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!

[rwoscott]

I have a silly qn CR (again). It may not be directly related to this change.

I tried to stop the RSS feed updating every hour (via the scheduled task manager). I ended up setting it to 9am (once a day). Now it runs (about) every minute between 9am and 10am.

I've tried fiddling with the settings in About Today and Scheduled TM, but I have no idea why it is doing it like that.

Any ideas?

[CyberRanger]

Originally Posted by rwoscott

I have a silly qn CR (again). It may not be directly related to this change.

I tried to stop the RSS feed updating every hour (via the scheduled task manager). I ended up setting it to 9am (once a day). Now it runs (about) every minute between 9am and 10am.

I've tried fiddling with the settings in About Today and Scheduled TM, but I have no idea why it is doing it like that.

Any ideas?

Make sure you have dashes (-) in your minutes row and not stars (*). (Stars mean every minute)

[rwoscott]

Originally Posted by CyberRanger

Make sure you have dashes (-) in your minutes row and not stars (*). (Stars mean every minute)

D'oh!!

I had * in the first slot. Thx.

Have you had a chance to look into a warning msg on "Talk About?" button.

[JCW]

Originally Posted by CyberRanger

How busy is your forum? The feed will update every 15 minutes BUT only if your forum is busy enough to call the scheduled task every 15 minutes.

Do you really think that is what it is based upon what I've told you already? The forum is busy. Also, I manually update and nothing...

Are you able to get regular updates from the Google feed link that I supplied, using your AboutToday mod?

JCW

[ajm4481]

http://www.koomid.com/abouttoday.php?do=rss&id=2
http://www.koomid.com/abouttoday.php?do=rss&id=1

Thats the page i get when i try this hack.. what am i doing wrong?

www.koomid.com

[tekram]

Hi;

I run a vbulletin 3.6.8. pl2

Great Mod !!!!

Some Problems with create a thread. the mod is create a thread in the forum with the id i have set in. when i klick the latest posts on the forumhome


there is a message that the link is incorrect. please ask the webmaster ... bla bla bla.



here are my settings



can you help me to fix that problem?

[Chadi]

The template setup is very confusing. I'm trying to figure out which template to edit to adjust the background of the RSS title when viewing the rss feeds (page that has the 28% width left column and "double click..." list), and also adjust the right column that shows the actual list of feeds.

[sdsvtdriver]

apparently any feed from feedburner won't work. They 'auto detect' your reader and send out rss2.0.

[bainsey]

thanks

[HP10T]

So I am a little confused and I apologize if this has been covered but there are 58 pages to read through. I am just wanting new posts on threads on my site to go to an rss reader like the google widget deal. Does this mod do that? If so what settings do I change? Thank you so much.