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!

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by rwoscott

1) in the above how do I only show the $myfeeds for the users I have selected in the admincp settings?

If you mean the usergroup permissions, I'm afraid that the $myfeeds variable ignores that.

Originally Posted by rwoscott

2) Can I do 3 (or more) columns??

Yes, you can make the number as high as you want. Of course, I think above 3 will look sort of bad formatting wise.

[rwoscott]

Originally Posted by CyberRanger

If you mean the usergroup permissions, I'm afraid that the $myfeeds variable ignores that.

Fair enough.

Yes, you can make the number as high as you want. Of course, I think above 3 will look sort of bad formatting wise.

3 might be fine.

Thanks soo much for your help.

[solidlink]

I cant get it to work... maybe its the vba cmps? Can you help me take a look?

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by solidlink

I cant get it to work... ?

Get what to work? AboutToday at all? Using the $myfeeds variables with vba cmps?

[Madspot]

how can i get this to have a bot post in threads

[Networknutz]

I am trying to figure out how to edit the html displayed when using the $myfeeds in left column. I'm not sure if it's done thru abouttoday or not. Right now my feeds seemed to be seperated by 2 or more <br> s and like to be able to edit that. any suggestions?

Thanks
Will

[rwoscott]

Is there an easy way to give a warning message telling the users that they are about to start a thread after they clicked the "Talk about it" button?

Many users are clicking it out of curiosity and they create unnecessary, so it would be nice to ask them if they want to continue or cancel.

[sdsvtdriver]

can't get this feed to work. not sure why. help?

http://feeds.feedburner.com/CalculatedRisk

[chrisife]

Great Mod. But i am having some issues in getting it work. I am running vb3.6.8 and abouttoday displays on top of the navbar like this:

http://www.allafricanfootball.com/abouttoday.php

Can somebody help me fix this?

[jretzer]

I'm having a difficult time with this. I have inserted a couple of RSS feeds and nothing is showing up. Here are the feeds:

http://detnews.com/feeds/rss17.xml

http://www.freep.com/feeds/rss19.xml

http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rs...ll&c=&eo=UTF-8

None of these are display anything

All I get is the first one I entered -- a Google News Feed

I must be missing a setting, but I can't figure out what