• Registered: 2006-03-27
  • Posts: 28

Topic: Thinking about using PunBB but would like to show recent forum topics

I'm thinking about using PunBB but I'm wondering if it's possible to show recent forum topics on the homepage of my site and how would I go about doing that?

Does PunBB have an RSS feed built in? If so, if there's no other way I think I could use a plugin from my CMS that will put new topics from an RSS feed into my homepage template of my site?

2 Reply by MattF

  • MattF
  • Senior Member
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  • From: South Yorkshire, England
  • Registered: 2007-03-15
  • Posts: 1,956

Re: Thinking about using PunBB but would like to show recent forum topics

Check the wiki over on punres.org for the recent posts/topics. It's a part of the mini portal mod. PunBB has extern.php for RSS feeds. I've also posted up a RSS and an Atom generator on here somewhere, and there's the Alex King RSS one too, somewhere on here.

MattF's Website

  • Registered: 2006-03-27
  • Posts: 28

Re: Thinking about using PunBB but would like to show recent forum topics

Thanks!

I think Alex King's RSS one is more for what I need. I could be misunderstanding though?

Looks like the mini portal allows you to add announcements and recent topics/articles to the forum homepage, but I want to add a recent forum topics section to the homepage of my site. The forum will not be site, just an added part of the site.

4 Reply by MattF

  • MattF
  • Senior Member
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  • From: South Yorkshire, England
  • Registered: 2007-03-15
  • Posts: 1,956

Re: Thinking about using PunBB but would like to show recent forum topics

Just use the relevant parts of the code from the portal mod and display it where you want it. smile

MattF's Website

  • Registered: 2006-03-27
  • Posts: 28

Re: Thinking about using PunBB but would like to show recent forum topics

I guess I'm just confused... on the miniportal wiki page, it's a lot of info to take in for me being not real experienced with punbb. With that said, as I look down through the different parts of the page, I don't see anything that refers to "recent topics" or similar? I must be overlooking it here?

Thanks

  • Registered: 2006-04-30
  • Posts: 382

Re: Thinking about using PunBB but would like to show recent forum topics

Yes, you can get them in RSS or HTML format very very easily, you can even decide which forums to include in your feeds.
Check punbb oficial documentation:
http://punbb.org/docs/dev.html

  • Registered: 2006-03-27
  • Posts: 28

Re: Thinking about using PunBB but would like to show recent forum topics

I'm really not following much here. You say it's very very easy, but to someone without any php/mysql knowledge, how easy is this?

I'm utterly confused after looking at the page you supplied. To show the 15 most recent topics, is the only thing I need to do is past "include('http://host.com/forums/extern.php?action=active');" in my template where I want the topics to go?

  • Smartys
  • Former PunBB Developer
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  • Registered: 2004-04-30
  • Posts: 7,844

Re: Thinking about using PunBB but would like to show recent forum topics

Assuming your CMS accepts PHP in the templates and you replace that URL with the actual URL to your extern.php file, yes.

  • Registered: 2006-03-27
  • Posts: 28

Re: Thinking about using PunBB but would like to show recent forum topics

So, is that all I need or is there some sort of add on to make it work correctly?

  • Smartys
  • Former PunBB Developer
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  • Registered: 2004-04-30
  • Posts: 7,844

Re: Thinking about using PunBB but would like to show recent forum topics

extern.php outputs in either HTML or RSS format. The code you referred to outputs it in HTML. I don't know what CMS you're using or anything about your setup, so I can't possibly know whether that's all you need or not wink

  • Registered: 2006-03-27
  • Posts: 28

Re: Thinking about using PunBB but would like to show recent forum topics

Sorry, I guess in my confusion, I don't even know what questions to ask so that they make sense. wink

I'm using ExpressionEngine.

When I asked if there was some sort of add on to make ti work correctly, I was referring to punbb. I didn't know if there was something that I needed to add on to punbb to make this all work, or if I simply need to copy and past the corresponding "include" code where I'd like the entries to show up at?

I may be wrong about this, but what I anticipated doing was using ExpressionEngine's MagPie plugin which retrieves and parses RSS feeds. So, all I really needed to do was figure out a way to publish an RSS feed with punbb so that I could use that RSS feed URL in my MagPie plugin code...