Hi there,

I've written an RSS feed for ccBoard forums.  I'm happy to share it with anyone who's interested.

A couple of cautions:  It is not an integrated joomla module/component - simply a standalone php page.  This makes it easy to install (simply upload the file) but as you have no access to your joomla setup variables these need to be defined all over in the php file. Also you will need to modify your HTML to include the RSS reference if you want the newer browser to automatically "see" the new feed.

On the positive side, it does formally validate as an RSS 2.0 feed and you can easily make a module that contains the link to the new php file.

Kind regards,

Simon

Can you share the PHP file you written for getting RSS from ccBoard?

This would be great! 

OK, zip file attached.

Unzip the file and upload the ccboard_rss.php to your website (I recommend the root but it shouldn't matter).

Open it up with a text editor.  All the items that you need to change are in the first section.  Save it - and away you go.  Point your rss reader (or browser) at http://yoursite.com/ccboard_rss.php and you should get the latest posts.

**  Everything after this is optional and won't affect the core feed.  **

My point about the Joomla Module was simply that this link (http://yoursite.com/ccboard_rss.php) can now be used as a hyperlink in a standard Custom HTML module.

To get the Forum Feed automatically recognised by a modern browser (in IE the little feed icon on the top right lights up in orange) you need to add another line to the page - this will almost certainly have to be done in the template so it's hard for me to specify exactly how you do this.  To give an example my template is Rational Magic so I go into the Joomla Admin and then Extensions | Template Manager | Select Rational Magic | Edit HTML .  Then underneath the bit where joomla does its Adding header piece (<jdoc:include type="head" />) I paste in the following line:

<link href="/ccboard_rss.php" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Forum RSS Feed" />

This is the same as manually editing the index.php of your template but whichever method you choose - take care!  Also this step is entirely optional.  All it means is that you don't get the autodiscovery of the feed in the newer browsers - everything else still works OK.

That's about it.  Hope it works for you guys.  Let me know if there's any dramas.

- Simon

Attachments
 ccboard_rss.zip [1 KB]

Hi,

Thank you so much. Let me check on this, if possible I shall convert it as a add-on module for ccBoard.

Thanks

Thomas

SyNuge 

Great script - thank you!

If someone decide to use it for Cyrillic charset (like I do) don't forget to change code:

line 36

$rss_result = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"windows-1251\"?>

Hi there,

 All the database connection info is already in your configuraion.php file (this is what Joomla uses to connect) so have a look in there and you will see values for your host, db, username and password.  Copy these into the corresponding variables in the script file and you should be good to go.  you shouldn't need anything like phpMyAdmin as my script file simply reads values form the ccBoard tables that are already there.

Hope this helps.  Let me know if you still have issues.

Regards,

Simon

Thanks that was exactly the hint I needed (as a newby). There's only two problems with this feed left: one is minor and unavoidable I guess: the BCC code is fully shown in the feeds. The second is more serious: it shows indiscriminately the posts of my closed as well as my open forums. So only if there comes an option to exclude forums I won't be able to share the feed with other users than my beloved co-editors/administrators... It will be of use to them nevertheless, or at least to me so thanks again!

Hi bRein,

Glad that you got it working.  Not sure what to do about the bbcode - I'll have a look and see if there are any easy answers.  As for the closed forums that should be easy to do by modifying the SQL very slightly.  Can you give me a little more detail?  Do you mean forums that are locked or forums where the view access is set to Administrator only.  It would be helpful if you posted a (partial, front page only) screenshot of your forum admin so I can see exactly how you've set up the forums.  If you do this I will send back a modified piece of SQL that will exclude the forums you don't want displayed.

Cheers,

Simon