Add-On Releases - CinVin vB Forum Feed Listing

[ BY REQUEST ]

This nifty little utility will present a list of all of your forums RSS feeds on one page! Your users can then easily pick & choose which forums they want to subscribe to via RSS, Google, Yahoo, or Bloglines.

Ever go to a big site like CNN and view their page of RSS feeds that you can subscribe to? This is the same thing but for your vBulletin forums!

In addition to your users, the search engine spiders will love this!

We went out of our way to make sure that this CinVin vBulletin add-on was quick & easy to both install and modify!

• Automatically adds an RSS button to your footer template.
• Correctly shows where your visitors are when viewing the Who's Online page.
• Forums can be specifically excluded from being listed.
• Ability to specify which usergroup to use for permissions when viewing the list of forums.
• "Link" forums can be turned off from showing.
• All options are configured through the vBulletin ACP.
• All descriptions and names are completely phrased so you can quickly add alternate lanquages or change the existing wording.
• All display output is handled through vBulletin templates so you can quickly change the output appearance.
• All templates and phrase are installed as a vBulletin product through your ACP which means there are no file edits!
• Compatible with vBSEO.
• Easy integration with vBadvanced CMPS.
• Debug mode to help you with any problems you may be having.

Installation only take a few moments...

• Unzip the .zip file that you downloaded.
• Upload the single PHP file and single folder in the upload_to_your_forum_folder folder from the download to your forums folder.
• Go into your ACP and select Plugins & Products => Manage Products => Add/Import Product => {Select the CinVin_vB_Forum_Feed_Listing.xml file from the download} => Import

You're all done! Just point your browser to http://www.yoursite.com/forums/cv_rss_feeds.php to view your new RSS feed listings.

DEMO #1: CinVin RSS Feeds (this is the 'stock' version)

DEMO #2: Cool Sci-Fi RSS Feeds (this one has been integrated with vBa CMPS)


FAQ's
- What vB versions? This should work with all versions of vB 3.6.x and above. It should also work with vB 3.5.x but I have not tested it on that version.

- Can I remove the "CinVin" text at the very bottom? NO! Believe it or not that little text is what allows us to work on hacks like this for free and, more importantly, to continue to support them. You are free to move the notice to your footer template, for example, if you would like to keep your notices all together but for removing it entirely a Branding Free license is available through CinVin.

[punk23]

Thanks but I checked that...

FAQ's
- What vB versions? This should work with all versions of vB 3.6.x and above. It should also work with vB 3.5.x but I have not tested it on that version.r

Guess it doesn't then....

[category]

can you give me the link for branding free option?

[KW802]

Originally Posted by punk23

Thanks but I checked that...

Guess it doesn't then....

From what I've been reading the problem is the version # in the 3.6.x product XML file that isn't recognized by 3.5.x importer. I'll see what I can do.

Originally Posted by category

can you give me the link for branding free option?

A link to CinVin has been sent in response to your PM.

[IraqVip]

I get blank page
http://forum.iraqvip.cc/cv_rss_feeds.php

[KW802]

Originally Posted by IraqVip

I get blank page
http://forum.iraqvip.cc/cv_rss_feeds.php

Did you import the product XML?

[Discussions]

Have you an update to the latest version which helps with the anchors? I'm using vbseo.

[IraqVip]

yes i did !!!

[Discussions]

Well, since we don't have an update to solve the anchor issues just yet...I will have to make the RSS page into pure html.

[yj_enquirer]

Hi KW802..

Firstly a great hack.. absolutely superb.. and succesfully installed...and minimal install time.. (though I spent most time trying to find out how to view the RSS feeds as I did not read the install instructions correctly and realise I had to point to /cv_rss_feeds.php... doh!)

But I have reached to the same issue as Bashy..

Originally Posted by bashy

So, Why would this show as a blank page for me when i am admin, it shows a blank page on the pages that guests cant see, or did you explain that i am that thick i couldnt understand it lol

Is there a fix or is it as is? Cause i will assume that all members will get this blank page

in my forum.. guests are allowed to view the forum, but not the threads within it.. members have different permissions to view forums based on their usergroups.

It does make sence to have the RSS link only able to get the posts based on the view of guests, else guests cud hijak the forums links and post it on an external RSS reader and get the brief posts information that they don't have access within the actual forum itself.

Q1) However, what I was wondering.. is it possible to limit information of what gets displayed in the RSS readers, i.e. perhaps just the first 10 characters only.. perhaps just limiting it to the title header only of a new post made in the forum?

Q2) Does the number of forums have anything to do with parsing of RSS.. the reason I ask is because, there are over 100 forums where I am trying to implement this Hack...

Doing it on forumID = 99.. i.e. passing through

http://www.XXX.co.uk/external.php?forumids=99

works fine and I can post that to RSS external readers

But if I try

http://www.XXX.co.uk/external.php?forumids=157

I get nothing.. external RSS readers are not able to acknoweldge this as a valid RSS code. Entering the site through the RSS validation service I get error messages as...

line 1, column 0: XML parsing error: <unknown>:1:0: no element found

and

Feeds should not be served with the "text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" media type

Thanks..


EDIT:
Ok.. I think if this hack is used together with Abe1's hack regarding External Data Provider Usergroup / Cookie setting it should allow RSS feed based on which usergroup you define within the Exteral Data Provider option in ACP as it will be based on cookies.

[dtdesign]

Kevin - just a couple of quick question for you ?

Is there anyway to control the feed from the individual forums, for instance I have a few hosted forums which aren't as busy as the rest of the site, but I'm creating a mini-site for some of these forums, and I was going to include the RSS Feed in Wordpress as I was using that as the CMS for the mini site, but due to the lack of activity, low numbers of threads are showing up on the feed.