This must be the issue on our LDM too - many users will complain somtimes a link is broken and once it's gone through this "30 second timeout" seems that the link is actually broken.

Okay... let me summarize the problems I am having with 2.2.5...

1. clear_thumbnails() does not exist
2. SCAN mass upload feature is broken... all links get default values of:
- file size listed as -999bytes
- date listed as 12/31/69 05:00
- parent forum = 1 (instead of open access none)

Not sure about (1) - I can't reproduce the problem with 2.2.5 gold - I recall that problem but thought it was fixed a while ago.

(2) is definitedly a bug in 2.2.5 and is fixed in 2.2.6 - which I keep hoping will be uploaded before this weekend.

Just to be clear -

If an entry in LDM

a) points to a downloadable file (i.e. has a filetype that appears in the VBulletin Attachments table), and
b) is set up as a full url (i.e. http::/site/dir/file.typ) - NB it doesn't matter if site is actually your own site or somebody else's

then you are likely to have problems with running out of CPU time if the file is bigger than a few MBytes. This is because the work of retrieving the file and then retransmitting it to the user is expensive. There isn't much one can do about that.

LDM is much more efficient if the file is actually stored on your own server and the entry is set up using the local file name rather than as a full url.

Note also that these problems do not occur if the entry points to a filetype that is not in the VBulletin attachment table, because in this situation, LDM itself is not actually managing the transfer - the user's browser and the original site are doing all the work. However, this gain in efficiency is achieved at a loss of secrecy about the location of the file.

Thanks - will update everything soon.

thank you Andrew

your hints helped me. But I wana explain why I want to give my users the ability to know the full url. because they need to upload thier images into my server, then can put the link as source of the image :

thats mean : I like to give the user a link after he/she upload an image. so he can i.e. put that link in html tag as <img src="image_link" />
in this case the image will apear directly without need to jump or click.

Hey Andrew, I noticed you fulfilled my request and set the hits grab at the beginning of a download instead of at the end, thus letting the "hits" system work for shared servers that how a low wait_timeout... However, I noticed that the system still holds a sustained connection in which I get an error report after 20 seconds (my wait_timeout setting). If the hits grab is now at the beginning of the file, is there still a need to sustain the connection which is killed off by wait_timeout?

I imagine that the connection is being held by VBulletin itself. I don't explicitly let this go. I will take a look at the options.

Hey Andrew... any possibility for an extra profile field for links? Just an extra field where I can store an additional piece of information, but not part of the description? So I can call this extra piece of information in a template somewhere?

If I understand you correctly, the url you want is http://yoursite/youforum/local_resize.php?linkid=NN.