Forum News (News in a Forum)

This hack adds news headlines to the top of a forum. The headlines come from an XML source. The headlines are links to the articles. Through the admin cp, add or modify forums system, you can select from a list of sources (or select no news for that forum). There is also a master on/off switch for the entire feature, and you can also select how many headlines will appear.

Support for this hack will be provided only within the vbulletin.org forums.

This hack involves database modifications. Please make a backup copy of your database prior to installing this hack. The author of this hack assumes no responsibility for anything.

The XML feeds come from Moreover.com. This service is provided free-of-charge only to non-commercial, non-profit, educational, or personal/hobby sites, and may not be used on any for-profit site. If you operate a for-profit site, you must contact Moreover.com to discuss purchasing the rights to the service.







Changelog
v1.0: Original release
v1.1: Fixes problem of not being able to change a forum's newsfeed back to NONE after previously selecting one.
v1.1a: Error in instructions file corrected. If you have 1.1, you do not need to download this; absolutely no code has changed.
v1.1b: See Post #30 below. If you have v1.1a, you do not need to download again; just make the fix as instructed in Post #30.
v1.2: Changes the code added to forumdisplay.php so that only one query is used. If you have v1.1b, you only need to replace the code added to forumdisplay.php with the newer bit of code from the instructions.
v1.2a: Fixes a minor bug affecting only the appearance of the output. If you already have installed v1.2, you do not need to re-download and re-install; please see Post #34 below for the simple fix.
v1.2b: Current release. Corrects the URL shown in the registration required notice. The only change over v1.2a is the "forumnewsbit_accessreg" template.

OPTIONAL Add-in feature: Make this feature user-selectable
I have created some instructions you can use if you'd like to give your users the ability to not see the news in a forum. Read Post #44 below for more info.

[nymyth]

ok found those options....but i still cant get the news to show, anybody know whats up with that??? Thanx

Peace

[nymyth]

ok nevermind, got everything to work, but i cant get the usercp thing to work i have the options showing in the cp, but when i click on 'NO' for the news, it still shows, any ideas??? Thanx

Peace

[SemperFidelis]

Ok
Here is a different problem for you.

Ive now hacked this in for the 2nd time - including the user selectable part.
All the options show up fine at both an admin CP and user CP level.

But as soon as I switch it on, I get a blank page returned when trying to access /forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=2 (or any other forum).

Has anyone else come across this error ?
Or have any idease on how to resolve it ?

[auz1111]

I have this hack working but the options under the ACP to turn it off or on are missing. any help is appreciated.

great hack!

[1F42]

check your setting group number as described earlier by hovering over the options of forum news in your ACP look at the bottom of your browser for the id no if this is diff to that of the last 3 sql changes you did then you need to edit those in sql to this number

[Doubledoom]

installed on 2.3.0 and running fine with no problems. Thanks

[Restless_ca]

I fought and fought with this only to find out that I had made the modifications in code I had commented out due to a previous hack

I had to work it around some other hacks I had but once it was working it was slick. Very very nice hack. Thanks

[atomic fireball]

This is one excellent hack!
Thanks for your work on this. I love the 'offbeat news' area for the nonsense forums

Quick question, is there any way to add the option of forum news on the main forum home page? This would be an excellent addition as well if it's possible.

I have this running with 2.3.0 and it works perfectly. Great work.

[atomic fireball]

To anyone who has this installed:
Have you been having problems with the moreover.com newsfeeds lately?

This hack was running perfectly for the last few weeks, but now it's not pulling news from moreover.com. So it takes an incredible amount of time to actually get into any forum which carries a news feed on my board.

Something has changed at moreover.com, and I'm hoping it's only temporary. I've had to turn off this wonderful hack in the Admin Control Panel until it can pull the news feeds again. I haven't been able to pull in news feeds for about 24 hours now.

If anyone has any info, I'd appreciate it, thanks.

[Erwin]

Working fine for me at the moment.