NewsTopica Feature Requests

[artwilliams]

Please place any NewsTopica feature requests in this thread. David has asked me to compile and organize them on his behalf. Thank you.

[anon]

The ability to add your own customized tags for parsing.

ex:

<item>
<title></title>
<link></link>
<description></description>
<MYTAG></MYTAG>
<ANOTHERTAG></ANOTHERTAG>
<pubDate></pubDate>
</item>


I feel that by doing so, this will help us adapt to the forever changing structures that are out there, making customization a synch for any feed and a heck of a lot less frustrating for the users who cannot modify source code to adapt.

[w2n]

Hi,

We are just waiting for see these features, in NewsTopica script very soon.


Guys, please let us know your views about these features, mentioned by me.

:lol:

[anon]

While I didn't read the post(yet), 'big kudos' to you for a well structured request list.

[w2n]

Thanks buddy for the great words! :lol:

In my mind, there are lot more features for NewsTopica, but, I want to go step by step, and highly appreciate if NewsTopica creator will include these features in the next version.

Our company is developing a very big portal, that will contain news in a very huge section, along with many other portal-like features. We are about to start marketing the site online and in the offline mthods like TV, Radio, Newspapers etc. We are eagerly waiting for the next NewsTopica version, which will contain the features said by me in that post.

8)

[anon]

Sounds like you are destined for greateness and have some really huge plans.

let me be the first to wish you much success in your endeavors.

:)

[mikedippel]

My news site is at: http://hobbyline.com/news/ I have the latest version and can no longer add RSS feeds via the admin panel. Of course I would like a fix for that. The error regards the fact that no OWNER is listed, thus an error.

I also would like to be able to incorporate perhaps one feed into some of my niche directories. That is, if I have a rv feed, I want to have just the list of rv-related news feeds to show on that other directory site. Perhaps this can be done via the iframe command? But I think a javascript would be better suited. Can we have a feature in newstopica that allows the placement of certain feeds on other sites?

[w2n]

Hey,

Many thanks again for the great words! :D

I think, it's the high time to get all the guys together and post all the features they are thinking, in this topic! So that, we can all discuss about those features and finalize from them, for the next NewsTopica version. Due to some other prioroties of the NewsTopica admins, the project has been delayed for some times, and I would really appreciate if we could all speed up the project, by gathering all the requested features here.

8)

[waheedmiah]

Hiya everyone how are you?

i was wondering if we could have a new template to go with Newstopica, like this one (perpper Mint)
http://www.web-designers-directory.org/phpLD-template.php

Thanx :)

[anon]

i really like topica lots, and we really do need a template. I have to finish up my sites, and have a few others to do as well as figure some directory problems on a few others (**censored****censored****censored****censored** this is adding up hahaha), but i might give it a go when i can get caught up.

[meandean]

maybe I just haven't looked in the right spot, but in the directory setup

/newstopica/admin/conf_settings.php?c=2&r=1

I see I have 3 options to sort. Page rank, hits and alpha.

If that's the case, can we add "Date/Time" ... rss aggregation is date sensitive so having link/articles on most recent to oldest (descending) order would be very helpful to the users.

If this option is available, can someone be kind enough to point me where?

(update - btw, it seems if links I list on the top page level are indeed in reverse chronologic - so I guess I'm only asking per category).

[David]

Take a look at this one
http://www.newstopica.com/demo3/index.php?c=5
It has the date. Am I not understanding correctly?
(Welcome, Dean) :)

[meandean]

Bah Feh -- figures I'd leave out important info!

Okay, the category is being fed by two different blogs.

So blog#1 threads show last to first ... THEN blog#2 threads show in desc. chronologic.

What I'd like is simply sort by date alone for the category, though it now appears that the link is part of the formula.
(btw, thanks for the welcome & quick reply)

update: yup, confirmed that's what's happening in categories. Added a third blog, ran the import ... got each blog in order[/URL], by date descending instead of each article by date descending regardless of link.

If I could get an option for date only ... wow, that'd be great!

[meandean]

Perhaps another useful feature would be the ability to either integrate with phplinkdirectory - and/or just cull out the base URLs for the websites being aggregated.

I would think this at least doable for RSS 2.0 and/or ATOM feeds that include website Title, Header, Description and Author information.

[David]

With regard to the date, can I have the url of your site?
Can you confirm whether you downloaded 3.0 or 3.01?

[meandean]

I want a 'combined' RSS feed for my front page ... so here's a hack that I'm hoping is coded MUCH better into an optional feature:

line 22 of templates/top_bar.tpl
Content visible to registered users only.

then line 106 of rss.php
Content visible to registered users only.

As I say, a horrible hack - but one that quickly demonstrates the insertion points for adding an RSS front page option.

[pixelsquares]

The ability to search for items during a specific date or a period within two dates given.

For example, "search accidents which happened on the 21st of june 2000" OR "search all accidents which happened between 1st of april 2001 till 1st of april 2002"

I believe this would be greatly appreciated since the longer your newstopica site has been there, the more "dated" information you have, and for someone to search for something like an earthquake which happened in japan 5 years ago on a specific date is abit hard (since earth quakes happens way too often there).

If you know what i mean.

[meandean]

search key words:

a) store all searches in a database - keyword and count
b.1) retrieve searches, order by highest count to lowest
b.2) provide a means of retrieving top 10, 15, etc ... as hyperlinks
(/newstopica/index.php?search={$keyword})

Likewise, data could also be used later for:
"last searches"

Basically, it allows you to establish newstopica as a mean to track search memes.

[meandean]

Oh, here's one more no brainer - capture the RSS name - either via user input, or via the channel->title tag (that is the top level <title> in the RSS feed).

Probably stow the value in PLD_RSS_FEED
.

[ping]

1) How about using a filter to sort the news and group similar articles together and sort them by relevance. Google News does this.
I believe there is an open source script that does a similar thing its called SuxOr and its on hotscripts.net

2) Can the size used by the news articles be reduced ?

3) When you delete an rss feed it would be a good idea if all the news articles from that feed would be also deleted.

4) Create a user page or enable users to create their own personal news page (just like google news)

5) Let users rate, comment news. Maybe a similar fonction to http://digg.com/ ?

6) Make it easier for making templates. ie: not having to updates templates when new versions come out, move all the php code from the tpl files and use a similar layout as Autotheme (hp theming engine for multiple cms).

7) Change all instances were phpld is mentionned in Newstopica (cosmetic touch).

8) Maybe show the top news inside each category not just frontpage.

9) Break down the top news on index by category

10) Paginated search results

11) Send this to a friend by email fonction

12) Create static content pages from within the admin panel that will use the template.

13) URL Rewrite : when i have a category called 'médias' it changes it to 'm__dias', maybe it should just change the 'é' for and 'e' as the underscore isnt very good for SEO.

14) A page to list all the news sources

15) Filter the news by source

16) Newsletter fonction so user can subscribe to daily or weekly updates on one or more cats.

[meandean]

I don't work for the NewsTopica project - but having gotten relatively dirty with the code, having experience with aggregation since '02 and being a software product manager for my day job, here's my thought and caveats on some of the suggestions:

1) How about using a filter to sort the news and group similar articles together and sort them by relevance. Google News does this.
I believe there is an open source script that does a similar thing its called SuxOr and its on hotscripts.net

Since you can already list a page of articles by category, I'm thinking that one need only add an option to the search feature to add the current category page to the search string.

2) Can the size used by the news articles be reduced ?

Yes, but, if you bring in an article that has HTML divisions or paragraphs then you run the risk of truncating an article before the closing tag.

3) When you delete an rss feed it would be a good idea if all the news articles from that feed would be also deleted.

I agree

4) Create a user page or enable users to create their own personal news page (just like google news)

I agree, but not until some other more basic issues are addressed.

5) Let users rate, comment news. Maybe a similar fonction to http://digg.com/ ?

That would be nice, but that would also mean essentially adding the same overhead as an aggregating blogging tool, such as WordPress.

6) Make it easier for making templates. ie: not having to updates templates when new versions come out, move all the php code from the tpl files and use a similar layout as Autotheme (hp theming engine for multiple cms).

I agree ... and and with the exception of the calendar, remove all the table taggery.

7) Change all instances were phpld is mentionned in Newstopica (cosmetic touch).

I agree

8) Maybe show the top news inside each category not just frontpage.

I think that's already possible with a bit of template magic - or are you talking about top news in terms of page rank?

9) Break down the top news on index by category

I would want that as an option - perhaps a sort option - as I want/need the latest stories first regardless of category. I suspect others may want similar flexibility.

10) Paginated search results

I believe that functionality exists?

11) Send this to a friend by email fonction

I agree, again a feature not to hard to build into one's templates.

12) Create static content pages from within the admin panel that will use the template.

I agree, WordPress and MovableType offer similar options, tough I'd want other stuff done first.

13) URL Rewrite : when i have a category called 'médias' it changes it to 'm__dias', maybe it should just change the 'é' for and 'e' as the underscore isnt very good for SEO.

No feelings either way on this one.

14) A page to list all the news sources

I agree STRONGLY - there should be a phplindirectory like of "sources" or "feeds" - needs RSS support as well.

15) Filter the news by source

Makes sense, I agree.

16) Newsletter fonction so user can subscribe to daily or weekly updates on one or more cats.[/quote]

Not sure if this is as needed as the ability to create RSS files on the fly based on category/search filtering - which would being in buckets more traffic.

[ping]

Would it be possible to exclude certain cats from search or have an advanced search where you can restrict the search ?

[Guizmo]

Well, my only suggestion is that Newstopica follows the free Newsgator online rss aggregator service Newsgator all along the gui ideas (beginning by the navigation treeview and entries count) and so on, that would be perfect, a direct and immediate motivation to buy.

So Newstopica would be the sitebar for rss. You could eventually discuss with the developer of NewzCrawler the capability to synchronise entries with Newstopica

[mikedippel]

I run many niche directories and would like to be able to show a specific news feed to each of those directories. Is this possible with the current version? If not, can it be incorporated into the new release?

[meandean]

I still think there is a basic need to create a directory of the sites that comprise the links.

This isn't hard now that the magpie aggregator has been employed - the sites directory built off the <link /> <title /> and <tagline /> tags in ATOM, or the <title /> <link /> and <description /> tag in RSS.

[David]

Ok, in about 1-2 days there will be at least a beta with some new fixes/featues. Hopefully, there will be time to get this in there.

[ping]

Content visible to registered users only.
Wow, good to see everything is on track.

Just another idea :

Could there be a url rewrite for the search, eg: search-blabla.html
search-blabla-page1.html ?

[Guizmo]

something like newsgator

[meandean]

Add RSS URL, RSS LINK, RSS Title and RSS Description to the $links array (passed to smarty templates like link.tpl) so we can ID the home page of the site on which the link exists, similar to Technorati, blogLines and online aggregation services.

For example, line 163 of Index.php - how much more useful would this be:
Content visible to registered users only.The last four fields giving Newstopica providers the ability now to reference by name (and link) the contributing source of the individual article/link?

At least put the "get links SQL" in an /includes/functions.php we could modify/augment/override?
.

[ping]

A fairly major one IMO : Fix the calendar, why should the claendar let you view news for 2009 when its obvious there aint any. Maybe adjust the dropdown menu so it will only allow from : first day news was posted > current day.

[David]

Content visible to registered users only.


Ok, I will get this done and publish a method for doing this in the coming days.

[David]

Content visible to registered users only.

Just wanted to note this is getting done, and I should have it for you soon. :)

[rebel]

any update on this? :)

[David]

It was done:
http://www.phplinkdirectory.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8906