Insert Google News Alert Results in forum

[58tbird]

Is there some way to display the results of Google Alerts on a forum?

My forum would benefit tremendously by having 3-4 or more current news stories fed by my Google Alerts to each board.  Perhaps a news ticker, or just something similar to a Google ad banner (and if it paid per click, all the better). 

I'm new to the forum world, so I don't know if there is anything like this, or if I'm asking for the moon.

Does anyone have any ideas or insights for me?

[58tbird]

Here's a sample of Google News:

http://news.google.com/

Google can customize searches and generate News Alerts that look just like this, but only include relevant stories to your customized Alert terms.

Is there a way to have these feed into some sort of display on a SMF forum?  Perhaps, a separate page can be setup (maybe like the Centralized Attachments mod does for attachments - I haven't used it so I'm not sure how that works).

I guess I'm looking for a way to add a feed reader to my forum (http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/answer.py?answer=59255&hl=en).  Is that possible?

[greyknight17]

They are using RSS, so yes, it's possible. Use the RSS Feed Poster mod to do this.

[58tbird]

Hi greyknight17!

Thank you for your help.  In researching this since my post, I thought maybe the answer was to use the Custom Action Mod.  So, I tried it and seem to have gotten what I'm looking for only I can't seem to make it accessible.  For a look at what I'm talking about, see this link, and these posts: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=63203.msg1486844#msg1486844
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=86793.msg1485436#msg1485436

Which do you think is better for this: the Custom Action Mod or the RSS Feed Poster Mod?

[greyknight17]

If you just want to pull the feeds off the site, probably the RSS Feed Poster. I say give it a try and see which one suits you better

Let us know how it went.

[58tbird]

Thank you again greyknight17 - I sure do appreciate all the help you've been to me on this and so many other issues.  I'm sure I would have given up long ago had it not been for you.

I've been pretty busy since your last reply - sorry it's taken me so long to respond.  I had a little crisis that took me about 6 hours to remedy last night (I accidentally deleted my index.templat.php file - but finally got it back).

Anyway, leading up to that I located the Website Tab Mod and installed it.  It now links directly to the url for my Google fed page, except for a couple of issues I'm working on.

Would you know how I could go about dressing-up the page a little (like putting the feed results in a box matching the default core theme's format or, at least, inserting a space or two between the Google ad and the feed results)?

[greyknight17]

Can you take a screenshot of what you have there showing the Google ad and feed results? Did you insert the Google Ad code manually?

[58tbird]

Yes - I copied and pasted the Google Ajax code into the Custom Action Settings box (...I guess that's not manually, is it?).  I've attached a screen print, or I believe you can access the page here.

Okay, I placed <br> prior to the Google code so that makes it look better.  But I guess I was looking for some way to make the results display in a simple box, like on the Help page.  This isn't critical, though, because the way it looks right now is fine.

Also, I'm wondering if there's some way to add a text box where users could add their own term and get temporary custom results displayed (results would only display for that user and not become a permanent part of the list).  Maybe this would be a monumental task because I imagine it would have to have the ability to place the term in the Google code in a way that would accommodate multiple concurrent but temporary search terms.

I didn't think to attach the code previously, in case you were interested.

[greyknight17]

Looks good here. If you want to have it inside a "box", you can try using the table tags for it instead:

Code Select Expand

<table>
<tr>
<td>Insert your code here</td>
</tr>
</table>

Not sure about the custom results box though.

If the original issue is resolved, you may mark your first post as solved (change message icon to checkmark).

[58tbird]

Thanks for reminding me - I marked it complete.  And thank you for ckecking things out for me, I appreciate it.  I tried using the table code, but it made no visible difference.  Like I said before, though, I'm satisfied with the way it looks now.  Thanks very much greyknight17!