Add-On Releases - DnP AJAX Custom News Link - Offer the best news to your forum visitors

What was the last time you were so excited to write an awesome topic for your forum then hopelessly watched it faded away and nobody cares? How about having some great threads, unique information that's only available on your forum, and you want all visitors instantly pay attention to them ? Think you would make announcements everywhere about those topics, then expect someone to click on the links? Maybe that isn't so good and professional at all. Even worse, you have to bump your own thread to get others attention. DnP Custom News may have a solution for you.

What does this little MOD do ?

As the matter of fact, topics in forum are displayed by some formatted orders. Either it is arranged by newest first, oldest first, or last replies, etc...at some point these topics will not be visible in the view of members anymore. Especially, for new visitors to your forum since they have no clue whether yours is a good forum or just a random half-dead community with nothing interesting. How could you show them how great your forum is, what information it has and what kind of fun can be found there? What you need is a manual list that looks automatic, absolutely informative and interactive, totally content-rich to the guests and even search engines. DnP Custom News Link allows you to place your best topics and urls into an article block that appears on your forum home index and makes it looks like a section of online newspaper homepage. This way, it is almost guaranteed you will freshen up your forum look and feel, attract more members to articles or threads that give best of your forum! Even better, DnP Custom News Link supports AJAX for instant page change without refreshing the whole forum index page.

Screenshots of different configurations

Demo

Right on the forum homepage of DnP Network?

Feature Summary

+ Multipaging support.
+ Lightweight AJAX / SEO Friendly pages and links.
+ Three types of news : Image, Video, Article.
+ Option to track views.
+ Consume single query for fastest load.
+ Topic Thumbnail.
+ Topic Description. BBcode supported.
+ All settings and News manager under AdminCP.
+ Links are SEO.
+ Different style is not yet implemented in this version.
+ Able to act as a vB Advanced CMPS Module

Installation for normal forum without vB Advanced CMPS :

1. Upload all files and folders from the package to your forum_root folder, except product-dnp-custom-news-install.xml.
2. Use Product Manager to install product-dnp-custom-news-install.xml
3. Open your FORUMHOME template (or any templates that are used together for forum home index) , then place

PHP Code:

$dnp_news_output 


to anywhere you would want DnP Custom News block to appear.



Installation for vB Advanced CMPS :

Example of how DnP News block blends in along with other columns on a vBA CMPS page

1. Upload all files and folders from the package to your forum_root , then upload dnp_news.php one more time into forum_root/modules folder, except product-dnp-custom-news-install.xml.
2. Use Product Manager to install product-dnp-custom-news-install.xml
3. Go to Style Manager ? Add New Template of your currently in-use style. Input
   
   Title : dnp_vba_news_output
   Template content : $dnp_news_output
   
   
4. Go to vBa CMPS ? Add Module ? PHP File Module. Input the following information :
   
   Module Title : DnP vBa CMPS Custom News Link
   Active : Yes
   File to Include : dnp_news.php
   Module Parent : None
   Templates Used : dnp_vba_news_output
   Use Module Wrapper Template : No
   Leave everything else by default.
5. Save and load module to your CMPS page. Go to Plugin Manager and disable DnP Custom News : global_start

Management :
Now you can go to AdminCP to post some news link or configure the Dnp Custom News block

Enjoy and have fun, if you like this little MOD give it a mark and rating.
Feedbacks are very welcome in order to improve the MOD functions and features.

[Original Source : http://www.silveryhat.com/delynie/f139/dnp-ajax-custom-news-link-modification-7086.html]

Update :
Upload all files and folders in the package to your forum_root folder (or forum_root/modules if used vBa CMPS). Use Product Manager to install product-dnp-custom-news-install.xml to upgrade your current version.

History Log :
v1.3

1. Fix a minor bug
2. Add support for vB Advanced CMPS

v1.2

1. Cache Template fix. Performance optimized
2. Add List Order (Newest first, Oldest first, Views, Random).

v1.1

1. Improve AJAX Compability.
2. Add Collapsible feature.
3. New option to hide description and thumbnail for small news.

v1.0

1. Initial Release.

[WonderStudios]

Very Cool
*Marks AS Install*

[merkaz]

Awesome
Installed .

[choccyclaire]

Ajax works now, thanks.

Your collapseable table didn't quite work though. There is a space inbetween title box and body box.

[silveryhat]

Originally Posted by choccyclaire

Ajax works now, thanks.

Your collapseable table didn't quite work though. There is a space inbetween title box and body box.

Oh not that space is inserted by purpose. You see , vBulletin built-in collapsible script is not working quite well with AJAX so this is the only alternate compatible method.

Originally Posted by WonderStudios

Very Cool
*Marks AS Install*

Originally Posted by merkaz

Awesome
Installed .

:up:

Originally Posted by Cedric_FP

Thanks for the quick work!!

I'll check it out now and let you know!

Let me know if you have any other problems

[choccyclaire]

Ah ok thanks.

Is it possible to have some sort of display order setting within the admincp so we can organise the news links ourselves instead of the newest added immediately becoming the big news.

[hatiramolsun]

thanks..

would like to show on another page. how can I do?

[bartek24m]

when i try to add news (article) i get error: (3.6.10 ver.)

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /includes/adminfunctions.php:285) in /includes/functions.php on line 2805

beside that its great mod
could you find out some way to get news from the some forumids

[FitgirlWorld]

installed and nominated! Great mod thanks!

however, cant get it to work on anything other than forumhome

must be a way

[silveryhat]

Originally Posted by bartek24m

when i try to add news (article) i get error: (3.6.10 ver.)

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /includes/adminfunctions.php:285) in /includes/functions.php on line 2805

beside that its great mod
could you find out some way to get news from the some forumids

What version of PHP are you using ? I have many of my friends who are webmasters from different forum to test this error but none of them happen to come across it.

About the method of pulling news from forumids, this cannot be implemented because of the following reasons :erm: :

1. Execute too many queries (slow down the block)
2. This is a manual news block, if it does getting threads automatically it's rather be replaced with TopXStats or some similar MOD.
3. Even though if it could grab thread info, the description and thumbnail will not be as accurate as manual edit at all.

Originally Posted by FitgirlWorld

installed and nominated! Great mod thanks!

however, cant get it to work on anything other than forumhome

must be a way

Originally Posted by hatiramolsun

thanks..

would like to show on another page. how can I do?

You guys may want to take a look at [Guide] DnP AJAX Custom News on every page of forum

[FitgirlWorld]

Any way to put an Adsense block somewhere in this?

I tried but didnt work too well

thanks again for great mod