Flag a thread as news

[CarCdr]

Just to be clear, is this an accurate summary of what you are after?

1) The portal system is currently able to pull information from "news" forum(s) but NOT threads.

2) You want the ability to flag any thread as "news worthy" so that it will be extracted/displayed by the portal system as if it were in the "news" forum.

First of all, to make it a little easier, I would not bother with changing the code for adding threads. If the person adding knows it is news, he can post it to the news forum or use the "Thread Admin Tools" menu (read on).

Just add an option to "Thread Admin Tools", a menu that is already access-controlled, to mark a thread as "news worthy". You would have to add a script (or add to an existing script) to be run by your new option (link) in the "Thread Admin Tools" menu.

You would also have to add a new column to the 'thread' table that would be set by your new script code. Let's assume you add a column called "newsworthy".

Finally, you'd have to change your portal script to also search for threads in the thread table with the "newsworthy" flag set.

What does all this add up to?

1. A template change to add option/link to "Thread Admin Tools".

2. A script or script change to add code called by said option.

3. A change to your portal script.

4. A new column in the thread table.

Now, alternatively, you could do this as a less-intrusive kludge.

1. Create a "newsworthy" thread icon that is accessible only to your moderators. Note the iconid of the new icon.

2. Using the default "Thread Admin Tools/Edit Thread" option, they can set any thread to have this newsworthy icon.

3. Change the portal script to include any threads it finds with the newsworthy iconid.

The advantage of this approach is that it uses existing code and all you need to do is modify the portal script to look for threads with the newsworthy iconid, which should be a pretty easy mod.