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?
Here's a sample of Google News:
http://news.google.com/ (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 (http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/answer.py?answer=59255&hl=en)). Is that possible?
They are using RSS, so yes, it's possible. Use the RSS Feed Poster mod (http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=624) to do this.
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 (http://auditbible.com/index.php?action=News), and these posts: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=63203.msg1486844#msg1486844 (http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=63203.msg1486844#msg1486844)
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=86793.msg1485436#msg1485436 (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?
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.
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 (http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=172133.msg1489106#msg1489106).
Would you know how I could go about dressing-up the page (http://auditbible.com/index.php?action=News) 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)?
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?
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 (http://auditbible.com/index.php?action=News%20Alerts).
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.
Looks good here. If you want to have it inside a "box", you can try using the table tags for it instead:
<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).
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!