DJ's DEFINITIONS FAQ
Here's a few Q&As, FAQs and FYIs about some of definitions available and some tips and tricks with regard to the AME modification itself. When referring to editing definitions, it will be assumed you're in your
Admin CP >>> AME CP >>> Display Definitions list.
**Internal Linking
You may notice the set of defs towards the top of your list called Internal Linking. This set is entirely optional, of course, but will auto convert internal links using the info between your forum's <title></title> tags. It will also add a small image to the start of the tag based on your forums favicon image. (NOTE: If no favicon shows up, make a copy of the favicon in your
website's root directory and add it to your
forum's root directory)
This set includes defs that will convert Threads, Posts, Forums and Categories, as well as auto format a link to a member's profile page with their User Name. (The member link doesn't include a favicon image. You can add it in if you want.)
This has not been thoroughly tested on a forum other then my own. So give me some feedback on if you like it or not. It also has not been optimized for people running SEOs of any kind. If you want support for your SEO you need to send me a link to your forum as well as let me know what SEO modification your running.
AllPosters.com (Thumbnails) et.al.: This set will convert almost all product links form AllPosters.com into thumbnails like the Amazon and CafePress definitions. There's very few products that will not convert, and these appear to be only frames, or anything that's been framed.
Also note that you can use your own affiliate ID with AllPosters if you have one just by replacing the three instances of mine in the
Replacement HTML. But if you want to leave them in there, you won't get ANY complaints from me.
Examples: ?aid=1244576320 | ?aid=F0048675431
Amazon.com (Thumbnails) and (Links): The original Thumbnail version of the Amazon Links was created by
nevetS in one of the old XML threads and it was the first definitions created to demonstrate turning product links into thumbnails rather then links.
Note that I have also included my affiliate IDs in these definitions, mainly because these are constructed on my live site. To work in your own affiliate ID in either the Links or Thumbnails definitions, look for the instances of the
?tag= in the
Replacement HTMLand replace the following IDs with your own. Or, again, you can leave them in. Won't hurt my feelings.
Examples: ?tag=stopmomstop-20 | ?tag=citofgamonlco-20
As noted above, you don't want Thumbnails and Links turned on at the same time, which is why I have them both in the Master XML, but one of them set to off.
Bebo.com: You'll notice that the Bebo definitions says
(Sponsored Content Only). This is because user videos on Bebo are no longer consistently hosted form one location. They're pulled in from multiple sites like YouTube and MetaCafe. AME can only reproduce one set of embed code per definition, so there's no way for it to distinguish when it's Bebo content, or YouTube content or what have you. As a result, only Sponsored Content video are supported by this definition. But with the number of sites already available in this group of definitions, it's likely you can use the Permalink to get an embedded video.
CutFrameTV: If your looking for the new version of this definition, it's now called
Photography Mentor.
Deezer.com: The Deezer definition was created by
RaZor Edge in one of the old XML threads as well. This was the definition that really got me excited about what the mod was capable of. To make Deezer work, you just copy the Permalink of the video, and post it into your thread. (When visiting Deezer, you never leave the main page, so naturally, you need a Permalink.)
This
Converts to This
By changing the colors in the
Replacement HTML code, you can get the music player to match the colors of your forum. Here's a couple of Live Demo's, one at RaZor Edge's site and one at mine:
eSnips.com (Videos) (Music): Unfortunately, you will only be able to use one or the other of these definitions, which is why
eSnips (Music) is turned off by default. The URLs were not distinctive enough to make a RegEx that could tell video pages from music pages. Until this changes, this is the one caveat you'll have to contend with.
GameSpot.com: As noted in the definition, the Age Verification Error is a problem on GameSpot's end and not a problem with the definition.
Google.com (Search Results) (Let Me Google That For You): These definitions convert your Google search results links into formatted links in a couple of ways. Note that they cannot be both turned on at the same time, which is why
(Search Results) is the only one active when you import them.
(Search Results) converts your search results links in simple link with the search terms and the google icon.
(Let Me Google That For You) on the other hand, will convert links into a funny redirect to LetMeGoogleThatForYou.com. This definition is a variation on
the one originally created by Vitaly.
For Google (Search Results) to work, you'll need to add these images to your
images/misc directory. This first is the old Google favicon and the second is the new one. The definition uses the new icon by default, but you can change the definition to the old one just by changing the
Replacement HTML image source from
_new to
_old.
Lively: Google will, sadly, be dropping further development of Lively.com Virtual Chat Rooms. They have said, however, that they will keep the thumbnail screens that you see prior to entering a room intact, you just won't be able to click them to enter a room. As a result, I'll be keeping support for this site intact, just to support those screens if need be.
MP3 Local Hosted Audio: I hope you like the new player I added. Unfortunately, I can't take all the credit. The player was created under the Creative Commons Licence by
neolao production. The great thing about this player is that it's fully customizable, and can even support it's own skin if you happen to have one. Go to
http://flash-mp3-player.net/players/maxi/generator/ and set the colors and settings to your liking. Copy and paste over the code into your MP3 definition under
Replacement HTML. Just remember that you MUST replace the MP3 URL (
http%3A//flash-mp3-player.net/medias/another_world.mp3) that they provide with
$p1. Otherwise, your MP3s won't work.
Alternatively, you can download the flash player and host it on your own site, but you'll need to change the source of the video player in your
Replacement HTML to the location on your server.
Mynet Eksenim.com: Small, almost insignificant quirk about Mynet's definition. When the titles are pulled, it puts a line break in the title of the video. This line break has no effect on the player unless you need to edit that post for some reason. Save the post with that line break still in, and the player can't convert. So all you really need to do is take the line break out and your set. Like I said, not a real big deal, but there you go.
NewsClipper.org: This is one of those definitions that I consider "imperfect" in that it's functional in every way it needs to be, but not as fully as you would like it to be.
Newsclipper.org is a website that manages to collect news videos from all the major video news sites: MSNBC, CNN, CBS NEWS, FOX NEWS, Associated Press, Rutgers, BBC, Sky News, ESPN and Comedy Central. But because all their videos are pulled from different sites, every video has different aspect ratios. There's currently no way to dynamically set the
height and
width of a video using AME (or in this case, an iFrame). So you'll have to set those attributes to your liking in your AME CP. I currently have them set to the widest and highest of the videos I found. This will leave a white square around videos that have smaller aspect ratios. (Not a big deal if your postbit color is already white.) You can change the color of this area by adding the color code in the style attribute:
style="background-color:#000000;". But this will only works in FireFox. IE users will still see a white empty area surrounding the video.
PC Planets.com: PC Planets has a variety of music, videos and songs to listen to in a variety of media types. The site has been thoroughly tested and so far all tested links convert with not problems. However, since AME can only do one media version per definition, any link, whether it was the MP3 or the WMV or the RAM version, will convert to the Flash version when posted.
UOL.com.br: Yes, that many files was needed to make UOL work. Each category is like it's own website with it's own embed source code. The site is vast, and is essentially several websites grouped under one domain. As noted, the one peculiarity is that URLs with "
assistr" in them wont embed. This is because, for whatever reason, these pages have no usable code in the HTML or URL to backreference. Not sure why. It could be this page is actually a front page that changes content often, so most of the content is handled via javascript. Either way, these URLs are infrequent, and shouldn't be encountered too often.
Sort Order: One thing I've been annoyed with in AME is trying to get some kind of display order that makes sense. I found out while working on these, that entries with the same
Display Number sort by alphabetically order. So what I ended up doing was setting all my working files to 1, and all my non working or in-progress files to 0. This made to where I could keep them in alphabetical order and create pseudo-categories.
Special Characters: For some reason, AME doesn't always convert Special Characters correctly. Instead of an ampersand (&) you'll get the HTML equivalent (&), etc. One of the things you can do is edit the post after posting, and simply change the name of the link, without altering what it links to.
(In the Full Editor, all you would do is edit the exiting name. In the Basic Editors, you would simply change the name between the [url][/url] tags.)
Wikipedia (Links): In order for Wikipedia to work you need to save this image to your
images/misc directory.
YouTube.com: Periodically YouTube and Google go down for maintenance. This means that some features, like embedding, is disabled during this time period. If you see "Video Not Available" and YouTube was working yesterday, hang on for a little while. Also, check to see if a video says "Embedding Disabled by Request "in the embed code box. If so, the video will be blocked from embedding and will give the Not Available message as well.
A new feature worked into YouTube is called
Deep Linking. Sounds like something you'd get from the back end of the video store, right? Not in this case. Deep linking is YouTube's relatively new ability to jump to a fixed time frame inside a video. In order to do this, append the URL of your YouTube video with
#t=XXs where
XX is the number of seconds into the video you want to jump. (NOTE: I know some of you already know of this, but what's different here is that you cannot use minutes and seconds in the URL. You have to use seconds only, so you'll have to do just a little head math and convert minutes into seconds.)
YouTube.com (HQ/HD): By now you should all know what this is as often as it's been requested. This will embed High Def and High Quality YouTube videos based on the URL. Most of you already know to add the special string of characters to the end of the URL when you want to link to it. However, for these to convert, you'll need to add the string after the watch?, before the v=, like so:
This is the concession I had to make just to get HD and HQ videos to work with AME. Remember that this will only work if a corresponding HQ/HD video for a given URL exists. Here's the code you need for each type of video:
High Def: fmt=22&
High Quality: fmt=18&
zSHARE.net: For zSHARE to work, you'll need to add the
3 following images to the
images/misc directory for your forum and/or any different styles you use. So, for example, if you have a forum that uses the default style and a custom skin named Centura, you would need to add it to the default
image/misc folder (yoursite.com/images/misc) AND into the folder for the Centura style (yoursite.com/centura/misc).
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