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=

[Fynnon]

Originally Posted by davidw

What kind of HTML Character Set are you using? You can find this information in your Language Manager under Languages & Phrases. Click edit on your language.

I`m using English (US) ISO-8859-1 because my forum is english only !
And the site from where i get the news is also an english only site !

I saw today this ’ appears also as a ?

[davidw]

The reason I ask is that I also use ISO-8859-1 and in the default RSS feeds (vBulletin) I have the same issue. I am looking for a workaround on this.

[zelnik]

David, any help with this please?

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....6&postcount=28

My site just this second started crawling and I disabled your plugin and the site sprung back to life, enabled it again and it's still working fine.

[davidw]

The main issue appears to be an issue with a feed you are trying to receive. This is beyond your control unless you use a different feed. Tickers (marquees) have a tendency from time to time cause a lag or crawling issue even from pulling from your own site (non-RSS) - this is normal. The only way to really speed it up is to possibly set up caching which you can do via the RSS feed manager. I don't have documentation on that but it is available out there.

[marshal_ramdev]

thanks

[HappyPike]

Thanks for making this nice addon!

When a link is clicked, it opens in new window. Can it be configurable to open in same or new window?

[Alfa1]

At last! I found the code for the typed ticker, frequently requested. It is a commercial code though. Can you make your hack work with this:
http://www.willmaster.com/software/attentionticker/

[davidw]

Originally Posted by HappyPike

Thanks for making this nice addon!

When a link is clicked, it opens in new window. Can it be configurable to open in same or new window?

You could try altering/removing the

target="blank"

from each of the links in the plugin.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

At last! I found the code for the typed ticker, frequently requested. It is a commercial code though. Can you make your hack work with this:
http://www.willmaster.com/software/attentionticker/

I will ask them if they can allow me to demo their software to see if it will work, otherwise, it is $49 per person and cannot be distributed. This is a possibility.

[animcentral]

great mod but i have a better idea.
i need to moderators able to mark the thread as news and that news show in marquee in forumhome,would you please do this?

[davidw]

While this might be something to consider, it isn't feasible in its present form. It would take a rewrite of the script. I will consider this for a future update.