changed in many months (sorry about that!) so it's very stable. I'd try downloading the zip file of the product again then re-uploading the files to your server. Make sure you upload the files in text mode. If you want to PM me a vb admin user name and password along with ftp info for your site, I'll check it out for you.

[theczech]

Originally Posted by CyberRanger

That's odd. The product file hasn't been changed in many months (sorry about that!) so it's very stable. I'd try downloading the zip file of the product again then re-uploading the files to your server. Make sure you upload the files in text mode. If you want to PM me a vb admin user name and password along with ftp info for your site, I'll check it out for you.

Thanks ...sent you a PM.

I tried to install it again today. Again, immediatelly after uploading the xml file through the product manage the same thing happened. As soon as I disabled the product things went back to normal.

[ArchangelX]

Great stuff!