I am using the free version and it works perfectly.
Unzip the carp archive (zip) and upload the carp folder to your forums home directory.
Upload the carpsetup.php to the same directory as of your showthread.php (forums home) folder.
Run the setup file, it will give you two choices..
1) directory cache and the other.. mysql cache. I am using directory cache and I recommend you to try this one.
When you hit next, carp will install cache folders to your carp/ directory. If you don't see any errors here then the setup is complete, you should now delete the carpsetup.php from the forum home directory and carpsetupinc.php from your forums/carp/ directory. If you encountered any errors here then it's highly likely that you need to change the directory permissions for you /carp folder in order allow the script to create cache directories.
Now the rest of the process is fairly simple.
Open your admincp (vb) and create a custom profile field. It should be Single-Line text box. Click next and fill the fields. Give it an appropriate title/description, i.e:
For title: Blog Feed
For description: Enter your Blog's RSS feed URL here i.e. http://myblog.com/rss.xml
Leave the default value field empty. Change max length allowed for user input to 200. Field should be editable by user, not a private field, not searchable on member list and do not show on member list. Leave the regular expressions field blank. In the Display page option below, set it to Edit profile and click save.
Now add two plugins in your admincp's Plugins and Products >> Add new plugin. For the first plugin: Selected "global_start" as your hook location, give it an appropriate title (can be anything) and paste the following php code in the plugin php code area:
PHP Code:
require_once 'carp/carp.php';
CarpConf('cacheinterval',120);
/** You may want to set a cachepath specifically for your forum **/
CarpConf('cachepath','carp/');
CarpConf('cacherelative',0);
/** You can omit the above two lines without a problem **/
CarpConf('cborder','');
CarpConf('poweredby','');
CarpConf('maxitems',1);
CarpConf('iorder','link');
Set the plugin to active and click save. Now it's time to add the second plugin:
Attach it to postbit_display_start as the hook location, give it a title & paste the following code in the plugin php code area:
Save your template. Now to test it, go to your usercp> edit profile and scroll down, you will see the Blog Feed option there, add your blog's rss feed and hit save changes. Now go to your forums and look for any of your post.. you will see the latest blog link below your username.
If you encounter any problems then post a message here and I will try to fix it accordingly.
Well, to be fair, I shouldn't speak for you. Correction: Most of us don't want crap.
But let me repeat a question not yet answered: How is this different from the Nevets add-on? Although l;isted for 3.5x, it works fine with 3.6x. My only complaint with it is that it doesn't parse Atom feeds (e.g., Blogger) very well.
There's also a Magpie add-on but apparently it messes up some of the Ajax functions.
Thank you for the mod. It works just like I wanted. I did modify the location of the "Recent Blog: link so that it went to the far right side of the postbit (I don't use the legacy postbit, so others might not be able to have this choice). I also decided to align the other items there to the right to keep things orderly. Looks good and works nice. Thank you again.