News Reader [Deleted]

[ibaker]

ibaker submitted a new resource:

News Reader (version 1.0.0) - Displays the entire page of an rss news feed item

Description:
This is a News Reader addon for Xenforo that displays a list of news titles from rss feeds that you create and when a user clicks a news item title, the entire news item web page is displayed below it in an iframe on your own site.

Live Demo:
http://www.aircraftpilots.com/news/

Notes:
1. It creates its own menu tab
2. You can create pseudo categories of news items by using XF's inbuilt Thread Prefixes which then become sub menu items under the News...

Read more about this resource...

 

[ibaker]

News reader Enhancements

Thread Prefixes:
In the default News Reader install, a menu tab is created called News. Under that tab there is only one sub menu item called "All". basically they are the same thing whether you click the menu tab or the sub menu "All" link...ALL news items are displayed in the News Reader.

You can group your news feeds into categories, perhaps by source or by specific interest etc, and have those displayed as sub menu items so users can just view the rss news feeds from those sources.

Be careful though as creating too many Thread Prefixes for your News Reader will impact your sub menu list that is displayed under the News Reader menu tab.

Steps:

1. In your Admin Control Panel -> Applications -> Thread Prefixes, create a new Thread Prefix Group.
2. IMPORTANT...Make note of the Thread Prefix Group number. Do this by after creating your Thread Prefix Group, hover your mouse over the "Edit" link of the group and note the prefix_group_id number at the end of the link that is displayed at the bottom of your browser. It will show something like: MyDomain/admin.php?thread-prefixes/edit-group&prefix_group_id=1 (The number in this example is 1)
3. Now create new Thread Prefixes making sure that:
   • You select the Thread Prefix Group that you created in step 1 above, for your new Thread Prefix
   • The Thread Prefix can be used in the forum where your rss news items are going to
   • The Thread Prefix is as minimal number of characters as possible so you can have more categories displayed on the News Reader menu tab sub menu
4. Now go to your rss news feeds Applications -> Registered Feeds, and for each of your rss news feeds, edit them with placing the desired Thread Prefix that you want those news items to have
5. Finally, go to Home -> Options -> News Reader and in the "Prefix Group" box, enter the Thread Prefix Group number that you noted in Step 2 above and save

The end result will display on the sub menu under the News tab of your menu bar, "All" for all news items and each of the Thread Prefixes that you defined. A user can click "All" to see ALL news items or they can select one of the Thread Prefixes on the News tab sub menu to just display the news items from the rss news sources that you ass the Thread Prefix to.

Other:
Personally I find it much easier and more appealing to the user to create a Usergroup of rss news feed sources. For every news feed I create a user of the same name and then assign them to their incoming news feeds That way I can also only allow the News Reader Thread Prefixes to be used by that Usergroup...even though it is all automated anyway.

I also have all my news feeds going into the one "News" forum which I can choose to display in the Node List or not. If it isn't displayed in the forum node list then users get use to using the News Reader

 

[ibaker]

Donations Received:
None so far...be the first

 

[DRE]

Hey I remember this! I wanted to buy it but then my members complained about News Feeds showing up in What's New and Latest Threads. I was able to get them out of Latest Threads but not What's New for some reason. I will have to try again.

 

[ibaker]

If you have all your news feeds going into one node, you can set the node to not display its threads (news items) in What's New...have a look at the node's settings for Include threads from this forum when users click "What's New?"

 

[DRE]

If you have all your news feeds going into one node, you can set the node to not display its threads (news items) in What's New...have a look at the node's settings for Include threads from this forum when users click "What's New?"

Thanks but xenforo is not allowing me to: http://xenforo.com/community/threads/forum-options-wont-save.28612/

 

[ibaker]

Thanks but xenforo is not allowing me to: http://xenforo.com/community/threads/forum-options-wont-save.28612/

Not sure what is going on for you mate but your issue would be completely unrelated to this addon...sorry I can't help you it

 

[DRE]

After a lotta troubleshooting, News Reader conflicts with the Age Forums addon. I have 81 addons installed so it took me awhile to isolate the problem. I uninstalled Age Forums since I don't really need it.

 

[DRE]

Okay I also found out putting the news bot on invisible and making it so no one can view their activity feed does work for most regular members but does not work for users who can bypass user privacy. Because of that, news bot posts will show up for them in recent activity.

 

[DRE]

Jake's Addon might be able to fix this: http://xenforo.com/community/threads/omit-thread-from-recent-activity-code-example.28416/

 

[DRE]

Sorry to post all this in your thread but a news reader is no good if the feeds show up in recent activity and pisses off it's members. Once admins can take care of that problem, they would be more interested in this addon.

 

[ibaker]

Its swings and roundabouts...many sites already have rss news feeds going into their forums and they come up in the recent activity...that is an inbuilt function of XF...the News Reader provides the user with the opportunity of seeing the entire news item instead of only a number of characters that the rss feed just provides, the big plus is it is all done without the user having to go from website to website, or from thread to thread, in YOUR forums...it is all there in just one single convenient place on your own site. Without the News Reader, a user clicks on an rss feed news item on your site which takes them to another site to read the whole story...the potential to lose them is great, keeping them on your own site is much much better...that's my thought

 

[DRE]

Jake Bunce has added a code that will exclude forums from Recent Activity!

 

[Unistic]

This is a great add on thanks! I'm running a clan site and its nice to have all rss feeds in a nice location.

But I want to know if it possible to show the number of comments in the rss feed list?

Meaning on the right side where it gives you the option to comment and then takes you to the rss thread can you also display the current total comments as well. i.e Comment(4 replies)

Also add another tap for Hot RSS ( that displays the most talked about RSS feed).

Anyways great job!

 

[Israel]

Jake Bunce has added a code that will exclude forums from Recent Activity!

Where can one find this code please?

 

[DRE]

Where can one find this code please?

It's the 10th post in this thread.

 

[Israel]

Thanks, that's what I get for scanning...

 

[DRE]

I do it all the time.

 

[ibaker]

This is encouraging...13 downloads and no real bugs...hope you guys are finding it useful for your site users

 

[Sunny6CM]

I'd like to clear out the News Reader and reimport - once I've cleared out the threads though there seems to leave the "Comment" links there. Any ideas ? Good feature otherwise and happy to donate if I get this ironed out..