Any-forum News hack

We've all seen plenty of news hacks here before. I'm talking about a hack that gets all new threads in a specific forum and shows the first post from the new threads on a separate, non-vB page. These hacks usually show a specific number of threads that you specify, or all threads from the past number of days that you specify. The forum that these threads come from is setup by you, by putting the forumid numbers in a variable in the hack's code file.

I feel that this is a limited system. You are limited to posting news items only in the one or few threads that you specify up front are to be used to get news items from, and then those forums are limited to only posting news items in (because every new thread in it becomes a news item). This just didn't seem like the best solution to me, because if I wanted to cover a particular topic, for example, computer hardware, I would have to have two separate forums: One to post hardware news, and one for non-news items like help and tips.

So what makes my hack different is that you can now post news items in ANY forum. When you post a new thread, there will be a new option in the same area as "parse urls" and "disable smilies"; this new option is called, "make a news item?" If you leave that box unchecked, the thread gets posted as normal. But if you check it, then not only does the thread get posted, but it will also show up on a separate page. So now, you can post news items and non-news items in the same forum, in any forum, and only the threads you want to be news items will show up as news items.

I have set up a permission for this checkbox, so it will only appear for the usergroups you want it to appear for. Setting this permission is just like setting any other usergroup permission, like the ability for the usergroup to post new threads, move threads, download attachments, etc.

You can change the news status of a thread, in other words, change a thread from being a news item to not a news item, or vice-versa, via a new option that appears on the Edit Thread screen from the Admin Tools.

This hack also includes a simple "latest threads" feature, that on the same page as the news items will show the most recently-replied to threads (the most recently active threads). I did these two things together because I knew they would be very similar to code, and would appear on the same page. However, each part is completely separate from the other part, and it is very easy to only use one part of the hack or the other.

Here is an image of the checkbox:


Here is the new permission setup (by default, for any new usergroups you create, this permission will be set to 'NO'):


There is a working demo of this hack. The test forums is located here, and the news page is located here. You can use the test forums as an unregistered user; I have set up the unregistered usergroup to have Super Moderator powers, so you should be able to play around with the Edit Thread admin tool, etc.

I'm posting this in the Beta forums because I'd like for some other people to let me know it works OK for them. It works fine for me, on two boards; I originally wrote it and developed it for my regular board, which was heavily hacked to begin with. I then setup a clean, unhacked, totally stock board as a testing grounds, and recreated the hack, and again, it worked fine. I want to confirm that it works fine for at least one other person, but I'm also hoping that someone more experienced than myself can take a look at it to see if I've coded it the best way possible.

The other issue I hope to address here in Beta relates to how the text from news item threads is formatted to appear on the news page. Currently, this hack gets the entire contents of the first post of a thread, and it is run through the bbcode parser, so what you see on the news page is just like what you see in the thread itself, including smilies, all vB Code tags converted, etc. Also, the entire post is used; it is not run through any process that limits it to a certain number of characters. The reason I did not set up a character limit was mainly so that the bbcode parser would not get confused if a closing tag was completely or partially cut out. I figured that since I included a permission system, that at least for me would limit the ability to make a thread a news item to Admins and Mods, I could teach my staff to keep news item threads short.

However, I have toyed with the idea (in my mind) of changing the hack so that if you check a box to make a thread a news item, when you submit the thread, instead of the thread being posted straight away, instead, first you are taken to another page with a textarea containing the contents of the post. In this second textarea, which contains what you just typed in the normal newthread screen, you can edit or change what you typed, and what you do here would get stored in an additional field added to the thread table, and this is what would get shown on the news page. That way, you could start a thread, put an entire news article in it or whatever, mark it to be a news item, submit it, then pare down the contents of the post to just a little blurb suitable for a news item display on the news page, while the original bit you typed gets saved as a post and shown in the thread as normal. (Hope that makes sense.) If I hear enough of a demand for something like this, or get any other ideas, I may consider it. The downside to this is it becomes a little more complicated to post a news item thread.

OK, so install it or play with the demo, and let me know if it's ready for a full release!

Edit on Jan. 1, 2002: This hack has been updated to Version 2, with new features as discussed throughout this thread. Please go to this post: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...281#post210281

[JJR512]

Sorry, please ignore the test forum for now. If you want to see the hack in action, please look at it on my production forums: http://forums.jjr512.com/homeindex.php

(This hack on the test forum is not currently working due to being in the middle of testing of something that isn't finished yet.)

[squawell]

so u mean the hack didn't finish yet~~

and i got that is normal!!

[pdaGuy]

JJR512,
I'd like to suggest something...
Wouldn't it be better if the "Headbits" didn't show the threads that are "News Items" too? I mean, what's the point of showing them in two places on the same page? What do you think?

P.S. Any idea on the include statement? (see post #119)

[JJR512]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by squawell
so u mean the hack didn't finish yet~~

and i got that is normal!!

[pdaGuy]

JJR512,
Thanks for considering my request and I look forward to see what you?ll come up with on the new version
Is there any chance that you or someone else could let me know how to insert extra PHP code on the homeindex.php page?
For example, I want to include a separate Poll script that I found here, but the installation instructions say that I must add the following in order to have the Poll on my site.

[QUOTE]
<?php require "./booth.php"; ?>
<?php
echo $php_poll->poll_process(1);
?>

[JJR512]

You cannot add PHP code to templates. (Unless it's the phpinclude template, of course.) You must add the code to the file; in this case, homeindex.php file.

Because the file is entirely PHP to begin with, you can strip the PHP opening and closing tags, so you are left with these two lines:
require "./booth.php";
and
echo $php_poll->poll_process(1);

Without having read the instructions for that hack, I would assume you should put the require line below the line that requires global.php, and the echo line...well, I don't really know where to stick that, honestly. I think an echo statement will work in this file because all the HTML is generated by templates, and the output of the echo statement would need to go wherever in the HTML that you want it, which isn't possible this way. I think wherever you stick that echo statement in the homeindex.php file, the output will just end up at the top of the page, above the header and everything.

[pdaGuy]

Well.... I did what you said but it didn't work
When I added the echo... I received
[QUOTE]echo (0);

[pdaGuy]

Just so you know.. I find out how to include the poll script
Everything needed to go on the phpinclude

[voogru]

i want to be able to include the news hack on my non-vB page this is how i have it setup

main site is in the public_html/ folder
and my forums are in the public_html/forums/ folder

now what i want to do is simply modify my index.php to get the news and make working links to the posts. i dont know how to include it and keep my normal page up.

basicly heres what im looking for, this is a IMAGE EDIT just for your info

http://www.voogru.com/images/homepage.jpg

i attached my index.php if someone could lead me in the right direction that would be great

-voogru

[TECK]

i posted here on this thread how to make homeindex.php your home page. search through..