Simple newsportal / thread overview to add to your board...

Okay, this isn't really a hack, since you don't have to modify any vb-files really, but I figured this was the best place to make it public anyhow. I found it rather useful myself, so I figured others might, too.

Last update: April 28th, 2003!
** Update summary: **
The bug that could occur due to MySQL stupidity has been fixed. Version 2 of the Newsportal script is now attached in this post, you can simply overwrite the newsportal.php on your site with the one from the attached zipfile to upgrade.
From now on, no more vB files need to be adjusted nor do you have to make any database changes. If you've already done all that due to the mysql-bug in a previous stage of this hack, you can just leave it like that, it won't do any harm. If you're intent on 'cleaning' your files again, let me know if you can't get it done yourself.


Q&A:
What does this 'hack' do?

http://www.kurafire.com/newsportal.php

That's a live example of the fully functional version of the Hack (version 2). I think it speaks for itself.

The amount of newsposts & threads on the right is set in a variable at the beginning.


Is this hack hard to install?
Absolutely not. You upload the newsportal.php, you add the new templates (see zipfile), and you place a link to newsportal.php wherever you want it on your site. That's it.
You don't have to modify any vB files, nor your database.


Does this hack include my style and everything?
Yes, the newsportal page will use your headinclude, header, footer and style-colors (pagebgcolor, tableouterwidth, linkcolor, etc.) and all these settings are easily configureable. You just edit the templates like you're (hopefully) used to with all the normal vB Templates.


Version 2:
The newsportal script now uses 2 queries to get the necessary information for your News posts. One for all thread info and the postid's of the starting posts, and one for the pagetext (ie. post contents) of all those postid's. You can use 2, 20 or 200 newsposts, that won't matter, it'll always be 2 queries (though I discourage using more than 20 newsposts ). ^_^

That's it, you're all done. Have fun with the newsportal! ^_^

[BigJohnson]

Sorry everyone . I dont no what is wrong with me today but i tried installing this and i cant get it to work. I hacked everything to what it said in the first post. I just didnt do the PHPmyadmin stuff yet. What query do i actual put in?. I tried some but i keep getting errors in my PHPmyadmin saying it doesnt no what isfirst means. What do i do?

[KuraFire]

run this query on your database:

ALTER TABLE post ADD isfirst char(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'N';

and with the newthread.php and newreply.php hacks, it should work. However, it'll only work once you start making new Newsthreads, unless you edit a bunch of posts that are currently the first posts of your existing newsthreads....

[chris frolic]

great hack, perfect for my needs! I removed the "threads" part of it, so its just a simple news updates for my main page. Thanks alot.

[Ryangel]

hmmm I'm stumped...

So what do i need to do so that my users cant see the "Admin boards" listed on the Latest threads?
Thanks.

[KuraFire]

The newest edition of the zip (first post attachment - clear your cache!)
has permissions support built-in, so users will only see what they're
allowed to see.

[Ryangel]

Originally posted by KuraFire
The newest edition of the zip (first post attachment - clear your cache!)
has permissions support built-in, so users will only see what they're
allowed to see.

hmm i just downloaded it on 9 July 2002. Has it been updated?
Maybe it doesnt work because the file is not in the root directory .... I did link the path to global correctly though...

[KuraFire]

I think you need to re-download it then...

I don't know if it'll work outside the root of the vB. I've not tested it there and so far only heard that others couldn't get it to work outside of the root, so... :/

[Automated]

nice mod/hack/addition whatever this would be classed as!

[high]* Automated clicks install [/high]

[dgmayor]

Here's a question for ya. Is there a way to have it call the templates from a style other than the Default? Maybe by way of passing a variable in the url or something?

Reason being, is that I want to pull my news from a forum and have it display on my site, and it needs to match the site. But the thing is, it's not the "main" portion of the site.

Basically my site breaks down like this:

Index
|---Portion 1 (Guild/clan page for Game #1)
| |--Forum Category 1
|---Portion 2 (Guild/clan page for Game #2)
| |--Forum Category 2
|---Portion 3 (Guild/clan page for Game #3)
| |--Forum Category 3
|
|--Forum Home

If that makes sense. Basically each category has a different style, and thus the news will need to pull form different forums from different categories and output in different styles. Now if I have to have 3 seperate copies of newsportal.php for each mini site, then fine, but how can I have it pull from different headers? I suppose if I had 3 seperate copies of newsportal, I could hardcode 3 different template names that each contained 3 different styles, but I'm sure there can be an easier way to do this?

[KuraFire]

you mean, you want it to _overrule_ the Style set that the User has picked?