Article Bot

Article Bot
by velocd


Article Bot is a script that allows you to assign a user account (preferably an exclusive one) to an article bot that will post RSS feeds in select forums at designated intervals. These articles are derived from RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds.

RSS files are assigned to article bots, as well to individual forums, which in turn directs what, when and where your article bot will post.

Features

• Works with RSS versions: 0.9x, 2.0, 1.0, and Atom 0.3
• AdminCP interface for adding/modifying/deleting article bots & rss feeds
• Designate intervals (in minutes) to each RSS feed for when your article bot will post them.
• Requires only 1 file edit (admincp/index.php), allowing ease of upgrading your vBulletin
  without having to remodify files.
• Easy to install. Works best in conjunction with crontab (contab help is inside install.html)

News

• 7/25/04 - Version 1.1 Released
  • Bug Fixes
    • Replaced htmlspecialchars() with htmlentities() in articlebot.php to fully convert special entities from descriptions.
    • Added trim() to thread titles, to prevent double threads from being posted that are merely off by whitespace.
    • New table articlebot_rss_cache for storing a copy of article bot threads, for quicker checking of doubles when posting new threads.
    • Threads are checked in articlebot_rss_cache, so you can permanently remove them from the thread table (you don't have to "soft delete") without worrying about the bot replicating them.
    • Other minor bugs.
  • Features
    • New installer/upgraders for doing the SQL part automatically.
    • Added "label" field to add/modify RSS interface, that allows you to tag a label, e.g. [yahoo], to the beginning of threads, unique to each RSS feed. This might help for better distinction of RSS feeds.
    • Added an option to toggle on/off of building similar threads per RSS feed. Some RSS feeds could hault the script if the building of similar thread results for that feed takes too long (maybe the article thread title is too vague, and matches a lot of results--my guess is it's only a problem on large forums).
    • Added an option to toggle on/off skipping of articles that don't contain descriptions.
    • Regular expression search and replace for article titles and descriptions. This grants you much flexability to filter out things you don't want in your titles or descriptions (given you have some regex experience, I will try to post some patterns in due time.. feel free to add yours )
• 7/11/04 - Version 1.0 Released

Upgrading

• To upgrade, reupload the new PHP and MagpieRSS parser files to their places on your server. Upload upgrade_vx-x (replace the x's with the version you are upgrading to) to /path/to/forums/admincp/, and then execute that script.

Files

• 3 screenshots attached
• articlebot_v1.zip
  • install.html, logo.gif
  • articlebot_admin.php
  • articlebot/
    • rss_cache.inc
    • rss_fetch.inc
    • rss_parse.inc
    • rss_utils.inc
    • extlib/
      • Snoopy.class.inc

RSS Feeds

There are several in the install.html, but if you're looking for more than you could ever want, check out NewsIsFree's directory:

http://www.newsisfree.com/sources/bycat/


Remember to click install if you use this hack.

Also be sure to read through the what you haven't of the thread before asking a question, for it may have been answered.

[|Jordan|]

Article Bot doesnt work for me, ive tried lots of different feeds.

Has anyone gotten it to work on VB 3.0.17 ?

[Semjaza]

Is there a replacement for this or another plug-in similar? I'm running the latest vB and this really does exactly what I was looking for.

[aciurczak]

RSS feed integration is now built-in to vB. Go to your admin control panel; it is one of the last sections on the left. Not sure when it was first implemented in the base package, I think in 3.6.

[Semjaza]

Originally Posted by aciurczak

RSS feed integration is now built-in to vB. Go to your admin control panel; it is one of the last sections on the left. Not sure when it was first implemented in the base package, I think in 3.6.

Yeah, I found that shortly there after and have been playing with it ever since... forgot to come back here and say so.

In any case, thanks for helping .

[boske]

Originally Posted by MikeBlah

i'm having trouble using the google rss feeds... says there is no file there... anyone have that working?

I am also having problems using the vB 3.6 RSS feed reader.

[jd_sa_bowler]

Hi all,

It seems that I cannot even do something that isn't rocket science. lol

Anyway have upgraded to VB 3.6 and want to remove articlebot, which worked great with 3.5.

I used the product manager to remove articlebot however I am left with an Admin Control Panel that still displays the navigation bar and drop down menus all be it with the names they are looking for.

Can anyone give me a hand to fix the Admin Control Panel nav bar?

I don't want to live with the mess but its doing no harm.

I have spent a few hours looking and reading but still no the wiser.

thanks

[jd_sa_bowler]

Originally Posted by jd_sa_bowler

Hi all,

It seems that I cannot even do something that isn't rocket science. lol

Anyway have upgraded to VB 3.6 and want to remove articlebot, which worked great with 3.5.

I used the product manager to remove articlebot however I am left with an Admin Control Panel that still displays the navigation bar and drop down menus all be it with the names they are looking for.

Can anyone give me a hand to fix the Admin Control Panel nav bar?

I don't want to live with the mess but its doing no harm.

I have spent a few hours looking and reading but still no the wiser.

thanks

Resolved

I found this thread https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...t=82698&page=4 which explained; Create pages for the AdminCP



I removed the xml file from forum/includes/xml and all was well.



thank you.

[fire2007]

my question is, how is this different from the RSS feed already in Vbulletin 3.6x?

[aciurczak]

This was developed before RSS functionality was built-in to vB. No need to use this hack anymore.