18.8. Modifying the PHP-Nuke Submit News module

18.8.1. How to bypass article approval

The standard workflow for a news article is that the user writes it, submits it for approval by the administrator, the administrator reads it, approves and publishes it on the site. This has some advantages:

• Everybody can post, even anonymous users.

• Since the posts are checked, there is no risk of getting flooded with garbage posts.

But it also has some disadvantages too:

• Users have to wait to see their post published. This may not be what they expect, if actuality of content is highly important for the topics of your site.

• The administrators have to spend time on approving news articles. Waiting content (Figure 18-11) can be quite an administrative headache, if the site receives many user submissions a day (see, for example phpnuke.org, where there are dozens of submissions awaiting approval at any given time).

Fortunately, to bypass article approval, the solution is relatively simple (see Automatic Article Posting):

• For versions before PHP-Nuke 6.5:

  In the modules/Submit_News, in the function submitStory(), find this

  $result = sql_query("insert into ".$prefix."_queue values (NULL, '$uid', '$name', '$subject', '$story', '$storyext', now(), '$topic', '$catid', '$alanguage')", $dbi);

  Change it to this:

  $result = sql_query("insert into ".$prefix."_stories values (NULL, '$catid', '$name', '$subject', now(), '$story', '$storyext', '0', '0', '$topic', '$name', ", '0', '$alanguage', '0','0', '0', '0', '0')", $dbi);

  The story will get posted immediately, so you will want to make the Submit_News module only available to Users. Also, you will notice that it will now say “Posted By Some_user”, and it will no longer show in italics.

• For PHP-Nuke 6.5 and later, the solution is slightly different. Replace this:

  $sql = "INSERT INTO ".$prefix."_queue VALUES (NULL, '$uid', '$name', '$subject', '$story', '$storyext', now(), '$topic', '$alanguage')";

  with this:

  $sql = "insert into ".$prefix."_stories values (NULL, '$catid', '$name', '$subject', now(), '$story', '$storyext', '0', '0', '$topic', '$name', ", '0', '$alanguage', '0', '0', '0', '0','0', ")";

You will also want to change the language file "defines", or edit these lines in the function submitStory (this is what is displayed when the submission is sent.

echo "<center><font class=\"title\">"._SUBSENT."</font><br><br>"
."<font class=\"content\"><b>"._THANKSSUB."</b><br><br>"
.""._SUBTEXT.""
."<br>"._WEHAVESUB." $waiting "._WAITING."";

function formatAidHeader($aid) {
    global $prefix, $db;
    $sql = "SELECT url, email FROM ".$prefix."_authors WHERE aid='$aid'";
    $result = $db->sql_query($sql);
    $row = $db->sql_fetchrow($result);
    $url = $row[url];
    $email = $row[email];
    if (isset($url)) {
        $aid = "<a href=\"$url\">$aid</a>";
    } elseif (isset($email)) {
        $aid = "<a href=\"mailto:$email\">$aid</a>";
    } else {
        $aid = $aid;
    }
    echo "$aid";
}

function formatAidHeader($aid) {
    global $prefix, $db;
    $sql = "SELECT url, email FROM ".$prefix."_authors WHERE aid='$aid'";
    $result = $db->sql_query($sql);
    $row = $db->sql_fetchrow($result);
    $url = $row[url];
    $email = $row[email];
     if (isset($email)) {
        $aid = "<a href=\"mailto:$email\">$aid</a>";
    } else {
        $aid = $aid;
    }
    echo "$aid";
}

function formatAidHeader($aid) { 
    global $prefix, $db;
    $sql = "SELECT url, email FROM ".$prefix."_authors WHERE aid='$aid'";
    $result = $db->sql_query($sql);
    if($row = $db->sql_fetchrow($result)) {
        $url = $row[url]; 
        $email = $row[email]; 
        if (isset($url)) { 
            $aid = "<a href=\"$url\">$aid</a>";
        } elseif (isset($email)) {  
            $aid = "<a href=\"mailto:$email\">$aid</a>"; 
        } else {
            $aid = $aid;
        } 
   }else {
        $sql = "SELECT user_id FROM ".$prefix."_users WHERE username='$aid'"; 
        $result = $db->sql_query($sql); 
        $row = $db->sql_fetchrow($result);
        $user_id = $row[user_id];
        $aid = "<a
        href=\"modules.php?name=Forums&file=profile
&mode=viewprofile&u=$user_id\">$aid</a>";
    }
    echo "$aid"; 
}