Vbulletin 3.5 Showing Recent Posts

As @Dani noted there are built-in ways to get vBulletin content and @digital-ether was right to think in terms of a feed. @noppid’s drop‑in script and @mikeSQL’s include/echo idea are useful if you want something ready-made. For most sites the most robust pattern is: fetch the forum’s public feed server‑side, cache it, sanitize the items, and render trimmed links. That keeps load low, preserves forum visibility rules, and avoids bootstrapping the whole forum on every request.

A minimal, practical PHP pattern (replace the feed URL and paths for your site):

<?php
$feed_url = 'https://your-forum.example/path/to/feed'; // set to your forum feed
$cache_file = __DIR__ . '/cache/vb_recent.xml';
$ttl = 300; // seconds

if (!is_dir(dirname($cache_file))) mkdir(dirname($cache_file), 0755, true);

if (!file_exists($cache_file) || (time() - filemtime($cache_file) > $ttl)) {
    $ch = curl_init($feed_url);
    curl_setopt_array($ch, [
        CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
        CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
        CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 5,
        CURLOPT_USERAGENT => 'SiteBot/1.0'
    ]);
    $xml = curl_exec($ch);
    $http = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
    curl_close($ch);
    if ($http === 200 && $xml) file_put_contents($cache_file, $xml);
}

$xml = @simplexml_load_file($cache_file);
if ($xml && isset($xml->channel->item)) {
    echo "<ul>";
    $max = 8;
    foreach ($xml->channel->item as $i => $item) {
        if ($i >= $max) break;
        $t = htmlspecialchars((string)$item->title, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
        $l = htmlspecialchars((string)$item->link, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
        echo "<li><a href=\"$l\">$t</a></li>";
    }
    echo "</ul>";
}
?>

Troubleshooting and cautions: ensure the cache folder is writable, set a sensible TTL for your traffic, add a fallback when fetch fails, and always escape output (no raw descriptions). If you need richer data (BBcode, avatars, permission-aware content) consider a controlled server-side DB integration or bootstrapping vBulletin — but only after weighing complexity, performance, and security (use read‑only DB credentials, honor visibility flags, and cache aggressively).