Any-forum News hack

We've all seen plenty of news hacks here before. I'm talking about a hack that gets all new threads in a specific forum and shows the first post from the new threads on a separate, non-vB page. These hacks usually show a specific number of threads that you specify, or all threads from the past number of days that you specify. The forum that these threads come from is setup by you, by putting the forumid numbers in a variable in the hack's code file.

I feel that this is a limited system. You are limited to posting news items only in the one or few threads that you specify up front are to be used to get news items from, and then those forums are limited to only posting news items in (because every new thread in it becomes a news item). This just didn't seem like the best solution to me, because if I wanted to cover a particular topic, for example, computer hardware, I would have to have two separate forums: One to post hardware news, and one for non-news items like help and tips.

So what makes my hack different is that you can now post news items in ANY forum. When you post a new thread, there will be a new option in the same area as "parse urls" and "disable smilies"; this new option is called, "make a news item?" If you leave that box unchecked, the thread gets posted as normal. But if you check it, then not only does the thread get posted, but it will also show up on a separate page. So now, you can post news items and non-news items in the same forum, in any forum, and only the threads you want to be news items will show up as news items.

I have set up a permission for this checkbox, so it will only appear for the usergroups you want it to appear for. Setting this permission is just like setting any other usergroup permission, like the ability for the usergroup to post new threads, move threads, download attachments, etc.

You can change the news status of a thread, in other words, change a thread from being a news item to not a news item, or vice-versa, via a new option that appears on the Edit Thread screen from the Admin Tools.

This hack also includes a simple "latest threads" feature, that on the same page as the news items will show the most recently-replied to threads (the most recently active threads). I did these two things together because I knew they would be very similar to code, and would appear on the same page. However, each part is completely separate from the other part, and it is very easy to only use one part of the hack or the other.

Here is an image of the checkbox:


Here is the new permission setup (by default, for any new usergroups you create, this permission will be set to 'NO'):


There is a working demo of this hack. The test forums is located here, and the news page is located here. You can use the test forums as an unregistered user; I have set up the unregistered usergroup to have Super Moderator powers, so you should be able to play around with the Edit Thread admin tool, etc.

I'm posting this in the Beta forums because I'd like for some other people to let me know it works OK for them. It works fine for me, on two boards; I originally wrote it and developed it for my regular board, which was heavily hacked to begin with. I then setup a clean, unhacked, totally stock board as a testing grounds, and recreated the hack, and again, it worked fine. I want to confirm that it works fine for at least one other person, but I'm also hoping that someone more experienced than myself can take a look at it to see if I've coded it the best way possible.

The other issue I hope to address here in Beta relates to how the text from news item threads is formatted to appear on the news page. Currently, this hack gets the entire contents of the first post of a thread, and it is run through the bbcode parser, so what you see on the news page is just like what you see in the thread itself, including smilies, all vB Code tags converted, etc. Also, the entire post is used; it is not run through any process that limits it to a certain number of characters. The reason I did not set up a character limit was mainly so that the bbcode parser would not get confused if a closing tag was completely or partially cut out. I figured that since I included a permission system, that at least for me would limit the ability to make a thread a news item to Admins and Mods, I could teach my staff to keep news item threads short.

However, I have toyed with the idea (in my mind) of changing the hack so that if you check a box to make a thread a news item, when you submit the thread, instead of the thread being posted straight away, instead, first you are taken to another page with a textarea containing the contents of the post. In this second textarea, which contains what you just typed in the normal newthread screen, you can edit or change what you typed, and what you do here would get stored in an additional field added to the thread table, and this is what would get shown on the news page. That way, you could start a thread, put an entire news article in it or whatever, mark it to be a news item, submit it, then pare down the contents of the post to just a little blurb suitable for a news item display on the news page, while the original bit you typed gets saved as a post and shown in the thread as normal. (Hope that makes sense.) If I hear enough of a demand for something like this, or get any other ideas, I may consider it. The downside to this is it becomes a little more complicated to post a news item thread.

OK, so install it or play with the demo, and let me know if it's ready for a full release!

Edit on Jan. 1, 2002: This hack has been updated to Version 2, with new features as discussed throughout this thread. Please go to this post: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...281#post210281

[JJR512]

Do you have access to a tool like phpMyAdmin, or can you telnet into your account?

[slideboxer]

Got the telnet... Have to check on that tool, though.

[JJR512]

I'm not exactly sure how to run queries via telnet, but maybe someone else can look in the instructions to see what needs to be done, and tell you exactly how to do it via telnet.

[slideboxer]

OKay, I went and found and installed phpMyAdmin.. now what? :stupid:

[JJR512]

Well, you select your database on the left side (if you have more than 1), click it to open the list of all the tables, then on the right side below the list of tables is a box that says Run SQL query/queries etc. Copy the query into that box and hit Go.

Don't forget to make a backup copy of your database first. You can do that through the admin cp.

[slideboxer]

I'm so proud of myself Got it up and running, no bugs, no problems. Thanks ofr your tie and help.

[The Realist]

Well done M8, Im glad you finaly have it up and running, especialy from the first version and problems you had.

One thing I like you have done and I hope all other hack makers take note of this is the fact that you state this in your instructions I QUOTE "Near the end of the line, before WHERE, right after "$cangetattachment", add this" in other words, other hacks ask you to totaly overwrite lines and therefore screw previous hacks up, you have asked users to add line rather than overwite.

Nice one.

Congrats M8.

[JJR512]

Yeah, that was how I wrote the instructions originally (to overwrite the entire line), and that's what gave you the problems that you had earlier. It was 100% because of that which made me try to figure out a better way to write the instructions.

Most of the rest of the file modifications are just additions, not modifications of existing code, but there is one part that goes into newthread.php that modifies what's already there, and this will interfere with another hack...I know this because I wrote the other hack, too! It's the one that gives you a different redirect message for if you post a non-poll thread or a poll thread. You kind of have to look at what both hacks want you to do if you want them both to work...or I guess I will post what I, personally, am using on my board to solve it, if anybody needs me to.

Speaking of polls, there is still one thing that I haven't tested with this hack yet, and that's what happens when you check both to make a thread a poll and a news item. I know something not right is going to happen, because both polls and news items involve redirecting you to a different page after the thread gets posted. Either it will take you to the poll setup screen and you'll have to create the news item manually, or it will take you to the news item setup screen and not only will there be no poll in that thread, but it might not be visible, either, because when you check that poll box, the thread isn't made visible until after you setup the poll. I still need to look at this issue, see what happens, and figure out what to do about it. In the meantime, I suggest that nobody try to create both a poll and news item thread at the same time.

[TheComputerGuy]

YAY...

This hack is AWESOME!!!

[TheComputerGuy]

on homeindex.php line 29 it states
$editlink="<a href=\"http://www.jjr512.com/testvb/newspost.php?s=$session[sessionhash]&action=editnews&newsid=$gnresults[newsid]\">(edit this news item)</a>";

That needs to be edited for your site....

Other than that...maybe I missed the instructions for this great hack, as I waited for this version to come out!