For my site I have a number of forums and my users post news daily. Rather than post news everyday myself I decided it would be best to find a way to mark threads as news rather than move them into a forum for news.

The benefit of this is that you can leave the thread in the forum its in and nto have to worry about members not being able to find the thread.


In the Admin CP

Go to Post Icons > Post Icon Manager
Now click [Add New Post Icon Category].

Title: News
Display Order: 2

Save.

Now on the page where you are redirected (Edit Post Icon Categories) click Post Icon Permissions on the icon category you just created. Set the category so that is only accessible by admin, mods or whatever group you want to have the ability to put news on your vBa index page.

Now go to Post Icons > Upload Post Icon
If your icons folder isn't set to CHMODD 0777 you'll need to do so or just upload news.gif to your icons folder manually via FTP.

Now go to Add Post Icon

Title: News
Post Icon File Path: images/icons/news.gif
Post Icon Category: News
Display Order: 1

Save.

Getting the Thread Icon ID

Back in the Post Icon Manager click [view]
Then on your icon click [edit]

You should see your id number in the title of the box - "Post Icon: News (id: 57)" (number will vary)

File edits in modules/news.php

In modules/news.php find
WHERE forumid IN($vba_options[portal_news_forumid]) AND thread.visible = 1 AND thread.open != 10 $notdeleted

Replace with (updated on 2/24/05)
WHERE thread.iconid IN($vba_options[portal_news_forumid]) AND thread.visible = 1 AND thread.open != 10 $notdeleted

Save and Upload.

Now return to AdminCP and under CMPS default settings and put your icon ID number in the field in your admin options that was once used for the news forum ID.


How to Display News
To display news you simply select the icon that was uploaded as the thread icon - not post icon! - meaning you have to select the icon when creating the thread OR via edit thread in the thread tools moderation menu. If you try to select the thread icon via the edit button it will not work.

Enjoy. I'll answer any questions you may have. I hope my instructions were clear. :)

2/24: Updated query. New query uses field in admin cp for News Forum ID rather than hardcoding it. Note this renders your news forum useless.

3/25: For best support visit this thread (http://www.vbadvanced.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5193).