Front page table for active topics

Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2006 5:28 pm (17 years, 8 months ago)

Hello,

Can you explain how you implemented the front page table for recent articles? I mean the table headed "Active Topics from our Forums"

Does it use your RSS feed or some other technique?

cheers,
Ben

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

We're using the following phpBB script:

http://www.matthijs.net/downloads/tools/active_topics.phps

However there are many others available on phpBB.com - this is simply the one we selected.

Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 8:25 pm (17 years, 8 months ago)

THanks Daniel, that looks pretty straightforward compared to some of the RSS things I was looking at.

cheers,
Ben

Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 2:40 pm (17 years, 7 months ago)

Hi Daniel,

I've got this working fine but could you tell me the php you use to get the time formatted in terms of mins/hours/days ago ?

thanks,
Ben

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

Ben,

I used the following function (this isn't my own function, but I can't remember where I got it):

Code:

/* Works out the time since the entry post, takes a an argument in unix time (seconds) */
function time_since($original) {
// array of time period chunks
$chunks = array(
array(60 * 60 * 24 * 365 , 'year'),
array(60 * 60 * 24 * 30 , 'month'),
array(60 * 60 * 24 * 7, 'week'),
array(60 * 60 * 24 , 'day'),
array(60 * 60 , 'hour'),
array(60 , 'minute'),
);

$today = time(); /* Current unix time */
$since = $today - $original;

// $j saves performing the count function each time around the loop
for ($i = 0, $j = count($chunks); $i < $j; $i++) {

$seconds = $chunks[$i][0];
$name = $chunks[$i][1];

// finding the biggest chunk (if the chunk fits, break)
if (($count = floor($since / $seconds)) != 0) {
// DEBUG print "\n";
break;
}
}

$print = ($count == 1) ? '1 '.$name : "$count {$name}s";

if ($i + 1 < $j) {
// now getting the second item
$seconds2 = $chunks[$i + 1][0];
$name2 = $chunks[$i + 1][1];

// add second item if it's greater than 0
if (($count2 = floor(($since - ($seconds * $count)) / $seconds2)) != 0) {
$print .= ($count2 == 1) ? ', 1 '.$name2 : ", $count2 {$name2}s";
}
}
return $print;
}