Add-On Releases - DnP AJAX Custom News Link - Offer the best news to your forum visitors

What was the last time you were so excited to write an awesome topic for your forum then hopelessly watched it faded away and nobody cares? How about having some great threads, unique information that's only available on your forum, and you want all visitors instantly pay attention to them ? Think you would make announcements everywhere about those topics, then expect someone to click on the links? Maybe that isn't so good and professional at all. Even worse, you have to bump your own thread to get others attention. DnP Custom News may have a solution for you.

What does this little MOD do ?

As the matter of fact, topics in forum are displayed by some formatted orders. Either it is arranged by newest first, oldest first, or last replies, etc...at some point these topics will not be visible in the view of members anymore. Especially, for new visitors to your forum since they have no clue whether yours is a good forum or just a random half-dead community with nothing interesting. How could you show them how great your forum is, what information it has and what kind of fun can be found there? What you need is a manual list that looks automatic, absolutely informative and interactive, totally content-rich to the guests and even search engines. DnP Custom News Link allows you to place your best topics and urls into an article block that appears on your forum home index and makes it looks like a section of online newspaper homepage. This way, it is almost guaranteed you will freshen up your forum look and feel, attract more members to articles or threads that give best of your forum! Even better, DnP Custom News Link supports AJAX for instant page change without refreshing the whole forum index page.

Screenshots of different configurations

Demo

Right on the forum homepage of DnP Network?

Feature Summary

+ Multipaging support.
+ Lightweight AJAX / SEO Friendly pages and links.
+ Three types of news : Image, Video, Article.
+ Option to track views.
+ Consume single query for fastest load.
+ Topic Thumbnail.
+ Topic Description. BBcode supported.
+ All settings and News manager under AdminCP.
+ Links are SEO.
+ Different style is not yet implemented in this version.
+ Able to act as a vB Advanced CMPS Module

Installation for normal forum without vB Advanced CMPS :

1. Upload all files and folders from the package to your forum_root folder, except product-dnp-custom-news-install.xml.
2. Use Product Manager to install product-dnp-custom-news-install.xml
3. Open your FORUMHOME template (or any templates that are used together for forum home index) , then place

PHP Code:

$dnp_news_output 


to anywhere you would want DnP Custom News block to appear.



Installation for vB Advanced CMPS :

Example of how DnP News block blends in along with other columns on a vBA CMPS page

1. Upload all files and folders from the package to your forum_root , then upload dnp_news.php one more time into forum_root/modules folder, except product-dnp-custom-news-install.xml.
2. Use Product Manager to install product-dnp-custom-news-install.xml
3. Go to Style Manager ? Add New Template of your currently in-use style. Input
   
   Title : dnp_vba_news_output
   Template content : $dnp_news_output
   
   
4. Go to vBa CMPS ? Add Module ? PHP File Module. Input the following information :
   
   Module Title : DnP vBa CMPS Custom News Link
   Active : Yes
   File to Include : dnp_news.php
   Module Parent : None
   Templates Used : dnp_vba_news_output
   Use Module Wrapper Template : No
   Leave everything else by default.
5. Save and load module to your CMPS page. Go to Plugin Manager and disable DnP Custom News : global_start

Management :
Now you can go to AdminCP to post some news link or configure the Dnp Custom News block

Enjoy and have fun, if you like this little MOD give it a mark and rating.
Feedbacks are very welcome in order to improve the MOD functions and features.

[Original Source : http://www.silveryhat.com/delynie/f139/dnp-ajax-custom-news-link-modification-7086.html]

Update :
Upload all files and folders in the package to your forum_root folder (or forum_root/modules if used vBa CMPS). Use Product Manager to install product-dnp-custom-news-install.xml to upgrade your current version.

History Log :
v1.3

1. Fix a minor bug
2. Add support for vB Advanced CMPS

v1.2

1. Cache Template fix. Performance optimized
2. Add List Order (Newest first, Oldest first, Views, Random).

v1.1

1. Improve AJAX Compability.
2. Add Collapsible feature.
3. New option to hide description and thumbnail for small news.

v1.0

1. Initial Release.

[silveryhat]

Originally Posted by Cedric_FP

Yes I understand that it would create a lot more work for the admin of the forum, not to mention yourself.

Couldn't there only be big news on page 1, and the other pages just have small news?

Apologies if that is a stupid question - I actually know very little about coding AJAX and how the plugin works in general. Though it is running very well over at my site and I have managed to configure it to nearly the way I want it by editing the php file.

I see. I'll verify and try again - server definitely supports AJAX so it must be that I'm missing a file. Will let you know Thanks for the help.

Let me know if it works for you after the verification.

Originally Posted by bada_bing

How can I get this block to show up on vbportal rather then vbulliten home

I have not any experience on vbPortal so I cannot tell you what to do , maybe you should contact the coder of vBportal.

Originally Posted by imiviortal

suggestion and a request :

1. it would be very helpful if instead of inputing name thread and url and everything, just to define one or two forums which the "DnP AJAX Custom News Link" system will take the first new threads from there !

2. i have a request, how do i make it capable with VBADVANCED ? i tried to put the "$dnp_news_output" code in the "adv_portal" template, though, nothing happends, why is that ?

regards,
imiviortal.

1. It is definitely something I try to avoid. Because it loses the flexibility of having different kind of news from multiple categories at first, second if it automatically pulls new threads then a TopxStats MOD could do the same..
2. I believe you must include the PHP file in a PHP Module, I have not any experience upon vBadvanced installation though.

[bada_bing]

Originally Posted by bada_bing View Post

How can I get this block to show up on vbportal rather then vbulliten home

I have not any experience on vbPortal so I cannot tell you what to do , maybe you should contact the coder of vBportal.

Silveryhat,

You are the coder of this mod.... this mod would be a nice addition to forums that have vbportal and vbadvance

[silveryhat]

Originally Posted by bada_bing

Silveryhat,

You are the coder of this mod.... this mod would be a nice addition to forums that have vbportal and vbadvance

Yes I am the coder of the MOD but not for the others. I can only provide support within my knowledge since I never touch vbPortal. I know it might come to be a great idea to add the support for vBadvanced and vBPortal but I mainly design it for the vBulletin forum only at this time.

[sefakdas]

thanks very good...

Turkish:
Teşekk?rler. G?zel ?alışma sitemde kullanıyorum

[animcentral]

Originally Posted by silveryhat

I totally see your point there

i gona w8 for that
if its possible to merge these two idea it's gonna be a great mod.
Features:

• marquee/Ajax
• with(out) image
• Moderator mark thread as news
• admin custom news/announcement
• get rss feeds URL as news
• get image/video from thread content

[choccyclaire]

This is great. Can you make the table collapseable when you do the next update?

EDIT: Will this only work in forumhome because I would like to display it in forumdisplay also, but cannot at present.

[FitgirlWorld]

thanks for AWESOME mod!

any way to resize the images it displays?

thanks

marked as installed

[silveryhat]

Originally Posted by animcentral

i gona w8 for that
if its possible to merge these two idea it's gonna be a great mod.
Features:

• marquee/Ajax
• with(out) image
• Moderator mark thread as news
• admin custom news/announcement
• get rss feeds URL as news
• get image/video from thread content

Some ideas sound pretty great and I'll include them in future versions. However, "get image/video from thread content" is definitely skipped because it will generate alot of problem and consume too much CPU resources since it has to goes through many different threads content. Look, the News Description supports BBcode, so if you have a flash bbcode tag, you can use it to embed some video clip already

Originally Posted by choccyclaire

This is great. Can you make the table collapseable when you do the next update?

EDIT: Will this only work in forumhome because I would like to display it in forumdisplay also, but cannot at present.

Yup I'll note that and I'll make collapsible block next version. However, the MOD is mainly for forumhom index at the current time, for any other additional locations I'll give detail instruction later to fit everyone's need.

Originally Posted by FitgirlWorld

thanks for AWESOME mod!


any way to resize the images it displays?

thanks

marked as installed

you can change it in the AdminCP , look for Normal News Image Width and Latest News Image Width

[TimberFloorAu]

Off Topic:

Can you share with us your custom quote div, on your forum. Looks great.

The rounded box when ppl quote members.

[choccyclaire]

Could you maybe have a max height option too?

Nominated btw.