Showing most recently updated forum threads on home page?

[greatphilosopher]

I noticed on <SNIP> (which has one of the most popular forums on the internet), that they have sections on their home page which show the 5 most recently updated threads in each of their forums.

They are shown as a list of links to those specific threads, with the thread titles as the anchor text.

I'd like to use a similar system on my website, but I can't work out how they do it! If you look at the source code, it just shows regular HTML links to the threads, and the thread titles written in normal text. Yet whenever the threads change, it automatically updates on the home page too.

Does anyone know how this is done?

[edited by: BlobFisk at 10:58 am (utc) on April 6, 2005]
[edit reason] No URLs please! See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[BlobFisk]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, greatphilosopher!

If you look at WebmasterWorld all the threads here are flat HTML files too! This is achieved at the back end by a CGI script creating a thread (from a template) with the new posts. An index can be built and new posts can be shown based on their timestamps.

The advantage of using flat HTML is speed and easy spiderable pages and sticky URIs...

HTH

[greatphilosopher]

Thank you for your reply.

So would anyone be able to show the actual script that does this, or where I can learn it? Is it difficult?

[maccas]

What forum software are you running?

[greatphilosopher]

Someone else mainly deals with the forum for me, and unfortunately I can't post any link because they're not allowed. I know it's a vBulletin forum, if that's what you're looking for?

I appreciate the replies :-)

[maccas]

You will need to look for a mod on their site or ask at the vbulletin forums, not sure if this google search is what you are after "Detailed Latest Posts". If you find a hack that does this just use SSI or php include to include it on any page.

[TheDoctor]

I have a script that displays the latest posts on a vBulletin forum. Sticky me if you'd like a copy.