Last XX Posts on non-vB page

UPDATED! Not a new version number, but a bug fix.
Fixed another bug with using forum titles and included forums.
New update: *Actually* fixed the bug with the forums this time.
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It's my best work to date (if I do say so myself ) and I think you'll like it and like all the configuration you can do.

This image shows the script with all of the columns on, and parsing [code], smilies, and the post icon, as well as showing the forum title before the thread title.


This image shows the script with all the columns off except $lastpostdate, and the $tw (table width) set to 600, and $showdate set to 0 (to just show the last post time).


This image shows the same as #2, except $tw is blank (allowing the table to compact and remove the empty space automatically).


Hack version: 1.0.1

Changes since version 1.0.0: Fixed small bug.

Changes since version 0.1.0: Parses [ b], [ i], [ u], [ code], and [ quote] within the "last post". Displays the icon of the post, or the thread if there is no post icon. Parses smilies. New option to convert new lines to <br> so the post appears as the author wrote it (note: may cause problems if there are large breaks in posts).

Changes since version 0.0.2: New option to show the text of the last post of a thread (also option to limit the number of characters of the post displayed). New option to set the table width, as a percent, a number of pixels, or just let the table size naturally. New option to show just the time of the last post, instead of the date *and* the time. New option to show a thin line around the cells (cell spacing).

Changes since version 0.0.1: Include only specific forums, or set to allow all forums except certain excluded forums. New option to display a "Last post date" column with the last post date and time, formatted with your board's date & time setting. Fixed a bug with font and font size. Split the config into a separate file to make editing easier.

For version: v2 betas 3, 4, 5, RC1, RC2.

Files needed: last10.php, last10config.php (see attached zip file).

Files to edit: last10config.php (see attached zip file).

Possible file locations: Anywhere, as long as the relative path to config.php and the URL to your board are correct. Also, you must put last10.php and last10config.php in the same directory!

Instructions
1] Unzip the files last10.php and last10config.php to your hard drive.
2] Open last10config.php in an ASCII text editor, such as Notepad (Windows), SimpleText (Mac), EditPlus, UltraEdit, TextPad, etc. (DO NOT use WYSIWYG HTML editors such as FrontPage, HotDog, DreamWeaver, etc. They will in all likelyhood screw up the file! I will not be able to support you if you edit the file in one of these programs.)
3] Edit the variables at the top. These are:

1. $path > path to your config.php file (usually in the /admin directory) - NO TRAILING SLASH! and DO NOT PUT config.php at the end of it! ( e.g. forums/admin )
2. $url > URL to your board - NO TRAILING SLASH! ( e.g. http://www.mysite.com/forums )
3. $urlimg > URL to your board's images - NO TRAILING SLASH ( e.g. http://www.mysite.com/forums/images ).
4. $maxthreads > max threads to show. will show less if $last24 or $last7 limits it to less results than this number
5. $ob > determines the sort order of the list. replycount and views are numbers, lastposter is a name, title is the name of the thread, and lastpost is the last posts' date. set to one of the following: replycount , views , lastposter , title , lastpost (lastpost is most popular. it's the thread most recently replied to, then the second-to-last most recent, etc.)
6. $obdir > set to "desc" or "asc". which direction to sort? "desc" goes from bottom to top (9 to 1, z to a, etc.). "asc" goes top to bottom (1 to 9, a to z, etc.)
7. $last24 > set to 1 to limit the possible results to the last 24 hours; 0 for no limit (must set this to 0 if $last7 is set to 1)
8. $last7 > set to 1 to limit the possible results to the last 7 days; 0 for no limit (must set this to 0 if $last24 is set to 1)
9. $bc1 > first alt color (for the alternating colored rows)
10. $bc2 > second alt color
11. $hc > head background color (title, last poster, etc.)
12. $lc > text link color
13. $tc > text color
14. $f > font face
15. $fs > font size in points. 6 is on the small side, 10 on the large side. Put only a number in this - no "pt", "pts", or anything else!
16. $lastposter > show the "last poster" column? 1 = yes; 0 = no
17. $views > show the view count for each thread? 1 = yes; 0 = no
18. $replies > show the reply count for each thread? 1 = yes; 0 = no
19. $lastpostdate > show the last post date and time for each thread? 1 = yes; 0 = no
20. $len > maximum number of characters of the title to show. e.g. if the title is 60 characters and this is set to 25, only the first 25 characters of the title will be shown (followed by ...)
21. $excludeforums > List certain forums to be excluded. Best used if you have a large number of forums you *do* want included and only a few that you want excluded. List them separated by commas, but without spaces - e.g. 1,2,3,4 - and DO NOT fill in both this and $includeforums! Use one or the other.
22. $includeforums > List certain forums to be included. Best used if you have a small number of forums that you want included and a large number you want excluded. List them separated by commas, but without spaces - e.g. 1,2,3,4 - and DO NOT fill in both this and $excludeforums! Use one or the other.
23. $showmessages > If you want to show the last post of the thread as well, set this to 1. You can limit the number of characters displayed in $lplen below.
24. $lplen > If you specify a number here, any post that has more than $lplen number of characters will be reduced to this number and "..." added to the end of it. If you don't want to use this feature, leave it blank e.g. "" - remember though that if $showmessages is set to 0, this won't do anything.
25. $tw > If you want to specify the width of the table, you can set it as a percent e.g. 95% or as a number of pixels e.g. 300 or just leave it blank and the table will size itself.
26. $showdate > If you want to show the date *and* the time, set this to 1. If you want to just show the time, set this to 0.
27. $cs > If you want a thin line around your cells, set this to 1 (or higher - experiment!). Set to 0 for no line.
28. $nb > if you want breaks in text to appear as such, set this to 1. otherwise set it to 0 (this may cause problems if there are large breaks in the text)
29. $showforumtitle > if you want to show the forum title, linked to that forum, for each thread also (forum title: thread title) then set this to 1. otherwise set it to 0.
30. $showicon > if you want to show the icon the author chose for their post, set this to 1. otherwise set it to 0.

4] Upload both last10.php and last10config.php to your website. You can include last10.php as follows. To include it on a PHP-parsed page (.php, .php3, .phtml, etc.):
<? include("last10.php"); ?>
To include it on a server-parsed page (.shtml, .shtm, .ssi, etc.):
<!--#include file="last10.php"-->

Instructions are also included in the zip file (last10.txt).

FEEDBACK WANTED! Likes/dislikes/modification requests all gladly accepted!

Please DO NOT contact me via IM or PM about this hack. Post your problem/question here and I will try to help you.

[Steve Machol]

Sorry - forgot the IE p ic:

[Rostor]

Originally posted by tubedogg
Rastor: There's no reason why it shouldn't work on IIS5. Have you tried it?

Yes I test it as you can see here:
www.swzone.org/main_home.php

It works but gives out many errors.

And I don't know how to solve it.

[jarvis]

Rostor,

I, too, was getting your exact same error. I went round and round for days wondering what the heck was going on in my little NT world.

I have found that IIS appears to have problems with filtering or parsing included files. The IIS include is looking for a txt or HTML file, and thus I could not get it working with a plain SHTM(L) include statement.

What I did as a work around, is I set up my SHTM pages to be parsed by the PHP Isapi filter versus the ssinc.dll that is default. Basically my homepage is now PHP parsed, but still mostly HTML-based. Have I confused you yet?

Now that my page is PHP-parsed, I can just just the standard <? include("last10.php"); ?> statement in my code and everything works fine. I was a bit nervous about doing this as I wondered if any of my FP extensions would not function, but all seems to working well. (knock on wood)

You can view how I implemented the hack on my site at www.mhogaming.com

Hope that helps...

-Brian

[gmyachtsman]

Kevin and Steve,

I am having the same problem on Netscape 4.7 with the overlapping of the end of the thread title at www.citysailor.com

I removed the <nobr> tags, but it did not help.


A guess a Kludgy solution might be to specifically limit the number of letters printed, depending on the space allocated.

[By the way, if anyone reading this knows how to make the background image on Netscape just x-repeat, instead of repeating down the whole page, please let me know]

First of all- I would like to thank tubedogg for ths wonderful hack! It is a great traffic builder! Thanks tubedogg!
Now on to my (stupid) concern:
I don't know a thing about "Parsed", never heard of the term. But I WAS able to follow the "Last XX Post" instructions up until the point of having the "last10.php" work . The problem I am having is incorperating this into some sort of HTML (or similar) document.

How EXACTLY is this accomplished?

Thanks in advance...

[Rostor]

Hi Jarvis thx for your help but i take a different way to solve the problem
Last Week I bought 2 books about PHP and started to study it !!!
After 3 days i make little modify to lastXX so now the hack works fine with IIS5.

First:
In the lastxxconfig.php file I add this lines:
// by rostor
$counter = "";
// fine inserimento rostor

So a problem with undefined constant has been solved.

Second:
In the lastxx.php I defined this line with " "

// if the title is more than $len characters, we need to cut it off and add ... to the end
if (strlen($threads["title"]) > $len) {
$title = substr($threads["title"],0,$len);
$title .= "...";
} else {
$title = $threads["title"];
}
// convert the date to a format readable by non-unix geeks
$fd = date($fdt,$threads["lastpost"]);

That's All

[RobAC]

Has anyone else included this hack into a non VB page (HTML document) and then looked at it in Netscat? It's not pretty.....and this particular line of code really confuses me...:

PHP Code:

<td bgcolor=\"$bc\" style=\"font-family:$f; font-size:$fs; color:$tc;\" align=\"center\"> 


Is defining style = font-family: font size......etc. within a table cell tag a valid argument???

[Steve Machol]

Yep - this doesn't look good in Netscape 4.7x at all. I wish I knew how to fix the HTML so it works with NS as well.

I wish I knew how to put it in HTML period! Can't anyone help me with this?

[gmyachtsman]

try changing the name of your file to .shtml from .html and put this code in where you want the last 10 to show up on your page:

Your choice of

<!--#include virtual="last10/last10.php"-->

or

<!--#include file="last10/last10.php"-->

If folder your.shtml file is in is not above the last10 folder in your directory, you need to do "../last10/last10.php" instead (note the "../" ) That tells it to look up one folder before looking down for the last10 folder .