Add-On Releases - vB News CMS

Built on the foundation of the 3.6 version, I've rewritten a lot of code and added a few things.

What does this do? It allows you to take your news from your news forums (up to 9 news forums) and display them in a category-style fashion with the ability to add new content, reply to the original story, send to a friend, and print.

Install Instructions

Located in the zipped readme.txt file.

New Features
- Allow usergroups to be able to add/reply to news/content.
- Give the ability to show archives (more than the initial x amount on the vbnews page). The archive page shows only the news/content for that specific forum and is however many you decide.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the forumid?
The forumid is the id of the forum you have created. Each forum has its own unique number assigned to it. When you click on a forum link you can see a number that is assigned to it. This will show up in the URL of the page you are browsing. Another way of seeing the forumid is to go to your admin control panel => Forums & Moderators => Forum Manager => Click on [Expand All] and then move your mouse over (hover) any of the forums you've created. Your status bar (bottom of screen) should display your forumid (number at the end of the link/url).

What if I don't like the archive name for the forum?
.../archives.php?&do=forum1
you can change this only in the vbnews.php file
Find each instance of

$archivetext			=	'forum1';

and change the forum1 to whatever you want it to say, but keep in mind that you will want to ensure each one is different (just as it is there).


Changes

none for 3.7


See screenshots for how it works. Sorry, no demo available at the moment.

[davidw]

I'm working on an update that will give more features for this. In addition to the archives page, the archive page will have pagination and the ability to display results in true archive fashion. If anyone has any requests, let me know.

Heck, I may even throw some RSS functionality in there too - just for the fun of it.

[cosy]

can u add some like "set thread as news"
so u can set threads that are not on that forums and show up on vbnews

[davidw]

This modification won't work like that - although that is a good idea for a future release.

[Brew]

I've been looking for something like this, but this isn't quite "there" yet.

Things like "Featured Article", about this author, special advertisements and stuff like that in side blocks.

I am hoping to have several people who will write articles for the site and it would be nice to have a central location for these important articles to be located at.

Just some ideas for a future version

[davidw]

some good ideas

[ishare]

Thank you very much for this very useful addon.
I just want to learn if it is possible to add the thread description just after the thread title.
I've installed the Thread Description hack and it would be wonderful for me, if i could add the thread description after or under the thread title.
Is that possible ? If yes, do you mind if i ask for how ?
Thanks again for all your efforts.

[davidw]

It should be possible, but it would take a little editing. I'd have to look up which variable to pull from the query to find out which one you need.
Don't forget to click install.

[ishare]

First of all i would like to thank you again for your kind relation davidw.

I am not sure whether i can do that or not, but i would like to use this modification for the list of the threads on my forum website.

I do have a movie review website and its very necessary to do an interactive list. And your modification is the only way i can do that. (Thats what i guess)

There will be a bar on top of the template which contains letters from A to Z (exactly same as memberlist.php). So when a member click to letter A, it will only list the threads start with A. And with your modification, then maybe i can be able to pull the threads from certain forum categories.

Actually i tried to do some custom edits on some of the templates just to show the thread title instead of the detailed information. And it worked. When i run your vbnews.php, i can get the list of threads (just thread titles) in a custom table. But when i tried to add the thread description, i couldn't do that. And i do all these works with very limited knowledge of php and other very difficult codes.

But ofcourse i have another very important thing to ask you. Do i have the permission of making any custom changes as i mentioned above ? If not, ofcourse i will not do that.

**Sorry because of my English.

[davidw]

Yes, you have permission to make custom changes. All I ask is that you don't re-release the modification.

However, if you like, I can implement some changes (or all) depending on how they pertain to the modification if it can benefit everyone if you like.

[huntrKillr]

hey david, i was wondering if there is a way to update a non-vb page with the latest story and have a read more link to the forum thread automatically. So lets say I have an area on my non-vb template that is allocated for news stories. Can the news stories i post using vbnewsCMS show up on a non-vb page with their brief description and a read on link?