2.0.6 is sweet from what i can see :D cheers for that andrew few questions tho.. my mp3's still dont play in the player ive enabled the player (any suggestions) also i back the bandwidth option that is cool..

theres only one suggestion ( well really a request) i have and that is a whats hot section & whats new section for every category would this be possible or ?


cheers loads andrew

benj

Okay, what do I do with this error?? I got this after installing 2.0.6 over my existing 2.0.5 version.

"Critical error: different versions of software, templates, phrases and database.
Software: 2.0.6 database: 2.0.5
Cannot continue - ask administrator to correct."

I can't get to LDM AdminCP either :( I can manually edit the .php file and lower the version number, but don't want to screw up.

I haven't dug into this yet, but maybe one small thing to add could be to the sort by: feature and make it so people can sort by ratings. Then maybe the ratings would also be a bit more important/encouraged.

Man, this was just what I was looking for from my refrigeration site.

Thank you very much for a very very very very good product.

for some reasons the rating *'s don't usually appear for me, and when they do its usually just the 2 ** selection and/or the 5 ***** selection.

1.) I am wondering if anyone knows why the downloads using this script would be limited to only 20KBps roughly? Any idea how to fix that (I'm guessing its in my php settings or something?

My PHP info: http://www.observedtrials.net/info.php


2.) I'm guessing upload_maxspace is set in bytes, but I figure it probably can't hurt to change:
upload_maxspace
Total filespace available for use by uploads; 0: no limit

to:

upload_maxspace
Total filespace (bytes) available for use by uploads; 0: no limit

Anyhow, just a suggestion :p.


3.) How about user selectable permissions for users that are allowed to upload files?

For instance, we set permissions based on forum permissions, how about a table where we would make our own name up, like "subscribed users", "regular users", "anonymous" users and set the permissions for these new groups (based on forum permissions), then the uploading users can just check off who they want it to be available for. This way they don't get confused by our forum permissions stuff. Hopefully you understand what I mean here.

4.) How about making it so users can only upload under certain categories. I see this entire upload feature being more useful for sharing the link on the forum than people actually using the downloads database, I don't want them to be able to mess with my categories.

5.) Did you set the max filesize to 200,000 bytes? If so, how can I change that?

I think those are all my suggestions/questions, but I wanted to say thanks again, because I've been a user since 1.22 and its been absolutely wonderful for me :).

Matt

I'd like to choose between the links setup, where you click on a category and see a list of live links and a downloads setup, where you click on a category and you see a list of files (with the description and/or thumbnail) but clicking on a file name brings you to a new page for that file.

So something like this if it makes sense.

Category
-Sub-Category of links
-->live link
-->live link
-->live link
-Sub-Category of files
-->file description
--->file page + live download link
-->file description
--->file page + live download link

ok i found out how to make the player work my fault cheers...

Benj, how did you get it to work?

man you need to suppy a path to your post icons in the settings something like "images/misc" well thats mine anyway then a little winamp symbol comes up next to your mp3 links and when you click on that it'll play in the jukebox

ah, is the max file size derived from our attachments options $maxupload or $vbphrase[ll_uploadmaxsize]? Can we set that seperately? And can we mess with only accepting certain mime types?

Did you reinstall through the VB product manager (remember to allow 'overwrite') or did you simply upload the code?

If necessary, the fix is simply to uninstall the product and then reinstall - don't worry, the uninstall does not destroy your database tables.

The main factor influencing download speed is whether you identify the files as full urls or as filenames without a url. The worst case is when the url points to someone else's server, but http://yoursite/dir/file.type will be much slower that /dir/file.type

Yes, I agree. Actually, it will accept the same format as the php.ini file, i.e. a number optionally followed by K, M or G

I understand, this is a good idea and I'll add it to the list of things to think about

Ditto a good idea

No, the file types that can be uploaded are read from the VB attachments table (VB/admincp/attachmenets/extensions and sizes) and in that you can set the maximum size per filetype

Yes, this makes sense, will think about it.

See the answer just up a little. Per mimetype, the maximum filesize is set from vb/admincp/attachmenets/extensions and sizes, taking into account the overall maximum values forced in your php.ini file.

I have this installed with about 40 links and so far it works great. I have two questions though

1st question is about link_imagesize

What is a good size to set on average I guess, 300, 1000? Any ideas so they are not to big but convey a decent picture?

2nd question is about downloads. I have movies on my site (WMV, MPG, AVI) Is it possible to set these as available to download or view? I would rather ask and get an answer and then screw up my board then try it and screw it up without having asked..

At any rate, great hack, installed with ZERO problems!

Yep, I reinstalled the XML file through vB Product manager and even saw the correct version. I didn't try to uninstall it, cuz I was afraid that it would destroy my links. Now that you mentioned that it won't, I'll give it a shot and update you with the status. Version 2.0.5 works flawlessly BTW. Great job! :D

Good idea.

I wanted to get reactions to the home page version of this before I could see about putting it into other categories too

I'd keep it small - 150 or so - one reason is that these thumbnails are regenerated on every page display (maybe that needs rethinking) and if you make them too big you'll have a big hit on your server.

It's certainly possible, but you need to think carefully about the cpu and bandwidth consequences. In particular, *dont try to set the video up as a full url http://yoursite/video.fil (or worse http://somewhereelse/video.fil, as this will really kill you. Host them on your own server and identify them with just their filename.

Even less demanding is to modify the force_download setting so that the files are accessed as simple links rather than processed through the script - but this will make the file location completely visible and exposes you to leeching.

150 or so it is!

as far as the movies, they have always been up, mainly only to registered users as a hook I guess to get people to register. I think in a year I have hit 6% of my monthly limit for bandwidth and that was when I uploaded all of them.

If I linked them it would be as movies/moviename.dhe whatever vs. the http: route. I am assuming if I do it that way they embed and auto play? I am not to keen on auto play but I am trying to understand the media player in this I guess, I had assumed it was for MP3's. Would I have to add the media extensions to the list?

anyway to make it so when they add a link it also makes a thread in a selected forum, wit hthe title and the link in it, ect?

I found this all a bit complicated !! It works as follows:

- Assuming the filetype is registered in the vb/attachments table, then - when the use clicks on the link - LDM sends the headers that are defined in that table, then dumps the contents of the file. Normally, that will produce an Open/Save As dialog at the user's end - but depending on the software that has been installed, it may fire up an application. Adobe Acrobat is the worst culprit in this regard.

- If the filetype is not registered in the vb/attachments table, behaviour depends on the browser and software loaded on the user's computer. It may or may not offer an open/save dialog or simply fire up an application.

So in general it's a good idea to register the file types in vb/attachments so that there's more control.

- For the embedded player, this only works for registered filetypes. It behaves the same way as a normal 'click' except that the material is diverted to an embedded Windows Media Player. This will work for videos, except - as far as I understand - WMP will wait until the complete file is downloaded before it starts playing. I have not looked into what happens with Real Media .rm files, etc, which I think tell the player to start work immediately.

Hope this helps.

Not for links, but when you create a category, there's an option to 'autocreate' a subforum in the category's parent forum, so this gives the user a 'one-click' way of finding all the associated entries.

One difficulty with this is that VB does not seem to have a way to track 'when last updated' for these pseudo-forums that are in fact links somewhere else, so the user does not get to see when something new appeared. This may just be a matter of writing a timestamp into the forum description table, but I haven't tested this.

Sorry for the confusion, I will give it a shot and post the results back here. thanks again for your help

Thanks for the update! Very cool to have the file uploads.

My forum is in a subdomain. I am trying to input an upload directory off my forum url. I have chmoded it to 777 to test and it won't take my directory in the upload_directory setting.

If my local_file_root_prefix is /var/www/forums I should be able to enter "videos" into the upload_dir if the directory is /var/www/forums/videos ??? For some reason anything I enter into this field is not accepted.

Thank You for the help!

Sean

I tried this with a test site which sits in http://ipaddress/local_site/forums etc. The directory holding http://ipaddress/local_site is /data/www/sites/local_site and I want to store uploads in subdirectories of /uploads which sits in the local_site directory. So I set *local_file_root* to 1, *local_file_root_prefix* to /data/www/sites/local_site and *upload_dir* to /uploads, and it all works correctly for me.

I pull from my server a few directories back, ../../blah/blah/file.type so I would figure it would be nice and fast and I thought it was before the upgrade. Is it still true that if we link to another domain's files it will pull from their server, through us (thus we're downloading and re-uploading the file)?

Sounds good to me :)


Is it your intention to never seperate this from the vB attachments area? What if we don't want to allow the attachments in threads of certain files, only in our Links/Downloads manager?

Thanks for the help :)

Matt

I don't know what to say. I've just tested our primary server, which we access via ADSL - a 1.6Mb word file came down from LDM at 160 kbytes/sec, which is close to the limit that we can achieve from the ADSL service to which we subscribe. (I have a test script on that server to test theoretical speed of line + server - it reported 126 kbytes/sec, but I imagine that LDM achieved some compression with the word file).

That's got to be true unless you set force_download to expose the link so that the user's browser can get straight to the host domain.

I'll never say never, but I do prefer not to rewrite code that's already written and properly supported by the VB people.

*Edited* - by the way, I think you can disable filetypes in the VB admincp as far as having them as allowed attachments. LDM will still pick them up as acceptable.

Very strange that I'm not getting good speeds. The server only hosts my small site and its a dual xeon 2.8ghz with 1gb ram and 2x120gb drives. If you had any suggestions for what to check, I'd certainly appreciate it, otherwise I'll just see what I can do with testing different methods.

Thanks again, Andrew :)

Matt

You said that it has slowed down - which version of LDM were you running before? The only change I can think of is that LDM now uses the cURL library when it is available. (You can see what is being used by looking at the table which is printed at the bottom left of the LDM admin pages.) I wonder if curl is slower than fopen?

LDM 2.0.6

AndrewD here are a few more suggestions that came in from our members.

When adding/editing a link/file, please allow the user to input the "When submitted" date. Often I would rather use the published date instead of the date the link/file is added. I have about 2,800 press releases I would like to add, but I can't unless I can set a real date for them.

The next suggestion is a personal request to make the links more SEO compliant. So for instance, instead of using local_links.php?action=links&catid=2, you could use local_links.php/accessories/ to list the category. It's important that the search engines be able to find the filenames or link names and index them correctly.

I think I mentioned some of this before, but it has to do with Keywords, and Searching. Many users are complaining that it's hard to find files/links, which are relevant to them. It's really not a big deal if you only have a few dozen links, but when you have hundreds or plan to have thousands, it quickly becomes a big deal. Sorting through all the links looking for those relevant to you or your search is very time consuming and frustrating.

Thanks for all the hard work!

Funny thing is, I hit this problem today myself. Will put it on the 'to-do' list

I'm assuming that this would be a site-option, and turned on when you are using e.g. mod_rewrite, yes?

Again, I have this problem also - I'm up to over a thousand documents. I think the best approach to enable the admin/user to place arbitrary keywords on links, regardless of the category they are in. Also the search results need paginating, perhaps with the option to use the results of one search as the start of the next - although this would need a lot of work.

Yes, the server would need mod_rewrite enabled to use this function.

I would consider Keywords an somewhat useful enhancement. However there's no point if the user doesn't put any words in or if they're the same words as the title. The majority of users are lazy and will not input any keywords at all. I've seen this when they upload photos and other content, we barely get a description with it.

Another option, be it a personal preference that I've mentioned before, is link associations. This associates the link/file with something from the users profile. More importantly this creates an association between the user and something they're interested in. Ultimately this can allow the user to search for links/files that are relevant to them. It's a very powerful method of presenting content/files/links based on the users interests, and choices. :drool:

I was wondering if anyone could help suggest how to setup a folder/ftp system on my site.

There's a couple people that want to help me set up the links/files section but I don't want to give them access to the whole site via ftp. I was thinking I could remap the downloads folder to a separate ftp for them so whatever they put in their ftp shows up in the downloads folder on the web. Are there any other ways I can do this?

Also if this is the way to go, how would I set up the scan directories and all the other settings to where it puts the uploads and all?

cool.... just wondering what infomation is stored in the database with regards to link click / downloads is there a timestamp submitted or something just wondering for my own purposes.... because you have in the "whats hot" section i think hot links from the last 30 days... how does this work?

I have upped the file attachment size to 50 megs, but when I upload a 7 meg file I get a "file too large" error message. I believe my php.ini file is 96 megs... Do you have any idea why this isn't uploading these?

Also I would like to be able to assign the upload to a username in case I am uploading materials for another person....

Thanks Andrew!!!

Sean

Yes, the linksdownloads table has a record with the following fields for each 'hit':
linkid, url, username, userid, user IP address, timestamp
There also a userbrowser field, but it's no longer used.

There are some analysis features available under administer/statistics/hits/view hits, where you can get tabulations sorted in certain ways. It's a bit rudimentary.

I think that the relevant parameters in php.ini are as these:
upload_max_filesize
post_max_size
max_input_time

There are also the per-mimetype settings in your VB/admincp/attachmenets/extensions and sizes

Will think about it. Why not just log on as them?

Andrew, how about you allow the people to upload an icon instead of putting in a url, have the program scale/resize the picture, then store it on the hard drive?

I use an Ensim server which runs the site in high security which runs the site in a chroot environment. It seems I am having a problems with the pathnames. I tried the example you put above (relative to mine) and I got no sucess... Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Sean