Logician NEWS: Drag Any Message to Your Main Page

This is a news script which will drag vb forum messages from your vb db to your non-vb main page/news page. There are a lot of good news script around but I needed a highly customizable main page news script with some special features and wrote it myself. I'm using it in my site's main page for a long time, but I was just too lazy to write installation/help documents to share it here, sorry!

FEATURES:

* This script simply pulls forum messages which you marked as "news" from your vb database and post them in your non-vbulletin (main/other) page.
* You can mark messages as "NEWS" in any forum you want (including private forums). You dont need to restrict your news to a specific forum.
* You can drag any message to your main page, regardless of its date. So news is NOT supposed to be the most recent messages in your board.
* You do NOT have to carry the whole message to your main page as news. You can import it all or simply take some part of it. So eg. you can drag a message's the first paragraph to your news page and link the thread for "Read More".
* Moreover you can insert invisible custom NEWS text which will be dragged to your main page to your board messages, but not shown in the original forum thread. So your original thread message and news text on your main page can be different than eachother.
* You can have sticky news in your main page (even if they are not sticky in your forum).
* News does NOT need to be the first message in the thread. You can tag any reply message as news and pull it to your main page either.
* Script parses ALL of your message icons/smilies (including your custom add-ons) and some of the important vBCode like: [url] [email] [img] [b] [i] [u]
* You can specify which members may post news.
* You can form your News' title seperately, apart from of the original thread/message title.
* You can set maximum number of news shown in your main page.
* You can set maximum number of characters that all shown news should not exceed. Some messages can be long and some can be short and if you set a character limit, the script will automatically compile enough news from your database to fit your web page's relevant part according to the limit you set.
* You can enable/disable:
News Poster Name
News Date
News Read Number
News 'Send to a Friend' Link
Comment number/Add comment button/Last commenter
Will viewing news increase the original thread's view count or not
News is sticky or not
for ALL your news INDIVIDUALLY.
* All news tags are invisible in the original thread. So forum readers do not notice any difference when you tag a message as news.
* Dragging a message to your main page as news is as simple as inserting a hidden [news]Title of My News[/news] tag to your forum message.

Well, these features are what I needed in my news script, so it should suffice to you too!

It's an easy to install script and will work with ALL vbulletin versions because it's an add-on, not a hack. I can give support as much as I have time, but please ask here, not via email or PM.

If you use the script, please click INSTALL. If you post the URL of your news page after installation, you can help other users see the script in action in different pages and in custom designs, thank you!

Logician

[Logician]

Demo Site:
* Demo news page (Check this first, it's in English)

Sites using this script:
* My Site's main page (Non-English, but you'll see it in real action)
* Wildthinks' Site (German)
* http://www.terrapinsgonewild.com/

One final comment: the graphical design of "news" in these pages are not mandatory by the script. You can design it as you like with plain HTML, so the script is flexible for design of the news. As you may already noticed, I and Wildthinks use it in different designs.

[Logician]

HOW TO USE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~
After you install the script, all you have to do is to mark some messages as "news" to drag them yo your main page. To tag messages you will use [news] [summary] [intro] and [options] tags, all of which are invisible in the original thread.

If you authorized some forums or members for news posting in the newsconfig.php options, remember to use authorized member(s)' name and post in the authorized forum when marking your messages. (An optional precaution you may regard to prevent ordinary users to post news by using these tags)

To mark a message, simply use [news] [/news] tag in your message body. The text you insert between, will be your news title in the main page.
eg. [news]This is a News Title[/news]

The [news] tag alone is enough (and the only required tag) to mark any message as news and it will drag the whole message to your main page.

If you dont want to drag the entire message, but pull only some part from the begining(or else), use that part in [intro] [/intro].(And of course still [news] tag is required since it tags the message as news). For example you can use [intro] tag to take the first paragraph of your message to your main page and the script will link your original thread with a "Read More" remark.
eg.
[news]My News[/news]
[intro]my introduction that will be dragged to news page[/intro]
Other paragraphs which will NOT be dragged to news page..

If you want to use an entirely different text as your news body, use it in [summary] [/summary] tags. So for example in a hot thread you can send a reply to one of the members and in your message you can use hidden '[summary]We are discussing subject X in our forum.. Join![/summary]' tag, to post this text to your main page as news and link the original thread. Forum viewers will only see your original forum reply in the forum but main page visitors will be notified by your custom text.
eg.
[news]My News[/news]
[summary]my news paragraph that will be dragged to news page but hidden in the original thread[/summary]
Other paragraphs which will NOT be dragged to news page and visible to thread readers..

And finally we have an optional [options] [/options] tag, which helps you to customize your news. For all of your news, you can individually disable these options: Send a Friend Link(sendfriendoff), Thread view number(viewsoff), News Poster's name(posteroff), News Date(dateoff), News Comments&Add a Comment Link(commentsoff), News' last commenter's name(lastcommenteroff), whether news shown on the main page increases thread's view number or not (countoff), whether news is sticky (sticky) and whether you want to crunch (removes newlines) news text (crunch) in your main page. Use the tags in paranthesis to disable relevant option like [options]sendfriendoff lastcommenteroff countoff[/options] (Exceptions= (sticky) and (crunch). They enable the option.)

Ok that's it..

Enjoy! \\=^))

Logician

[zachb]

Wow! That looks great. Awesome job, Logician!

[Lesane]

Looks great indeed, well done.

[SaintDog]

Great job Logician,

I was actually on the look for a good news script, this is even better as I can use now use vBulletin as well (which is how I preferred it).

Keep up the great work!

- SaintDog

[JulianD]

Looks great, I might test this one! Thanks!

[Unknown553]

Well, with a good 45 minutes of customizing and getting the hang of it, I finally got it looking and working exactly how I wanted it to. Great script, highly customizable and functional. Awesome work Logician, and thank you for a great, much needed vB addon.

[inetd]

Logician, ypou really the best!!!

[Dean C]

pretty nice...