Rss feed output

[Steve B]

Hi folks, I just want to say that you have great site and from browsing it over the last few weeks, it appears very friendly too!!

I hate to jump in with a question on my first post but I seem at a loss with a problem I have. I wish to restrict the amount of characters that are output in the description field from the RSS feeds on my vB3.6 forums.

From all my browsing around I believe that by default there is no way to do this and looking at the hacks over at vb.org I can't find anything that will work with vb3.6.

I presume this will need to be a code mod to the 'external.php' file but my php skills don't extend that far.

Does anyone know of any hacks that can do this or offer any help?

[Peggy]

I have no idea about this Steve, but I wanted to jump in here and say Hi and welcome to vb-FAQ. It's a very friendly place we have here.... til someone gets a bee in their bonnet ;)
*grabs my flyswatter*

I'm sure someone will be along soon to answer your question :)

[Steve B]

Thanks for the warm welcome Ohio. :)

[protoss]

Hi there Steve. I looked into this when vB 3.6.0 was in the RC stage. I didn't find anything concrete.
There were a few posts about greater control on the official vBulletin.com site and if I remember correctly the official stance was a no no because it meant altering the code. It was suggested people ask at vBulletin.org.

[Steve B]

Hi protoss, I have to agree with you, my findings point to the same.

The one hack I did find at Vb.org that could restrict the output does not wok with 3.6 and because vb have improved just about everything else to do with the rss feeds (and made substantial changes to external.php, the writer has said that there is no point in porting his hack to work.

Kind of ironic really that by improving the RSS feeds of vb3.6, Jelsoft has actually scuppered this request. ;)

[Noppid]

vB said RSS2 would be default too. That didn't happen. :/

vB said 2checkout worked, it never did and could not have ever worked. I provied that. It still is not right to the best of my knowledge. It's still v1 and 2CO works best with v2 which I believe all of us were forced into. I coded my own that works, but that's another thread.
/rant

Steve, what is the point you are trying to make in shortneing the output. I think I can help and yeah, it's gonna require an old fashioned hack likely. But I'm curious that if I knew your intention if I could come up with a better idea. I play in the RSS sandbox often on both sides of the feed.

[Steve B]

Steve, what is the point you are trying to make in shortneing the output. I think I can help and yeah, it's gonna require an old fashioned hack likely. But I'm curious that if I knew your intention if I could come up with a better idea. I play in the RSS sandbox often on both sides of the feed.

As a fairly new site we are working hard at improving our member base and increasing our content. The problem is that most of our content is currently going into the forums and obviously it is also being made freely available to anyone who wants to subscribe to any of the available RSS feeds out. We could turn off sections of the forums to guests and prevent the feeds but that would hurt us with the search engines too. Like you I am using carp (although I am using the free version) and this is feeding news and other posts to the front of my site (outside VB), here its easy for me to strip back some of the description field to restrict the output and entice people to the forums to read the full post.

Unfortunately we are not a niche market (photography) and the competition is fierce. So every fair method I can implement to sustain or improve our growth I would like to investigate fully. On top of that we also have some bad history with another site and suspect that they have subscribed to our feeds. We all know that content is king and that you have to make it available, but allowing only an overview or ‘snippet’ is a much more favourable option for us at the moment, and that’s what set me off on my search…

[mikelbeck]

Are there any plug-in hooks into the rss system in 3.6?

[Noppid]

Are there any plug-in hooks into the rss system in 3.6?

Yes and no. There are hooks in the external.php. There are no hooks in the XMP parser. So, I dunno yet if a plug in can pull off the necessary trimming of the data.

[Steve B]

Just a quick update on this.

I have now found a Addon at Vb.org that does exactly what I wanted. It was released on the 27th

I have yet to instal it but will let you know how I get on. If anyone else is interested in this hack it is available here (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=125100)

[protoss]

Thanks for the update Steve. I'll check that out later.

[Noppid]

Good find and exactly as I said it would be, a hack. :)

Glad ya found it. In fact, I'm glad I don't have to code it as well.

[Hell³]

Nice find, tagged for future use.

[Steve B]

The saga continues ;)

I have now installed this hack but the options to activate the plugin and trim the feed are not showing in the admin CP. I followed the instructions to the letter and TBH it seems a simple hack by comparison to some that I have installed but I can't get it to work. Maybe I am looking in the wrong section of the Admin CP but I would have thought the logical place to add the options would be under the 'external data provider' section. I did briefly check over the other sections but that drew a blank as well. :confused:

I have posted in the thread at vB-org for assistance from the author but I was wondering if anyone here had yet installed this and has it working?

Obviously I will report back if I find anything else out :)

[Steve B]

All sorted and working now :)

The file at Vb-org was corrupted, the author has uploaded a new version which appears to be working properly now.