Logician NEWS: Drag Any Message to Your Main Page

This is a news script which will drag vb forum messages from your vb db to your non-vb main page/news page. There are a lot of good news script around but I needed a highly customizable main page news script with some special features and wrote it myself. I'm using it in my site's main page for a long time, but I was just too lazy to write installation/help documents to share it here, sorry!

FEATURES:

* This script simply pulls forum messages which you marked as "news" from your vb database and post them in your non-vbulletin (main/other) page.
* You can mark messages as "NEWS" in any forum you want (including private forums). You dont need to restrict your news to a specific forum.
* You can drag any message to your main page, regardless of its date. So news is NOT supposed to be the most recent messages in your board.
* You do NOT have to carry the whole message to your main page as news. You can import it all or simply take some part of it. So eg. you can drag a message's the first paragraph to your news page and link the thread for "Read More".
* Moreover you can insert invisible custom NEWS text which will be dragged to your main page to your board messages, but not shown in the original forum thread. So your original thread message and news text on your main page can be different than eachother.
* You can have sticky news in your main page (even if they are not sticky in your forum).
* News does NOT need to be the first message in the thread. You can tag any reply message as news and pull it to your main page either.
* Script parses ALL of your message icons/smilies (including your custom add-ons) and some of the important vBCode like: [url] [email] [img] [b] [i] [u]
* You can specify which members may post news.
* You can form your News' title seperately, apart from of the original thread/message title.
* You can set maximum number of news shown in your main page.
* You can set maximum number of characters that all shown news should not exceed. Some messages can be long and some can be short and if you set a character limit, the script will automatically compile enough news from your database to fit your web page's relevant part according to the limit you set.
* You can enable/disable:
News Poster Name
News Date
News Read Number
News 'Send to a Friend' Link
Comment number/Add comment button/Last commenter
Will viewing news increase the original thread's view count or not
News is sticky or not
for ALL your news INDIVIDUALLY.
* All news tags are invisible in the original thread. So forum readers do not notice any difference when you tag a message as news.
* Dragging a message to your main page as news is as simple as inserting a hidden [news]Title of My News[/news] tag to your forum message.

Well, these features are what I needed in my news script, so it should suffice to you too!

It's an easy to install script and will work with ALL vbulletin versions because it's an add-on, not a hack. I can give support as much as I have time, but please ask here, not via email or PM.

If you use the script, please click INSTALL. If you post the URL of your news page after installation, you can help other users see the script in action in different pages and in custom designs, thank you!

Logician

[Logician]

Originally Posted by copyninja

o damn sorry to double post but ... my concern is not post count of these boards lol neways...

i would like to change the format of the date in 2 ways ..

i would delete the part that says "Past Date:" because i dont need that part...

also i would like the date to read (random date) .."9/18/2003 at 'time'"

ALSO this right here may be asking alot lol so if it is you dont have accomodate this request, anyway you think you make it so that the time is in a 12hour format and then you can use am or pm ...

edit phpheader.php, find the line:

PHP Code:

return date ("Y-d-m H:i:s", mktime($saat+$timeset, $dakika, $saniye, $ay, $gun, $yil)); 


Change the "Y-d-m H:i:s" part (only that part!) according to the info here:
http://tr.php.net/date

[copyninja]

thank you

[NecroSocial]

Logician I'm trying to get the news table to match the design specs for my site's main page. I know I can get the text to layout properly however I'd like to have the option of including a graphic along-side the intro text (see the attached image for an example of what I'm trying to do). I had the idea of making a new vbcode (something like [newsimage={file}]) that could be included in news posts. However I'd like to know how to get your script to pick-up the file so I could drop it into my table as one of the news variables (££nImage££ or some such). Any ideas on how this could be accomplished?

[Logician]

Originally Posted by NecroSocial

Logician I'm trying to get the news table to match the design specs for my site's main page. I know I can get the text to layout properly however I'd like to have the option of including a graphic along-side the intro text (see the attached image for an example of what I'm trying to do). I had the idea of making a new vbcode (something like [newsimage={file}]) that could be included in news posts. However I'd like to know how to get your script to pick-up the file so I could drop it into my table as one of the news variables (??nImage?? or some such). Any ideas on how this could be accomplished?

If you are going to use a fixed image in all news items, you can edit the new HTML code which is in phpheader.php (variable $newstablesample).

But if you want to insert a different image per news, this wouldn't easily be possible without tweaking with the hack structure.

[NecroSocial]

Yeah I'm looking to include a different image per post. I'm fully willing to tweak if you're up for showing me what to tweak.

[seattlecane]

very nice, solves my problems

[BlackxRam]

Is there a Vb3 version of this in the pipe!?

[Logician]

Originally Posted by BlackxRam

Is there a Vb3 version of this in the pipe!?

nope and unlike my other hacks I'm not yet sure if I'll port this over. If someone is eager to work on this hack's VB3 porting, he can contact me.

[higmet]

the old hack works fine on my vb3 testboard

[MeTaL_oRgY]

Hey logician! How ya doing??.... well, I installed this and it works perfectly, I just need one more thing though... I want the avatar of the news poster to appear on the index of my site... is this possible withouth modifying the SQL?... if no, then its just fine I just wanted to ask

Thnx for another GREAT hack!