Display Recent Blog Posts on Directory Sidebar

Some people asked me how do i display my recent blog posts on directory sidebar. Well there are two methods, first is using javascript but we wont talk about it. Why because, it is executed on client side and doesnt come from server side, so it is like not SE friendly and so people like me and you hate it.


Second method is to use a PHP script to read RSS and convert it to HTML. For this you need two files named rss2html.php and template.html. [ Download them here ]. Then follow these steps.


1. Upload both of them to your directory root folder.


2. Edit your directory’s init.php file and somewhere in middle spot out the following


$tpl->assign(’MetaRobots’ , trim ($MetaRobots) );
$tpl->assign(’MetaKeywords’ , trim ($MetaKeywords) );
$tpl->assign(’MetaDescription’, trim ($MetaDescription) );
$tpl->assign(’MetaAuthor’ , trim ($MetaAuthor) );
$tpl->assign(’MetaCopyright’ , trim ($MetaCopyright) );


3. Immediately after that insert the following code


$rssurl=”http://www.web1directory.com/rss2html.php”;
$blogfeedurl=”http://www.web1directory.com/blog/feed/”;
$templateurl=”http://www.web1directory.com/template.html”;
$url=$rssurl.”?XMLFILE=”.$blogfeedurl.”&TEMPLATE=”.$templateurl;
$html = implode(”, file($url));
$tpl->assign(’latestposts’,$html);


4. Remember to edit the top three lines. $rssurl (first one) is the path to your rss2html.php file, second one is your Blog feed url and third one is template.html file URL. (DONT USE MINE PLEASE)


5. Save the init.php file


6. Open your template and whereever you want the recent posts to appear, put {$latestposts}. You can edit the template.html to control the looks of your directory


7. You are done.


regards
aditya

 

I was the first person to ask this
thanks for the code will try it now and update in this thread with the results.
Amit

 

Green Rep given, not like you need anymore but I find this to be very usefull and thank you!

 

very nice info aditya ... i'll surely try this .. thanks alot.

also if you know how to add all the alexa icons and stuff let me kno as well

 

so nice of you Aditya, thanks for sharing the code.

 

Cool!
Thanks for sharing!

 

Can I see a demo of what are you talking about

 

yeah goto my directory and see sidebar, you will see 5 recent posts from the blog there.

 

I was just planning to implement it. It seems that you saved some of my time. Thanks.

 

This is a great method. I wanted to be able to put the post anywhere on the directory and wasn't sure if this did that or if it was a set template with the blogs on the side, so I had to do it differently.

I've posted the how to here and added a link to this method as well since I think both methods can be used. The hard part for most people isn't really getting the code and the nice seo friendly url, it'll probably be getting the templates to mirror. PHPLD to wordpress isn't that that. Just take the source from the page output and copy the header and such over. Since Wordpress uses CSS, it might help to know some of it.

http://www.linkwebdirectory.com/web/2007/04/11/integrating-wordpress-with-phpld/

 

http://www.linkwebdirectory.com/web/2007/04/11/integrating-wordpress-with-phpld/

There is nothing at this link.

So let me understand, the blog itself is not at another place and you are using RSS feeds, the blog is right inside phpld?

thanks

 

I tried this last night using phpld 2.1 and received error messages. Does this require 3.* ?

 

As the directory in which Aditya installed is 3.x i think it would need 3x version for the feature to come.

 

I went with Magpie RSS which is how i parse the information from the voisd webmaster blog to the voisd webmaster directory.

 

hello. i'm getting an error for this code.

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ':' in /home/blah/public_html/mysite/init.php on line 138

 

what version of phpld are you using ? i am pretty sure i had that same error with 2.1 ' the free version '

 

im using v3.2

 

I am also looking for this one, and thanks for sharing, deserves a lot of greens

 

Nice work aditya , sent you a green as well.