Logician NEWS: Drag Any Message to Your Main Page

This is a news script which will drag vb forum messages from your vb db to your non-vb main page/news page. There are a lot of good news script around but I needed a highly customizable main page news script with some special features and wrote it myself. I'm using it in my site's main page for a long time, but I was just too lazy to write installation/help documents to share it here, sorry!

FEATURES:

* This script simply pulls forum messages which you marked as "news" from your vb database and post them in your non-vbulletin (main/other) page.
* You can mark messages as "NEWS" in any forum you want (including private forums). You dont need to restrict your news to a specific forum.
* You can drag any message to your main page, regardless of its date. So news is NOT supposed to be the most recent messages in your board.
* You do NOT have to carry the whole message to your main page as news. You can import it all or simply take some part of it. So eg. you can drag a message's the first paragraph to your news page and link the thread for "Read More".
* Moreover you can insert invisible custom NEWS text which will be dragged to your main page to your board messages, but not shown in the original forum thread. So your original thread message and news text on your main page can be different than eachother.
* You can have sticky news in your main page (even if they are not sticky in your forum).
* News does NOT need to be the first message in the thread. You can tag any reply message as news and pull it to your main page either.
* Script parses ALL of your message icons/smilies (including your custom add-ons) and some of the important vBCode like: [url] [email] [img] [b] [i] [u]
* You can specify which members may post news.
* You can form your News' title seperately, apart from of the original thread/message title.
* You can set maximum number of news shown in your main page.
* You can set maximum number of characters that all shown news should not exceed. Some messages can be long and some can be short and if you set a character limit, the script will automatically compile enough news from your database to fit your web page's relevant part according to the limit you set.
* You can enable/disable:
News Poster Name
News Date
News Read Number
News 'Send to a Friend' Link
Comment number/Add comment button/Last commenter
Will viewing news increase the original thread's view count or not
News is sticky or not
for ALL your news INDIVIDUALLY.
* All news tags are invisible in the original thread. So forum readers do not notice any difference when you tag a message as news.
* Dragging a message to your main page as news is as simple as inserting a hidden [news]Title of My News[/news] tag to your forum message.

Well, these features are what I needed in my news script, so it should suffice to you too!

It's an easy to install script and will work with ALL vbulletin versions because it's an add-on, not a hack. I can give support as much as I have time, but please ask here, not via email or PM.

If you use the script, please click INSTALL. If you post the URL of your news page after installation, you can help other users see the script in action in different pages and in custom designs, thank you!

Logician

[Logician]

Originally posted by FrankR310

do i have to change that line to $run_time_config={string....?

$run_time variable keeps the running time of the script while our new $run_time_config variable keeps the option if this will be displayed or not. So do NOT touch that line. The line I mentioned in the bugfix message is the only line that should be changed (as you have already noticed)

[Highlander]

hi..logician..again i tried your third hack..and i like it again..but enough of that ..you hear that so many times..but its your great work..you handle codes like i drink water on hot days..lol..

ok..i got no bugs to report..only wishes..like every time i meet you..here..

please follow this link to see what i mean:
<a href="http://www.spieleplanet.net/news/index.php">http://www.spieleplanet.net/news/index.php</a>
there you see my old news system....its similar like yours..but not integrated in the board..its a standalone script....but what i liked there is that i could handle different categories ..cause i got english users and german users..and for every head line there was an quick link schown on the top..so all headlines are shown on the top and seen at once..,got an idea how to handle this ?..and the next thing is....to display old news on NEXT PAGES or something like this..

so another question and this is what i need to know really ..how can i make the news system like you showed on teh news pages on the beginning of this thread..(examples) ..i want to make news from FORUM ID XX in the middle....and other news Forums should be shown in side boxes..what about that..its possible to make categories like center BOx (big in the center of the page with main news..and SIDE BOXES with short news on the right or left ?..i have to define specific Forum ids for that..but i dont see any option..for example Forum ID 50 will be shown only in the side boxes ..and ForumID 10 will be shown in the center as main news..understand my idea ?

you just win the football gemae today .. gratulation !

[Highlander]

ups the URL is wrong :

http://www.spieleplanet.org/vbp/news/

[Logician]

Highlander :Unfortunately your wishes are not achievable with this script. Script can not support different categories like English or German. However if you want, you can install it to 2 different directories and use one for English News and the other for German news. This is possible.

As for old news support, it's not possible. This is not designed to be a stand-alone news script but a vb-integration so it just drags vb news tagged messages to your main page and if a message is tagged as news but not dragged to the main page, script automatically removes the news tags from it (configurable in options part). This is intentional to decrease SQL load in your server and incease script running time and because of this behavior, it's not possible to save/archive/access old news.

Again you cannot create different columns for news, script is not designed to do that either. In my site's main page only the middle column is generated by this script, the other columns are not. So if you are referring the right column in that page, it's not this script doing it, I writed an individual PHP code to handle it.

[Highlander]

okay..thx..i will dake the old news script for right side boxes....

but really it would be nice if we could define specific forums for specific teables..like FORUM1 and FORUM2 is with link or without link..so maybe it would be nice to make FORUM3 and Forum4 to define two Forum IDS for specific news .. this script is integrated in VB its the thing i searched..cause i need comments functions .. and so my news on main page and forum are the same..but for me only once written..

p.s. did you rite the seperate news script for the side boxes..could i try it maybe ´for extra news in side boxes like you got !

but really it would be nice to make a more dynamic news vb-script..with specific Forums to choosse wich are shown on the side in extra boxes..or somewhere else..maybe with other tags like [news1] news here inside[/news1]

[FrankR310]

i was thinking about how to do this as well....

couldnt i just rename one file like phpheader.php and phpheader1.php along with newsconfig.php and newsconfig1.php

then change reference to the correct file in the scripts and the news () function to news1 () function?

modify the template in phpheader

specify specific forums to pull news from for each one

then include them on the main news page?

i wanted to try this but didnt want to mess anything up as it's running so well right now...

what do you think? i have no zero knowledge on programming..just thinking things thru to see if it's possible.

thanks,
frank

[futureal]

Quick question about this news script/hack: Is it possible to define a range of dates to display on a page (such as a site News page) with this?

In other words, suppose I want my site's home page to display all news messages newer than one month ago. Then I have another page (say, Archive) that will display all news posts for May, one for all on April, one for all of March, etc.

Would that work? I read through the documentation and either didn't see that info, or totally missed it. If it's the latter, I apologize.

[Logician]

@Frank: All you suggested may be done but it will be pointless because both scripts (newsconfig.php and newsconfig1.php) will compile the same data from the database so although you achieve to have two news columns in one page, the compiled news will be same.

To seperate the news you need to go on hacking the script and modify the news tags too. [edit: just noticed you planned to seperate forums to post news, so you can skip this step]

So it requires a lot of work but it is possible, at least in theory.

@futureal: This script is degisned to pull messages only if they are tagged as news in the original post. So if you are referring a system that the script will automatically pull the news according to post date without author's tagging them, no it's not possible. You need to insert [news] tag to pull a message to your main page and delete the tag to remove it. The script automatically deletes the tag in certain cases too but message date is not one of them.

What you want to achive can be done via the new version of my WebTemplates hack though. (Recent beta version doesnt support this feature yet). Or you may want to check other news scripts released here. I dont know if any of them support what you asked but there are nice scripts around so you can find one with that feature.

[Highlander]

Hi @all

I think i found a little bug..its not a really a bug ..but for all vbulletin owners wich got the FADE hack the news tag will make your posts fading (glowing) like links...i tried to manage this..but the fading hack sees in the news TAGS the same like [url] so the message is glowing...fading..

but only in the Forum..and i thought..maybe its not so bad..so the people see at once..thats news !

[inetd]

Logician, this hack can work with WebTemplates?