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!

[JCW]

I clicked installed!

First, I'd like to show my appreciation for this great mod: Thank You! :up:

The RSS feeds that came configured are working fine, but when I add a feed that requires a search (e.g. Google News or Yahoo News) nothing displays. [By the way, fopen is on. VB version is 3.5.4. All permissions are set properly. And I've tried this in multiple browsers.]

Here are a couple examples of feeds that I cannot get to show (even when I "Force RSS Update") :

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

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ta...olf&output=rss

These both work in the browser window. This has been really frustrating, and I've read many posts here and cannot figure this out.

I do not get any visible errors. There's just no data/info displayed at all for the above feeds in AboutToday.

Your help is appreciated.

Thank you.

JCW

[jretzer]

JCW ... that's wierd, because those are the ONLY ones I can get to work. I can't get straight RSS feeds to work as shown in the post above yours.

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by 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?

What's the name of the feed that you are displaying? My first thought looking at your site is that you have an error in your style. Have you tried it with the default vbulletin style? Also, try doing a "Force RSS Update". Maybe the feed just didn't read in right the first time.

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by jretzer

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

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

Ah ... you've done nothing wrong! All these url's deal with UM football. AboutToday refuses to parse any such nonsense! Go Buckeyes!!!! (please don't embarrass me again!)

Originally Posted by JCW

I do not get any visible errors. There's just no data/info displayed at all for the above feeds in AboutToday.

Your help is appreciated.

Thank you.

JCW

Seriously, let me see if I can figure out why these feeds won't parse.

[rwoscott]

Hi CyberRanger, any ideas on how I might do this easily?

Originally Posted by 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.

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by rwoscott

Hi CyberRanger, any ideas on how I might do this easily?

It's an excellent idea. We do that in my other main product (Downloads II). Let me look at the code and see what would be needed.

[JCW]

Originally Posted by CyberRanger

Seriously, let me see if I can figure out why these feeds won't parse.

Thanks for looking into it, CyberRanger. By the way, in the last few days, the Google News search RSS feed was retrieved once but it will not update. It just keeps showing the same old news. However, I can use the same link and pull up the 'fresh' (new) news.

I'll be waiting to see what you come up with. :up:

[rwoscott]

Originally Posted by CyberRanger

It's an excellent idea. We do that in my other main product (Downloads II). Let me look at the code and see what would be needed.

Thanks Mate.

[sdsvtdriver]

Originally Posted by sdsvtdriver

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

http://feeds.feedburner.com/CalculatedRisk

any ideas?

[Dave Hawley]

Some feeds work, some don't.