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!

[ubblite]

I just want to make sure it's not me; is anyone running AboutToday successfully with vB 3.6.0 RC1? I know it's designed for vb3.5.4, but it was working with 3.6.0 Beta 4 until I installed RC1.

[ubblite]

Originally Posted by shanemcse

After doing lots of research and adding feeds from sites like CNN, MSNBC, NYTimes, LATimes, etc. I found a much easier and better way to do it. Google allows you to add a feed for any keyword, keywords, phrases, etc. Plus it pulls the news from all kinds of sources including the ones I listed above. All the URL's are the same except for the keywords you want to pull from so you could easily add multiple feeds without even getting the URL from google. Just edit the URL yourself.

I was doing the same thing with Google - customizing each feed manually and then I'd import the RSS into AboutToday. The only thing I don't like about Google feeds is that each story contains more links to the same story, which take up too much space. And Google feeds generally seem shorter in length compared to other feeds, if that matters.

[msidnam]

does anyone have any Apple/Mac related rss feeds?

[ubblite]

Originally Posted by msidnam

does anyone have any Apple/Mac related rss feeds?

Here's a few:

http://feeds.macworld.com/macworld/all
http://www.tidbits.com/channels/tidbits.rss
http://macnn.com/macnn.rss

[tim99]

Really cool app but I am having a little trouble getting items posted. I no doubt have something set wrong somewhere.

If I select the option Use RSS image then I get a thread that looks like this (with the open URL tag) -

Heat wave broils much of nation (AP)

[URL=

And if I disable that option then I get a thread that looks like this (with a URL to the image) -

Westerners flee Lebanon as fight continues (AP)

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/2...EPHuPzM_K3oQ--AP - Westerners fled by land, sea and air Monday as Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon briefly and Hezbollah rockets knocked down a three-story house in northern Israel. However, there were signs of movement on the diplomatic front to end the worst fighting in 24 years.

I expect that what should be happening is I'd either get inline image or nothing at all.

Any help is much appreciated.

peace . . .

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by tim99

If I select the option Use RSS image then I get a thread that looks like this (with the open URL tag) -

Heat wave broils much of nation (AP)

When the feed is created into a thread, any html img tags are converted into bbcode IMG tags. I find that the feed image tags tend to contain dynamic url's. Unless you have set vbulletin to allow dynamic img tags (admincp -> vbulletin options -> Message Posting and Editing Options -> Allow Dynamic URL for IMG Tags), vbulletin will convert the dymanic bbcode IMG tags to bbcode URL tags. The bad thing is ... that converion from an <img> tag to the bbcode url tag doesn't seem to work well.

[jgommel]

I installed AboutToday w/out a problem - or so I thought. I setup a category and tried to add an item to that category. I enter an Event Name, Source, Description and choose my Category, but after submitting the event, the description does not display. When I try to edit the event, the description field is empty.

I'm running vB Version: 3.5.4, vBadvanced CMPS v2.1.0 and iSkin Black ExtremePixels Skin

Any suggestions?

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by jgommel

I installed AboutToday w/out a problem - or so I thought. I setup a category and tried to add an item to that category. I enter an Event Name, Source, Description and choose my Category, but after submitting the event, the description does not display. When I try to edit the event, the description field is empty.

I'm running vB Version: 3.5.4, vBadvanced CMPS v2.1.0 and iSkin Black ExtremePixels Skin

Any suggestions?

Hmmm ... there was a problem with this in the last version that I thought I'd fixed. Can you try the unofficial version 2.0.4 and see if that fixes the problem. Here's the url: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=372

Hmm ... actually, I'm not sure if that's what you need or not! I'm going to be off-line until Thurday but I'll check it out then. BTW - I think you get the award for the first person in 27 pages of posts to ask a question about the "Today in History" portion of the mod!

[jgommel]

Originally Posted by westpointer

Hmmm ... there was a problem with this in the last version that I thought I'd fixed. Can you try the unofficial version 2.0.4 and see if that fixes the problem. Here's the url: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=372

Hmm ... actually, I'm not sure if that's what you need or not! I'm going to be off-line until Thurday but I'll check it out then. BTW - I think you get the award for the first person in 27 pages of posts to ask a question about the "Today in History" portion of the mod!

Okay, I tried installing the "Unofficial Version 2.0.4", but that did not work (as you expected). I even tried uninstalling the entire plugin and installed v2.0.4 alone. Still didn't work. I thought it was something I did, but the install is so easy, I figured I couldn't have done something wrong.

Hopfully we can get this protion working again!!! I'm eager to add this to my site.

Thanks!

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by jgommel

Okay, I tried installing the "Unofficial Version 2.0.4", but that did not work (as you expected). I even tried uninstalling the entire plugin and installed v2.0.4 alone. Still didn't work. I thought it was something I did, but the install is so easy, I figured I couldn't have done something wrong.

Hopfully we can get this protion working again!!! I'm eager to add this to my site.

Thanks!

Give this a try. This is the unofficial version 2.0.4 that should fix that problem. Please let me know if it does.

Edit: removed for now!