[MODDB] Smartfeed for phpBB 3

MarkDHamill · Post by **MarkDHamill** » Thu Nov 22, 2007 3:29 am

I am the author of the phpBB Smartfeed mod that was reasonably popular for phpBB 2. Smartfeed is a sophisticated RSS/Atom interface to phpBB that is smart enough to handle the complex permission logic to allow authenticated users to see protected forums. It also allows the public to get public forums as a newsfeed.

I am in the midst of a version for phpBB 3 and have started with the user interface. As of today a user interface prototype is available. A sample of the screen can be seen below. You can test a non functioning interface here. At this time it is not sophisticated enough to distinguished between logged in and non logged in users. Consequently it shows all forums regardless of requisite privileges. I would appreciate any feedback you have on the user interface.

The phpBB 2 Smartfeed topic can be found here.

Here is a snapshot of the user interface at the moment. The whole screen does not show because the fields are quite lengthy.

Thanks in advance for the feedback.

.:: Chico ::. · Post by **.:: Chico ::.** » Thu Nov 22, 2007 3:35 am

Sounds really good.
Mod Dev has a few mods for feeds, but so dificult to get they working.

Hope this one works.
Thank you!

idiotnesia · Post by **idiotnesia** » Thu Nov 22, 2007 4:42 am

can hardly wait to try your mod

saaiberke · Post by **saaiberke** » Thu Nov 22, 2007 7:12 am

Yes, yes, yes!! You can't imagine how happy I am to find this posting.

If you want, i can make a dutch translation for this one as I did for the phpBB2 version.

The user interface is, once again, very clear and easy to use.

Oh man, you make my day

Grtz,

Nic

pimpdaddy · Post by **pimpdaddy** » Thu Nov 22, 2007 9:46 am

Hi, does anyone know of a "reverse" to this mod? basically i want a news feed to post within my forum...

any ideas?

murnauvsbuñuel · Post by **murnauvsbuñuel** » Thu Nov 22, 2007 10:36 am

great MarkDHamill .

i have install the old mod to phpBB2 and work fine, i hope that this mod to phpBB3 are so good. This is my favorite mod to feeds

thanks.

PatPatten · Post by **PatPatten** » Thu Nov 22, 2007 12:43 pm

Greaat MOD,

Give it to me..

.:: Chico ::. · Post by **.:: Chico ::.** » Thu Nov 22, 2007 1:36 pm

pimpdaddy wrote:Hi, does anyone know of a "reverse" to this mod? basically i want a news feed to post within my forum...

any ideas?

you can try this one: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... 0&t=589892

MarkDHamill · Post by **MarkDHamill** » Thu Nov 22, 2007 2:06 pm

Thanks for the positive feedback everyone. Moving from phpBB 2 to 3 is not a trivial matter and mostly requires rewriting the whole application, so I am afraid if you are anxious for a complete mod it will be some time out. However the user interface is about 80% done and that is a significant challenge in itself. There are also so many rules, some documented, some not, on how to write a "correct" phpBB 3 application, and these take time to sift through.

No suggestions for changing/improving the user interface? This would be an ideal time to incorporate them.

MarkDHamill · Post by **MarkDHamill** » Sat Nov 24, 2007 4:08 am

User interface is I hope largely done at this point. Forums shown are restricted based on access, authentication has been added similar to the phpBB 2 version etc.

What I don't expect to be in the interface in the phpBB 3 version includes:

- An administrator interface for ad placement. Too dang complicated right now.
- Some indication of how a forum is restricted (moderators only, user group only, etc.) Right now figuring out permissions is too baffling

I may need to remove the private message feature too depending on how complex that gets when I try to implement it.

http://www.potomactavern.org/phpBB3/smartfeed_url.php

scott_thewspot · Post by **scott_thewspot** » Tue Nov 27, 2007 1:33 pm

I'd be happy to get a test Beta release that just worked as a "guest". That way the actual basic feed function and reading from phpbb3 etc could be tested out by lots of people while the more complex permissions part and private message parts are being refined.

One reason I would love to see this mod (apart from simple feature richness) is the fact that you are MSSQL friendly, while the other RSS mods seem to prefer to tell me that if I don't use MySQL then I should go do something anotomically complicated to myself.

MarkDHamill · Post by **MarkDHamill** » Thu Nov 29, 2007 10:47 pm

Scott, thanks for the offer. The user interface is virtually complete, unless I find bugs or need to tweak features as a result of trying to create the feed.

The user interface does change if you are registered. To see what changes, log in here:

http://potomactavern.org/phpBB3

Use this User Name: Smartfeed Tester
Use this Password: smartfeed

You should see forums that cannot be read by non-members.

Select the Smartfeed icon near the top right.

Note that when logged in you see "Show only your subscribed topics in the feed?" If you say yes, the New Topics control is disabled along with the forums, since logically they should be disabled.

Now, as for the program that generates the feed itself (smartfeed.php), I haven't started that. As I said, it will have to be rewritten. That will be a long process, unfortunately, because it is much harder than the user interface. I will start simple with text only newsfeeds and slowly build it up.

scott_thewspot · Post by **scott_thewspot** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 1:38 am

A couple of comments/suggestions/bugs:

1. My IE7 doesn't recognise the presence of the feed automatically when visiting the page. Could that be added as part of the mod process? If you don't know it I can pass on the couple of lines that make it happen.
2. The option for "Show only subscribed topics", will that also work for "subscribed forums" which is now available in v3?
3. The select boxes for the forums to read is a bit odd. If i untick "subsubforum2" then it also unticks the parent forums above it in the hierarchy. What happens if I want to feed from one of those parent forums but not the sub forums below it?

MarkDHamill · Post by **MarkDHamill** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 3:21 am

scott_thewspot wrote:A couple of comments/suggestions/bugs:

1. My IE7 doesn't recognise the presence of the feed automatically when visiting the page. Could that be added as part of the mod process? If you don't know it I can pass on the couple of lines that make it happen.
2. The option for "Show only subscribed topics", will that also work for "subscribed forums" which is now available in v3?
3. The select boxes for the forums to read is a bit odd. If i untick "subsubforum2" then it also unticks the parent forums above it in the hierarchy. What happens if I want to feed from one of those parent forums but not the sub forums below it?

Scott, in the phpBB version I added instruction on how to automatically advertise a feed for your forum through putting HTML in the <head>. I will probably do something for this version, but that comes last. Don't worry about it. As smartfeed.php isn't ready, it would be false advertising for me to suggest the presence of a feed.

In phpBB 3, you can subscribe to certain topics. I made a design decision that in this version if you have subscribed topics and you click this radio button you will get a feed for only subscribed topics. That's why the subscribed forums is disabled.

As for unticking "subsubforum2" the unticks above it are by design. Although, now that I think about it, there is an inconsistency here. phpBB 3 allows a forum or a category to have subforums. A category has no posts by itself, but only in the forums contained in it. So logically I need to change the logic so that if a forum has subforums, and someone unchecks a subforum the parent forum is not automatically unchecked. I'll look at that soon. If it is a category, the rule will hold. Thanks for the testing!

scott_thewspot · Post by **scott_thewspot** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 5:17 am

Maybe I'm not understanding something here, but on my forums I have a subscribed to a particular forum so I get notified of *any* new messages posted in it, but I also have subscribed topics from other forums as well which I will then be notified of *replies* to those topics.

Are you saying that I can only do one or the other?