vBExternal v1.6

Alright, the people waiting for the quiz hack are gonna kill me for making this while i'm supposed to be developing v2.. heh.

Anyway, welcome to vBExternal, the answer to all your questions of "how can i get this to show on my website from my forum?"
vBExternal provides you the user with the availability to include several forms of information from your own forum, on your own website, with minimal work required!

UPDATE - 1.5:
This update provides more stability, the vBExternal file will only call 1 query for $vboptions and 1 query for the action, a maximum potential of 2 queries (some may execute 3 dependant on functionality used)

UPDATE - 1.6:
Several minor bugs fixed, 2 main one's were users online (repeating names) and emoticons (being red x's).
Also using vBExternal is completely different as to before (the download contains instructions on how to set up vBExternal the new way)

To update: Re-upload vBExternal.php

Features:

• Newest Members
  
  • Description: Outputs X members onto your website, ordered by newest first
    
  • Available Parameters/Options: Change amount shown (default is 5)
    
• Top Posters
  
  • Description: Outputs X members onto your website, ordered by # of posts
    
  • Available Parameters/Options: Change amount shown (default is 5)
    
• Newest Threads
  
  • Description: Outputs X threads onto your website, ordered by post date
    
  • Available Parameters/Options: Choose all/1/several forums to pick from (default is all forums), Change Amount shown (default is 5)
    
• Newest Replies
  
  • Description: Outputs X threads onto your website, ordered by newest reply
    
  • Available Parameters/Options: Choose all/1/several forums to pick from (default is all forums), Change Amount shown (default is 5)
    
• News
  
  • Description: Outputs X posts onto your website, from a specific forum, ordered by post date
    
  • Available Parameters/Options: Choose which forum news is pulled from, Change Amount shown (default is 5)
    
• Users Online
  
  • Description: Outputs all your users online on your forum, onto your webpage
    
  • Available Parameters/Options: N/A
    

Installation:
All you have to do is upload a few files, no running an installer, no file edits, no template additions/edits, nothing!!

Resources:
The system uses the default 1 vB queries onload, and then only ONE additional query (if action is successful)

Using vBExternal:
First of all, your site will have to be php, if your site is say .htm/.html, no worries, just rename the file type to .php, it will all be the same. Then read 'Usage Instructions' contained within the download to see how to set it up


Customizing HTML Output:
Go inside yourforumdir/vBExternal/
You'll find a few HTML files, these files are the template "structure" for each action, you can change the HTML to your own liking, however leave in the macro's --> {bla} (These are swapped with data called from your forum)

I think that's it really, really simple, really easy to use, so there ya go

PS: Feel free to send me any donations, my paypal is: webmaster@gzevolution.net

Enjoy,

- Zero Tolerance

[jugo]

Originally Posted by azmi

from jugo : https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....6&postcount=72

i have a question:
i want to show all new forums to display.
is there any way to to this?

I'll hook this up for you......i'll PM you and post it here.

[bhxtyrant]

Originally Posted by worMatty

Morning, all.

I doubt you'll see this, ZT, but thanks very much for such an outstanding mod. It's such a simple thing, I'm surprised this was released on the 24th May. You've made it very customisable, but I too would like to know how to put the date and time of the news threads into my pages along with the articles.

Does anyone have any idea how this could be done? I'll continue to experiment and make enquiries in the meantime and if I find the answer I'll post it here.

Hey worMatty,
I actually spoke to ZT a while ago,He said this feature may be avalible in a future release of his hack so there are hopes.Unfortunatly he isn't exactly sure when this new version will be released so if you do happen to find out how to include the time/date using vBexternal please let me know

[GetGamer.com]

I'm having trouble getting this mod to work.

I uploaded per the instructions to my forums root (http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/) and I've made the following edits to this page: http://www.bigblueball.com/im/msn/indexnew.php

PHP Code:

<?php
chdir('./forums');
require_once('./vBExternal.php');
?>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
...
    <h2>MSN Messenger News</h2>
    
    <?php
        output_News(5,147);
    ?>
...

but when I load the page -- it's completely blank. It seems like there is a path problem, but I can't figure out what it is. Any suggestions?

[bhxtyrant]

Hello Getgamer.com,

I had a similar problem and the solution is rather simple.you had to edit the following code with the correct server root paths to the correct files.for example you currently have this

chdir('./forums');
require_once('./vBExternal.php');


you should have something like this..

chdir('/home/servername/public_html/forums');
require_once('/home/servername/public_html/forums'/vBExternal.php');

this should solve your problem

also not sure if this really matters but move that line of code underneath of the code "</head>" this is how i have it set on my page and it works great

[GetGamer.com]

Originally Posted by bhxtyrant

Hello Getgamer.com,

I had a similar problem and the solution is rather simple.you had to edit the following code with the correct server root paths to the correct files.for example you currently have this

chdir('./forums');
require_once('./vBExternal.php');


you should have something like this..

chdir('/home/servername/public_html/forums');
require_once('/home/servername/public_html/forums'/vBExternal.php');

this should solve your problem

also not sure if this really matters but move that line of code underneath of the code "</head>" this is how i have it set on my page and it works great

Thanks, that did the trick. Strange that the other doesn't work though...

[worMatty]

Originally Posted by bhxtyrant

Hey worMatty,
I actually spoke to ZT a while ago,He said this feature may be avalible in a future release of his hack so there are hopes.Unfortunatly he isn't exactly sure when this new version will be released so if you do happen to find out how to include the time/date using vBexternal please let me know

Thanks, bhxtyrant. I'll remember to.

User's avatar would be a nice feature, too... *goes away and thinks*

[GetGamer.com]

This is a great mod! I'm glad I ran across it.

I have a few suggestions:

1. Allow the selection of multiple forums for news.
2. Include the post date for news.
3. Allow an optional image associated with the forumid (similar to what you see at www.neowin.net)
4. Include the "news_bit" mod by Jugo
5. Allow a starting number for your news array.

Why a starting number? Well...
I would love to have the most recent news story in full at the top of a page, followed by the next five (2-6) articles using the news_bit, followed by the next 10 articles (7-16) using just titles only. It's a great way to show a lot of information on a page without cluttering it up. Very similar to what you see at Dave's iPAQ.


Obviously, it would be nice to automatically exclude private forums, but in addition to that, I've found another but that crops up with you use the news_bit modification. If you limit the characters, you could end up with unclosed tags and unpredictable formatting (especially with things like lists).


EDIT: I believe I'm on track to modify this to do the different ranges. I found this reference in the MySQL Reference Manual:

The LIMIT clause can be used to constrain the number of rows returned by the SELECT statement. LIMIT takes one or two numeric arguments, which must be integer constants.

With two arguments, the first argument specifies the offset of the first row to return, and the second specifies the maximum number of rows to return. The offset of the initial row is 0 (not 1):


mysql> SELECT * FROM table LIMIT 5,10; # Retrieve rows 6-15

So I can add a parameter that specifies the starting row. The next step is to parameterize the html "template" that is used. Then I can call the function three times and achieve something akin to what I mentioned above.

[csidlernet]

/me thanks for allowing me to install it

[Mithras]

Very happy I found this script, it has made my life easier but there are a couple of things that need to be fixed and added.

1. Bug: Trouble with images.

It appears that if you wish to show an image using the img tags and said image is located at a url that has /images/ in it, it inserts the url to the forums image directory within the original url. This means that the thumbnail doesn't show up in the news.

2. Addition: Displaying the Date

Is it possible to export the date of the news post so that we can display it on the main page?

[bhxtyrant]

I am trying to find a way to do this as well (add the date) but sadly i know nothing about how vB is coded so i dont know where to begin to try and add this fuction.