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!

[Mrdby]

Originally Posted by Mark K

yay, finally got mine finished, displaying exactly how i want now, in my rightside column. Thanx for this great mod, was exactly what i was looking for.

To see it in action click here

How did you do that?

[Mrdby]

where do you go to get the links to feeds?

[Mrdby]

Warning: Division by zero in /global.php(341) : eval()'d code on line 461 i got this error at the top of my forum.

[Mrdby]

and it gave me that error in my shoutbox.

[YabbaDabba]

Originally Posted by CyberRanger

Thanks for the detailed comments. I really need to recode a lot of this. As you can see, it's been a long time since I did an update. Now, just to find some time!

It's been 6 months, so I thought I would pop in and ask if you have any idea as to when you would be working on a new release.

Thanks for all your efforts,

[Fungsten]

Originally Posted by Mrdby

How did you do that?

Same here.

Also I noticed that if I click on new threads at the bottom of a thread then many times I a message saying there are no new threads. But there are more recent threads. Is anyone else getting that?

[busybeeburns]

In /abouttoday.php page the "Add" link directs to mysite.com/forum/abouttoday.php?do=add&cat=

...which is a dead link

[nyk_user]

I have installed this but when I click on either Categories or RSS feeds then I get a 404 page not found from my control panel.

I uploaded all the files according to the directions, any suggestions?

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by nyk_user

I have installed this but when I click on either Categories or RSS feeds then I get a 404 page not found from my control panel.

I uploaded all the files according to the directions, any suggestions?

You need to load the files again to your server. Make sure you get the files that are in admincp.

[basilrath]

any ideas on this

ive add $myfeeds to a sidebar nothing shows in it at all

i had this working on another site but its not showing the feeds

ive got the "How many rows across for $myfeeds variable?" set above zero (its at 1)

and the feed is added too and is active still nothing ive tried everything

nothing shows

any ideas

3.6.8 and vbadvanced