including vbulletin info on page off server (NOT eva2000s hack!!!)

Came across this:

http://msmoo.simplenet.com/sorbo/andro.htm

They basically have a small pull of "hot topics" from a board somewhere else. This is a great little idea for linking with people and i guess works like moreover.com sort of thing.

How to do it? Can't use normal php as for one the linking people may not have php and secondly can't use server links /usr/bin etc.

So how can we do it? Is it possible for vbulletin to, through cron say every 5 mins make a small html page with the top 10 popular threads on it. Then make a little javascript program that calls this. We can then give people the javascript call, they add 1 line of text to their website and there appear our hot topics on their site.

What do you think?

[ashy]

I struggled looking for answers to this for ages but managed to find the "syndicate" hack on this site which gave me what I needed ie last 10 (and also last 50) headlines that is on a non-vb page - and on a different server.

If I remember rightly the syndicate hack returned HTML but I wanted it to write a .JS file so easy to include on another page - in fact easy to include on anyones site like moreover.

I run the php to generate my news.js every 15 minutes by CRON - or let my news gatherers run it direct from their browser after posting a news story.

Please see http://www.southport.gb.com - main home page with last 10 news stories (single selected forumid for news only). Also option to display last 50 on its own page.

Apologies if this duplicates other posts but I found it hard to get exactly what I wanted. If anyone wants a full copy of my implementation I will post here.

Credits to all whose bits I took!

[Dark_Wizard]

This sounds interesting...please post it!

[ashy]

This is all based upon the following hack.

VBSyndicate Hack V1
Dave Campbell www.cpfc.org September 2001

I dont write PHP so hack of a hack - only showing here as a working example that his given our site a great boost in popularity by ever changing content ie news headlines on our front page.

My activenews.php is as follows...

<?
require("/home/southpor/public_html/forums/admin/config.php");
//
$num_active = 10;
$num_chars = 50;

$db=mysql_connect($servername,$dbusername,$dbpassw ord);
mysql_select_db($dbname);

$fp = fopen("/home/southpor/www/news/latestnews.js", "w");
@flock($fp, 2);

// select the forums you want to pull the topics from

$querylatest="SELECT * FROM thread WHERE forumid='27' ORDER BY dateline
DESC LIMIT $num_active";

$resultlatest = mysql_query($querylatest,$db);

while ($latest_array = mysql_fetch_array($resultlatest)) {

// Get Forum Infomation
$query_forum = "select * from forum where forumid='$latest_array[forumid]'";
$result_forum = mysql_query($query_forum,$db);
$forum_info_array = mysql_fetch_array($result_forum);

// split the date up a bit
$datestr1 = substr($latest_array["dateline"],0,10);
$datetime = substr($latest_array["dateline"],11,8);

$querythread="SELECT * FROM post WHERE threadid='$latest_array[threadid]' ORDER BY dateline ASC LIMIT 1";

$result_thread_text= mysql_query($querythread,$db);

$result_thread_array = mysql_fetch_array($result_thread_text);

$newstitle = $latest_array["title"];
$newsposter = $latest_array["postusername"];
$newsposterid = $result_thread_array["userid"];
$newstext = substr(strip_tags($result_thread_array["pagetext"]),0,$num_chars);
$newsthreadid = $latest_array["threadid"];
$newscomments = $latest_array["replycount"];
$threadforumid = $latest_array["forumid"];
$threadforum = $forum_info_array["title"];
$threadiconid = $latest_array["iconid"];
$newsdate = date("D j M", $latest_array["dateline"]);
$newstitle = ereg_replace("'", "", $newstitle);

// echo commentary to browser
print ("<b>$newstitle</b><br>");

fputs($fp, "document.write(\"<font face='Verdana, arial, helvetica' size='2' color='#FF0000'><a href='http://www.southportforums.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=$newsthreadid'>$newstitle</a></font><font face='Verdana, arial, helvetica' size='1'> $newsdate $newsposter<br></font>\");\n");
}

@fclose($fp);

print ("<br><b><u>News Headlines Have been updated - Thank You</u></b><br><br>");

include ("news50.php");
?>

I have this set to run as CRON job every 15 minutes - though news reporters can call the script from their browser as well. The news50.php is the same except generates up to 50 headlines in a diff JS file.

The javascript is included on your own page by standard <script src="............" </script>

As you can see it generates latestnews.js that I simply include on whatever page I need - or other sites can use as well. Example as before at www.southport.gb.com

As said - this is other peoples hack - I am only showing here as my working example - something I was looking for myself earlier!