Add-On Releases - vB News Ticker - Your Blogs RSS Feeds and Forums in a Marquee

What does this do?

It allows you to take your news from your forums (up to 10), blogs (up to 10), and/or RSS feeds (up to 10) and display them in a ticker (marquee).
You have a choice on how many you can pull from each forum as a whole or select your whole site, how fast you want the ticker to scroll, the length of the title of each news item, colors, etc. You can also add RSS feeds and the latest blogs.



Install Instructions

Step 1:
Fresh Install
If you intend to use the RSS features, upload the RSS folder to the root of your forums.
If you rename this folder or change the location, you MUST edit the path in the XML file for each of the require_once 'rss/rss_fetch.inc'; paths.
Go to your admin Control Panel => Plugin System => Manage Products => [Add/Import Product];
Click Browse and find product-davidw_vbnews_ticker.xml
Click Import

Upgrade Options:
Go to your admin Control Panel => Plugin System => Manage Products => [Add/Import Product];
Click Browse and find product-davidw_vbnews_ticker.xml
[If upgrading] Click the button next to Yes in Allow Overwrite
Click Import
You will probably want to revert any templates you have altered as most changes people have requested are now integrated.


Step 2:
Edit the admincp options
*** IMPORTANT ***
Make sure that if you do not enter an item in the forumIDs after the first one, the rest must be set to 0
- if it is not set to 0 or a forumid number, it will result in a database error.


Step 3:
Go to your admin Control Panel => Styles & Templates => Style Manager
Find your Master/Parent style or the style you wish to add this to and drop down the All Style Options menu dropdown and choose Edit Templates
Click Go if it does not redirect you
For your Forums Directory:

Open up your Forum Home Templates subdirectory and choose your FORUMHOME template

Find:

PHP Code:

<!-- main --> 


Add above:

PHP Code:

$vbnews_ticker 


Click Save & Reload

For all your web pages (Navigation Bar)
Open up your Navigation / Breadcrumb Templates subdirectory and choose Navbar template

Find:

PHP Code:

<!-- / nav buttons bar -->

<br /> 


Add Below (You may want to remove the <br /> for aesthetics):

PHP Code:

$vbnews_ticker 


Click Save & Reload


Frequently Asked Questions

How do I add the news ticker to my vB Advanced?
To get the ticker in your vbadvanced, you need to add global output variables
Admin CP => vBa CMPS => Default Settings => Portal Output Global Variables and put vbnews_ticker in there.

How do I add the news ticker to the IBProArcade or Photoplog?
Thanks to Mark.B for his add - https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=144

Why does this seem slow?
For a couple links or for a couple displayed items per link/news item, it should display fine, but as you add more (fill up) each potential slot and up the number of items to pull it will take longer to load. It it easy to add up fast. This uses anywhere from 1-30 queries depending on how many you use.

What is the forumid?
The forumid is the id of the forum you have created. Each forum has its own unique number assigned to it. When you click on a forum link you can see a number that is assigned to it. This will show up in the URL of the page you are browsing. Another way of seeing the forumid is to go to your admin control panel => Forums & Moderators => Forum Manager => Click on [Expand All] and then move your mouse over (hover) any of the forums you've created. Your status bar (bottom of screen) should display your forumid (number at the end of the link/url).

How do I change the colors?
It's an admincp option now
Ticker Background Color: If you leave this blank, it will stay your forum colors. If you put in a hex value, it will change to that color.
Please use 000000 - FFFFFF only.

Ticker Color: If you leave this blank, it will stay your forum colors. If you put in a hex value, it will change to that color.
Please use 000000 - FFFFFF only.

If you want alternating colors do this (You need to edit the plugin to make this work.):
Find:

PHP Code:

$ticker_titles             .= '<a href="showthread.php?t='. $ticker['threadid'] .'" title="'. $ticker['title'] .'" target="blank">'. $ticker['title'] .'</a> '. $ticksep.''; 


Replace With:

PHP Code:

$tick_color                = ($color % 2) ? $color1 : $color2;
                $ticker_titles             .= '<a href="showthread.php?t='. $ticker['threadid'] .'" title="'. $ticker['title'] .'" target="blank"><font color="'. $tick_color .'">'. $ticker['title'] .'</font></a> '. $ticksep .'';
                $color++; 


How do I put in (absolute) links directly to the location rather than relative links?
In the plugin, find each instance of
showthread.php?t= (or whatever the page is)

and change part to a full url.
Example:
http://www.yoursite.com/showthread.php?t=

[OblivionMage]

Seems quite interesting, I'll test it out.

[Jasem]

installed

Good work, Thanks a lot

[davidw]

Don't forget to click install

[y2krazy]

Installed, however, when using an RSS feed, only about 20% of the news items actually have a link to the news item on the site I am getting the feed from. Why is this?

Also, if you are using a ticker separator, when the last item is reached it adds the seperator after the last item. It looks out of place.

How come you are not allowed to use each style's CSS? If I have more than 1 style, the colors do not match the 2nd style.

Thanks in advance.

Also, you should let people know that in the AdminCP, when setting a Ticker Prefix, you can use HTML to customize it. I used "<b><font color="#000000">Headlines:</font></b>". Looks good.

~ Sean

[davidw]

On some feeds, it depends on the source of the feed. Some sites format the feed correctly, while others do not, and yet others are hit and miss on which results are formatted correctly. I have this issue with vbulletin's own RSS integration for new threads from certain sites. Some sites won't work at all, some give me some results, and some give me all the results. I can't really explain other than that.

As for the ticker separator, I never did work on that further than the last one as the one I originally intended it for worked how it was meant to. It's been like that since its inception. For the CSS, it was intended for a global ticker (which is why you have adjustments in the admincp) and for non-vb pages as long as you can integrate them. I had it running on a non-vb page originally - but have made many changes since then. There was a lot I wanted to add (write in) on the admincp, but formatting breaks my HTML in the phrases, so I passed. I have given out similar suggestions to some in the earlier versions - before 3.8.x (I am unsure if it is in the thread or sent by PM) but yes, you cando that

I have a copy or two of an earlier version somewhere where I attempted to use the style-based CSS rather than admincp input and I might revive that but I have a few other projects I am working on for release.

[masterweb]

Seems really good, any online demo to se it in action ?.-

[CFodder]

Great mod thanks David, installed and working perfectly . Can see it working HERE masterweb

Is there any way I could get it working so particular feeds on appear in certain forums?

[davidw]

You would probably have to create a new instance of a ticker - rename the variables and such. Another way might be to rewrite the ticker and create a template for each forumid.

[CFodder]

Thanks David, well I'm no coder, if you could point me in the direction of which variables I'd have to rename I'd appreciate it .

Am using CMPS modules for the current ticker so wouldn't need the forumid ... at least I think not :s.