AboutToday - Bring RSS Feeds and Daily Events to Your Site!

What is AboutToday?

AboutToday provides a central place to bring daily items of interest to your forum visitors. It includes two main components: an RSS Reader System and Local Events database System.

Please NOTE: This mod has been modified for vb ver 3.6.4. It should work on vb ver 3.5.4 and 3.6.x.

1. An RSS Reader system where the admin can enter RSS feeds that will then be displayed on the page. RSS feeds can be set to AUTOMATICALLY create threads or be set so that users can easily create a thread from a feed.. Feeds can be read via fopen or cURL.
   
   
   
   
   
   The RSS Feeds are fully intergrated with vbAdvanced and could actually be placed anywhere you want!!
   
2. A database system that can hold unlimited categories of "AboutToday" events. For example, you could have a history category (like a Today in History) with sub-categories for different eras in history. Or, you could have a daily joke or software tip of the day, etc.
   
   The "Add Event" feature is intended to help you if you want for example - Sports: Today in History. With the vb calendar, you cannot have categories and you are restricted with how far back the dates can go.
   
   
   
   
   So with the "Add Event" feature, you could have a category tree like:
   • Hockey
     • Professional
     • College
     • High School
   • Football
     • American Football
     • The Rest of the World (Soccer)
   • Baseball
   
   with the normal calendar feature, you cannot have categories. And with "Add Event" you can have any date. So, if you want an event like "Jan 1, 132 B.C. - the first ball was invented", you can do that. But, that isn't possible in the normal calendar. Also, the events in "Add Event" are fully searchable.

Installation

Copy the following files to your server in the forums directory:

abouttoday.php
includes/class.csv.php
includes/class_abouttoday.php
includes/cron/cron_abouttoday.php
includes/xml/bitfield_abouttoday.xml
includes/xml/cpnav_abouttoday.xml
admincp/abouttodayadmin.php

From the admincp, import the product file product-abouttoday.xml (Manage Products - Add/Import Product).

REFRESH your admincp window. You should now see a listing in the left column of the admincp for "AboutToday".

Getting Started

NOTE - if this is a new install, a Yahoo RSS Feed and CNN Entertainment Feed have been automatically added to give you a feel for how the product looks.

If you plan to use the RSS Feeds:

1. From the admincp, select AboutToday - RSS Feeds. Add an RSS Feed.
2. From the admincp, select Usergroups - Usergroup Manager. Add permissions so the Administrator group can use the product.
3. From your forum directory, bring up the file abouttoday.php.
4. If you want the feeds to AUTOMATICALLY create threads, go to admincp - abouttoday - settings. There you must set the userid of the account to use to create the thread. Then, edit the RSS Feed with the forumid of where the threads for that feed should be created!

If you plan to create your own "today in history" type of database:

1. From the admincp, select AboutToday - Categories. Add a category.
2. From your forum directory, bring up the file abouttoday.php. "Add" your first event to the category you have created!

Version Status
I've tested this product extensively but ... use this totally at your own risk!

Credits
I learned a lot about how to code this and used a lot of the code from what Ron1n did with ecDownloads. What I've learned from his code while helping to support ecDownloads has been invaluable.

Sites Using this Product
Visit www.armchairgeneral.com to see this product in action.

Click Install!
Please Click Install if you are using this product. Thanks!

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by hilfe-forum

i dont hafe cURL but i have fopen....

that's odd. I can't look at this in detail until tomorrow a.m. (about 12 hours) but I will then.

[hypnoticpimp]

Im having problems, with it automatically getting new feeds from the rsss evry 1 hour, like updating itself. I set my rss to 60 minutes. but it never changes. stays the same. I always have to do it manually? what could be wrong. please help. I mean. Its like a whole day, and still wont change, refesh, update the feed. I have to do it manually

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by hypnoticpimp

Im having problems, with it automatically getting new feeds from the rsss evry 1 hour, like updating itself. I set my rss to 60 minutes. but it never changes. stays the same. I always have to do it manually? what could be wrong. please help. I mean. Its like a whole day, and still wont change, refesh, update the feed. I have to do it manually

The important question here is how busy is the board?

The feeds are automatically updated whenever the scheduled task "Hourly Cleanup 1" is run. On a busy board that will run once an hour. However, if you are trying the product on a test board, the updates may be much less frequent, depending on how much activity you are generating on the test board. That's because even though the scheduled task is suppose to run once an hour, it will first wait for any scheduled tasks before it to run before it runs (items like birthday emails, daily summaries, etc). Each hit to your site will run one tasks that is ready to be run.

So on a test board where you are the only person accessing the site, if you go to bed, get up in the morning, and pull up your forum, the feeds will not be updated. In fact, you'll probably need to hit the board 5 or 6 times until "Hourly Cleanup 1" gets it's turn to run.

Now, if you are on a very busy board ... that's a different story! Let me know which one it is and we'll proceed from there.

[hypnoticpimp]

i dont see Hourly Cleanup 1" on my scheduled tasks, i only see Hourly Cleanup 2

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by hypnoticpimp

i dont see Hourly Cleanup 1" on my scheduled tasks, i only see Hourly Cleanup 2

Well, that's a problem in and of itself! I'd recommend your create a new scheduled task using the settings in the attached image.

[johns_ar]

This hack seems to mess with my Search forum

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by johns_ar

This hack seems to mess with my Search forum

I'm sorry but I'm going to need more detail. Do you mean the search option? How does it "mess" with it?

[CyberRanger]

Version 2.0.3 added Jul 11, 2006

• Built in support to use either fopen OR cURL for fetching RSS Feeds. This has been modified to automatically check for cURL and use it if available, otherwise use fopen.
• Cleaned up formating in "Today's Events" section so that the font size is the same as events pulled from the calendar.
• Moved the automatic update of RSS Feeds from a hook into "Hourly Cleanup #1" to it's own scheduled task called "AboutToday". This is set to run every 15 minutes by default.
• Modified how poorly formatted feeds are handled so that one bad feed won't cause the feeds to error out.
• Post count will be incremented when threads are started via AboutToday.

[CLKeenan]

Does 2.03 include the post count mod? Or should I do that manually?

-Chris

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by CLKeenan

Does 2.03 include the post count mod? Or should I do that manually?

-Chris

see my prior post ... it is included. However, an option to auto delete threads without replies has not been added yet.