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!

[wolf32]

Originally Posted by CyberRanger

In your web browser, go to http://www.your.site/forum/abouttoday.php


For each feed you create (admincp-About Today - RSS Feeds), type in the forumid in "Allow option to create forum discussion?"

Thanks . Once quick problem. Whenever I create a thread for a certain feed, what'sdisplayed is the link to the story and under the link "[URL=". What is this [URL= thing about?

Also, I'm pretty new to RSS feeds. So, does an RSS feed infringe copyrights; or do I have to ask the owner of the site I want a feed from to acquire it?

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by wolf32

Thanks . Once quick problem. Whenever I create a thread for a certain feed, what'sdisplayed is the link to the story and under the link "URL=". What is this URL= thing about?

When the feed is created into a thread, any html img tags are converted into bbcode IMG tags. I find that the feed image tags tend to contain dynamic url's. Unless you have set vbulletin to allow dynamic img tags (admincp -> vbulletin options -> Message Posting and Editing Options -> Allow Dynamic URL for IMG Tags), vbulletin will convert the dymanic bbcode IMG tags to bbcode URL tags. The bad thing is ... that converion from an <img> tag to the bbcode url tag doesn't seem to work well sometimes creating the broken URL tags. Try turning on "Allow Dynamic URL for IMG Tags" and see if that helps.

Originally Posted by wolf32

Also, I'm pretty new to RSS feeds. So, does an RSS feed infringe copyrights; or do I have to ask the owner of the site I want a feed from to acquire it?

As far as I know, you don't need to contact the feeding site. I do think you should leave a link to the actual article in the feed. vb3.6.x includes thread creation off of feeds so I feel the vb folks would have checked this out before adding the feature.

[wolf32]

As an administrator I am able to view "abouttoday" but my normal users are not able to? I went through settings in the Admin CP but came up with nothing. Where do I go to change accessibility?

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by wolf32

As an administrator I am able to view "abouttoday" but my normal users are not able to? I went through settings in the Admin CP but came up with nothing. Where do I go to change accessibility?

You'll need to modify the usergroup settings for your registered users.

[sgrynd]

I have this installed on 3.6.3 and for the most part is working fine, however I am having a problem with thread creation. When the talk about it button is hi t,it creates the thread with the link and a few words from the feed.

Here is an example - From the rss feed; http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot

Everything You Know About Disks Is Wrong

modapi writes "Google's wasn't the best storage paper at FAST '07. Another, more provocative paper looking at real-world results from 100,000 disk drives got the 'Best Paper' award. Bianca Schroeder, of CMU's Parallel Data Lab, submitted Disk failures in the real world: What does an MTTF of 1,000,000 hours mean to you? The paper crushes a number of (what we now know to be) myths about disks such as vendor MTBF validity, 'consumer' vs. 'enterprise' drive reliability (spoiler: no difference), and RAID 5 assumptions. StorageMojo has a good summary of the paper's key points."

What is posted in my forums is:

Everything You Know About Disks Is Wrong

modapi writes

This seems to happen for every feed that I have. Have I missed a setting somewhere?

Thanks for the hack!

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by sgrynd

This seems to happen for every feed that I have. Have I missed a setting somewhere?

You aren't missing anything! I need to get an update out. It seems like the latest versions of vb treat quotes a little different. If the feed has double quotes in it, the thread text is being truncated at the first double quote. I'll try to get something out in the next few days.

[sgrynd]

Ah, that makes sense, thanks for the quick response I will keep an eye out for th eupdate.

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by sgrynd

I have this installed on 3.6.3 and for the most part is working fine, however I am having a problem with thread creation. When the talk about it button is hi t,it creates the thread with the link and a few words from the feed.

Can you give this a try:

On line 1218 of abouttoday.php, find:

PHP Code:

$pagetext = html_entity_decode($_GET['story']); 


Change to:

PHP Code:

$pagetext = $_GET['story']; 


[sgrynd]

It seems to be working for the quick few I tested, will try a few more and get back to you.

Thanks for the quick update!

[wolf32]

Problem only happens with SI.com. Have no idea why, any suggestions.


Link: www.u-connex.com/RSS_error.jpeg