RSS Feeds on Forumhome and Other vb Pages

This product adds support for displaying RSS feeds on 1 or more vb pages.

The product will create 5 plugins and a new section, RSS Feed Processing, under vBulletin Options. Also added will be 2 new templates appropriately grouped under 'RSS Feed Templates'.

Configuration

Change the settings in 'vBulletin Options -> RSS Feed Processing' to suit your particular needs.

One thing that proves difficult for some users is creating the 'cache' directory. This directory needs to be CHMOD 777 and it should reside outside the web root. All of the RSS feeds will be cached in that location so depending on how the product is configured (i.e. allowing users to define their own feeds) the size of the directory could grow signficantly.

An advanced feature that is only available for non-user specified feeds is the ability to include code to filter and/or modify the feed content. If the feeds are being provided for your users this can prove to be a very powerful tool.

Placing the content on pages

As supplied the RSS Feed content will be displayed below the "What's Going On" block. This may be changed by modifying the 'RSS Feed - Content Generation' plugin in different ways.

1. Find where you want the output in the FORUMHOME template and change the search sttring accordingly.
2. Delete all the search-related text and manually edit the template(s) where you want the content to appear.

In either a) or b) above you may also change the hook location for the 'RSS Feed - Content Generation' plugin so it runs where it's needed. If the content is desired on multiple vb pages then the plugin could be moved to init_startup so long as the template edit logic is removed.

The RSS feed content is placed in the $feedcontent array with an entry for each feed. To manually place the feeds in templates refer to the entries for 3 feeds as $feedcontent[0], $feedcontent[1] and $feedcontent[2]. If the content for a given feed cannot be decoded then that array entry will be empty.

Revisions

1.00 RC2 16-Jan-2006
Added support to allow the displayed feeds to collapse when not a user-specified feed.

• Modified the rss_feed_rss template
• Updated the RSS Feed - Function plugin

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Do not reproduce or publish elsewhere without my written permission.

[tgmorris]

Originally Posted by silly rabbit

See explaination from hosting company: Implementation of PHPsuexec.

Based on the writeup the hosting company provides it seems like it should work fine.

When you say 'outside the web root' do you mean anywhere except alongside 'public_html'??

Yes, it should just not be in a folder that users can get to via the web. Although with the way the host has things set up now that's not as important.

If you aren't getting any errors generated and the file cache is being populated then it *should* be working ok. The one possibility is that the way it's currently coded if the remote site is slow to respond then the the script will be slow to fill in the data. This gets magnified as it does 3 retries when fetching things. You might try reducing the retry count from 3 to 1 to see if that helps. You can tell if this is the problem by just waiting to see if the page eventually loads.

[silly rabbit]

Originally Posted by tgmorris

Based on the writeup the hosting company provides it seems like it should work fine.

tg, once again great hack, thank you! I suspect my server is one of the last to be 'converted' and on '777' working fine. When it 'crashes' that will be my signal to drop to '755' hehe! Left cache 'alongside' web root (which is not public accessible) and will play with the 'retries'. Selecting different xml feeds does seem to make a difference on performance so I suspect your excellent coding is not to blame at all . . . .

I see where my running tally of all past and present xml feeds in the cache dir are stored as '644' which, with the exception of 'user' write(no execute), is strictly read only . . . .

Now on to modifying 'postbit'!!! Will attempt to add 'reply' links into the xml title bar which will quickly point, take reader directly to the appropriate 'comment' forum . . .

Thanks For Sharing Great Hack & reply, I think a really short 'support thread' is testament to a hack that works correct the first time and I will watch for your future / past 'inventions'!! Rss stands for 'really stupid simple'??? (hehe)

Rabbit

p.s. Everybody knows about iespell?? Little abc/check box upper right in VB editor??? Love it! Works just fine!!

[rollo tamasi]

Originally Posted by dethfire

how do we limit the descriptions to say 100 characters and then add (...)?

^ just wondering if the above is possible?

great mod, i was about to install feed2js with magpie and add a table below the what's going on section but i don't have to now

Thanks

[Foxsake]

Installed this and created a directory outside public_hmtl
changed its permissions to 777
however each time i provide a url link it just gives this


Fatal error: file_put_contents cannot write in file. in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 91

can someone advise on what im doing wrong?

Thanks in advance for any help

[dethfire]

does this work in 3.6?

[dethfire]

anyone get this to work in 3.6?

[BamaStangGuy]

I have this working in 3.6.2

This is a great hack but is a bit limiting.

I would like to limit title's to xx characters and be able to define how many feeds it lists per feed url I add.

[tgmorris]

Originally Posted by BamaStangGuy

I have this working in 3.6.2

This is a great hack but is a bit limiting.

I would like to limit title's to xx characters and be able to define how many feeds it lists per feed url I add.

Limiting the Title Length is easy and exactly why the Data modification code box exists. Just add the code needed to trim the titles however you would like them. As a very brief example to trim it to 10 chars...

$rss_item['TITLE'] = substr($rss_item['TITLE'], 0, 10);

Limiting the number of items on a per feed basis would require a small code change but if you know php it wouldn't be too hard to pull off.

[BamaStangGuy]

Thank you for that.

Is there any reason that sometimes the RSS feed will not load? It seems for me that every few refreshes the rss feed does not show up.

Maybe you can reproduce it on one of my sites: Mustang Forums

If it shows up close the browser and open it again. If you do it a couple of times you should catch it where it won't load.

[dethfire]

All of a sudden I'm getting these errors

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.sciam.com/xml/sciam.xml) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.sciam.com/xml/sciam.xml) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.sciam.com/xml/sciam.xml) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.sciam.com/xml/sciam.xml) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.nasa.gov/rss/breaking_news.rss) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.nasa.gov/rss/breaking_news.rss) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.nasa.gov/rss/breaking_news.rss) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.nasa.gov/rss/breaking_news.rss) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.physicsforums.com/blog/wp-rss.php) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.physicsforums.com/blog/wp-rss.php) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.physicsforums.com/blog/wp-rss.php) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.physicsforums.com/blog/wp-rss.php) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.jwz.org/cheesegrater/RSS/apod.rss) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.jwz.org/cheesegrater/RSS/apod.rss) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.jwz.org/cheesegrater/RSS/apod.rss) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.jwz.org/cheesegrater/RSS/apod.rss) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://physicspost.com/rss.php) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://physicspost.com/rss.php) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://physicspost.com/rss.php) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218

Warning: file_get_contents(http://physicspost.com/rss.php) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /includes/init.php(292) : eval()'d code on line 218