Block to display EverQuest II and Vanguard Update Notes from the Sony website. Intended as a center block or module.

The included blocks will retrieve the Everquest II Update Notes from http://patch.everquest2.com:7010/patch/eq2/motd/en/updates_live.html or the Vanguard Update Notes from http://patch.vanguardsoh.net:7000/patch/vanguard/motd/en/updates_live.html, parse the server status and latest headlines out, and cache them for 1800 seconds (half-hour) in the {prefix}_blocks table.

This block is a good example of a method of retrieving content from an external site and caching it.

Also included are EQ2 and Vanguard modules to display the block data as a module. NOTE: This feature requires that the respective block be installed (but not necessarily marked as active).

NOTE1: This module requires outbound HTTP connectivity to the patch.everquest2.com server on TCP port 7010 for EQ2 and patch.vanguardsoh.net on TCP port 7000 for Vanguard. Make sure your server can connect outbound, or the block(s) will be unable to function. Fedora Core users (possibly others) will need to edit the /etc/selinux/targeted/booleans.local file and add "httpd_can_network_connect=1" (without the quotes). Other systems may need similiar changes. Read the httpd_selinux(8) man page for more information on this if your system uses this feature.

NOTE2: Do not use Dreamweaver to edit PHP files, there are known issues with Dreamweaver that can cause file corruption and complicate troubleshooting. Use a plain-text editor (such as Notepad or WordPad), or a programming editor, such as jEdit.

NOTE3: This is a "caching" block, and stores a copy of its output in the "content" field of the "{prefix}_blocks" table, and pulls from there rather than re-run all the queries (until the block needs to be updated). This works perfectly well until the stored block exceeds the TEXT field type it's stored in which has a maximum length of 65,535 (2^16 - 1) characters. This condition would pretty much only exists if $config['breakdown_shownames'] = 1, since the block stays a constant length that's within the limits of the TEXT field. Also, people with very small guilds, can possibly duck under the limit, even with it enabled. To work around this, the Roster Master installer will change the field type of the table from TEXT to MEDIUMTEXT. This should have no impact on the operation of the Dragonfly CMS core, or to database efficiency. However, please note that if you subsequently upgrade the Dragonfly CMS core, there is a good chance that the CMS installer will revert the field type back to TEXT, in which case it would have to be remedied once again by hand (using whatever SQL management interface that you are comfortable with).