Hi, Paul!

A problem has come up for me after updating first page news add-on to the latest version (3.4 - 27-Aug-2019): before the upgrade, I was able to display two sets of news on my non miniBB-powered home page. This is the setup--I've shortened the file names here for illustration purposes:

news.php
news2.php
news-template.html
news-template-news2.html
news-template_cell.html

The php scripts would be pulling content from different forums, each would have a corresponding template, but both share the same "cell" template.

I call the news using a simple include <!--#include virtual="/path/script"-->.

The old set-up worked fine; but after the upgrade, I have only one set of content displaying, but not the other (i.e., news works, but not news2). I have checked the path to the templates, checked the $b1 variable in the script files ...

Years ago, someone else reported an issue -- same symptom, but I am not sure whether it is the same cause, given the age of the first report: https://www.minibb.com/forums/msg.php?id=25184

Please help. :(
marsbar

I couldn't be sure what an exact problem is, and not sure how you cloned both scripts... but if the news.php script works, then maybe you could just clone it and change settings inside to let it work the same way. I.e. if you created both scripts from an original add-on, then you could try to clone a working copy, not the original script.

Also, please note that the newer version has an option to display nothing if there are no fresh news or topics found. This is regulated via the new setting called "$newsTimeLimit". Make sure you really have fresh topics in your second forum, or you have to set this value to 0 to skip checking for freshness and display whatever is present disregarding its date.

I could say something more only seeing your scripts and debugging them, so at least need an FTP access, which you could drop on my email if you still have this trouble.

Thanks so much for your super fast and detailed reply, Paul!

Good news: success at last! The fix was to modify the value set for $newsTimeLimit: I have it set to zero now.

Just so that I understand how $newsTimeLimit works, does the system check the age of the topic or the age of the last post? (From my previous errors, I am thinking it is looking at the first creation date of a topic, not the last updated date of a topic.)

With thanks,
marsbar

Yes, this option is related to the initial topic creation date only. It makes sense only if `$post_sort` setting is equal to '1' i.e. News are based on the new Topics and not new Posts. If you sort by the age of the last post, definitely set it to 0.