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

[atosoup]

All fixed now.. Just a couple of small probs with edditing the hyperlinks in the online users as I have it in an iframe and how can I add the guests online to the box with the users online?

[atosoup]

Sorted the hyperlinks but still have no idea how to show number of guests online in this page... Is it possible?

[mkoerner]

this is what i have been looking for. I do have one problem im using php4. Can you tell me what I need to change in the files to get it to work correctly?

i keep getting page can not be found. I think its just a pathing issue. I just dont know what to change.

[Webs007]

This works well if the external file - is on the same server as the forum...

What if I wanted to pull the news onto another website - not located on the vb server?

i.e i have www.vbinstallion.org/forum/ and I actually want to pull the headlines so they appear on www.news-site.org ? (these forums are examples not my actual fsites) - how does this work with vBExternal? - is it even possible?

Webs

[boduzapho]

Sorry i am new to VB,

running vb 3.5.4

Installed ok..

following error message:

Warning: main(./includes/db_mysql.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in C:\xxxxxxxxxxx\forum\vBExternal.php on line 67

Fatal error: main(): Failed opening required './includes/db_mysql.php' (include_path='.;c:\php4\pear') in C:\xxxxxxxxxx\forum\vBExternal.php on line 67

--------------------------------------------------------------------

it seems the file '/includes/db_mysql.php' is not even in the install of vb 3.5.4 , any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

[mdbw]

Warning: main(./includes/db_mysql.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/******/public_html/mdbwforums/vBExternal.php on line 67

Fatal error: main(): Failed opening required './includes/db_mysql.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/******/public_html/mdbwforums/vBExternal.php on line 67

I got this error message, but I followed all instructions.

Here is my code for the page:

<?php
chdir('./mdbwforums');
require_once('./vBExternal.php');
?>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>Untitled Document</title>
</head>

<body>
<?php
output_NewestReplies(30);
?>
</body>
</html>

[mdbw]

looks like the guy above me had the same error.

[troykristoffer]

I have a quick question. I've been using this for months without problem and I love it. However I just posted in my forum with an image (linking the full path of the image, as I dont believe vBulletin allows otherwise...for ex: http:www.mywebsite.com/images/filename.jpg...) When the vBExternal script parses my front page of the website (Non VB page...) it does it beatifully, all the text is there, links and formating and colors are correct, except them image doesnt load. It TRIES to load, but after a second or so the image loading indicator (basically a clear box) simply vanishes. The image shows up fine in the actual forum post.

I looked at the SOURCE of the rendered page, and found that the HTML renders incorrectly. The image src tag says this:
<img src="http://www.mywebsite.com/http://www.mywebsite.com/forum/images/correctfilename.jpg...>

Obviously this isnt what I want. But theres two problems that puzzle me.

1. Why, when the image path is directly entered as http://www.mywebsite.com/images/correctfilename.jpg it basically throws that out the window, not only doubling up on the website URL, but adding the forum directory in there, and then

2. deciding... hey, I've screwed it up enough, after the forum directory, I will attempt to use the correct filename now. (images/correcfilename.jpg). What I am puzzled by is that would make sense if I had embedded the image in my post as "/images/filename.jpg" but I didnt. Somehow the script decided to insert "http://www.pinkjams.com/forum" in the middle of the correct url.

I've tried using "../images/filename.jpg" but VB doesnt allow that.

I'm imagining that there is something in the vBExternal script that I can edit to make it stop looking in the forum directory, but I dont know what, since Im simply a novice coder. Anyone got any suggestions?

PS: If you want to see the behavior Im talking about, visit www.pinkjams.com . The front page has the script running, and the second post down has an image imbedded in the middle of it... for the first second or so that the page is loading you will see the loading placeholder and then it will vanish as if theres no image there at all.

[Angeleyes]

I have a problem. My homepage is article live by interspire and it uses several templates for all of the information. How can I add this into one of the templates to display the requested information. I'm desperate at this point... I've tried everything I could think of... but I am pretty new at this stuff.

Thank you so much for your time!

[Tannerman]

I've been able to get this to work (example). It took a lot of fiddling.

In any case, I was wondering if anyone has been successful in pulling information from MORE THAN ONE forum when using the News include. The instructions state:

###################################################
# Displaying News

<?php
output_News(5,4);
?>

# Change '5' to the amount you want to show
# Change '4' to the forum id you want to pull
# news from (must be set - only 1 forum id allowed)
###################################################

Just curious if anyone has been able to modify vBExternal so that more than 1 forum ID can be included here.