Major Additions - Links and Downloads Manager

What this is and does

LDM is a general-purpose tool for managing libraries of links and files, and handling uploads and downloads in a flexible way, while tracking and control user access. It has a range of integrated media players and a large library of 'plugin' extras.

Installation and Usage Explained in the on-line Wiki, with a brief explanation in the file instructions.txt in the release zip. The recent revision history is given in the first post of this thread.

Please use carefully and always backup your database before upgrading. Post reports of problems and suggestions for enhancements in this thread.

14.06.09 Version 2.3.0 is now the the officially-supported version. Works with 3.7 and vb 3.8. Please post comments in this thread

22.06.08 Version 2.2.9-post1 - This is the previous supported version. Works fine with all versions of vb 3.6 and vb 3.7. All standard features except profile integration and forum prefix selection work fine with vb 3.8.

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by maroceve

Hey andrew ...nevermind, i fixed the problem, thank you.

Good what was the solution?

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by Saint_I_Am

I have a problem with vbadvanced integration. I have all the files integrated and have done what it says in the manual



The only problem is that the new window cuts off half way. It would be good if the new window had vertical scroll bars so you could scroll down and see the rest of the page including the left and right sidebars of vbadvanced.

I think the real solution is to pull the standalone and embedded player code into a different code file. I'll do this in the next version of 2.3.0, and also put the scroll bars back.

[Saint_I_Am]

ok thanks. Will wait for this before taking it live

[vbboarder]

There were some bugs in the flash-sites extras plugin, so I decided to debug them. There are a total of 10 video sites whose videos can be embedded. Here are the fixes:

1. Added ?transparent? wmode to all flash sites so videos can be played in Firefox 2.
2. Changed allowScriptAccess from ?always? to ?sameDomain? to reduce security risks.
3. Added 4 missing icons for supported video sites.
4. Added Spike video site. Actually, this is a pattern & embed fix for the iFilm site, which was bought by Spike so iFilm is not accessible.

Known Issues:
DailyMotion & ThatVideoSite embedding do not work. VSocial works, but has limited use since it?s a paid service.
Request: Andrew, can you debug the DailyMotion pattern matching so videos can be embedded (no rush, not a top request)?

Included in zip file (for release with the next LDM version):
flash-sites-plugin.xml ? no change
sample-test-videos.xml ? changed iFilm link to Spike link
readme.txt ? added note about above known issues
local_links_flashsites.php ? fixed 4 bugs mentioned above
icon folder ? added 4 more icons

To install, read the readme.txt file?. that's what it?s for

[vbboarder]

Originally Posted by AndrewD

I think the real solution is to pull the standalone and embedded player code into a different code file. I'll do this in the next version of 2.3.0, and also put the scroll bars back.

Since you're thinking about redoing the code for the player pages, can you consider using either the Shadowbox or LightWindow media viewer?
The presentation of both the standalone and embedded players are not user friendly like that of the JW flv & wmv players. The standalone player requires a new window, which is against users' preference of no popups, and the embedded player requires a new page load, which is time & resource consuming. The JW players are user friendly because users can view videos on category's entries listing pages without requiring popups or page loads. The Shadowbox & LightWindow would create a more user friendly interface.

Both the Shadowbox & LightWindow are similar to Lightbox, but for videos - they can display Windows, Quicktime, & Flash videos. They can even show entire web pages, forms, image galleries, & PDF's. There's 2 main differences between those scripts. LightWindow is MIT licensed so it's freely available; however, it's dependent on the Prototype & Scriptaculous libraries. On the other hand, Shadowbox is licensed under the Creative Commons Noncommercial_Share-Alike license so it's free for personal use, but $20 for commercial use; however, it's much more flexible with required JS libraries - you can use the author's custom JS library, Yahoo YUI, Prototype, jQuery, Dojo, etc. In my experience from trying both media viewers with the Image Resizer mod, I found that Shadowbox is more compatible with vBulletin than LightWindow - ie: it can show images in posts, profiles, groups, albums, and even LDM!
You can find out more about the media viewers at:
Shadowbox: http://mjijackson.com/shadowbox/
LightWindow: http://stickmanlabs.com/lightwindow/#why

Thanks for considering.

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by vbboarder

Since you're thinking about redoing the code for the player pages, can you consider using either the Shadowbox or LightWindow media viewer?
The presentation of both the standalone and embedded players are not user friendly like that of the JW flv & wmv players. The standalone player requires a new window, which is against users' preference of no popups, and the embedded player requires a new page load, which is time & resource consuming. The JW players are user friendly because users can view videos on category's entries listing pages without requiring popups or page loads. The Shadowbox & LightWindow would create a more user friendly interface.

Both the Shadowbox & LightWindow are similar to Lightbox, but for videos - they can display Windows, Quicktime, & Flash videos. They can even show entire web pages, forms, image galleries, & PDF's. There's 2 main differences between those scripts. LightWindow is MIT licensed so it's freely available; however, it's dependent on the Prototype & Scriptaculous libraries. On the other hand, Shadowbox is licensed under the Creative Commons Noncommercial_Share-Alike license so it's free for personal use, but $20 for commercial use; however, it's much more flexible with required JS libraries - you can use the author's custom JS library, Yahoo YUI, Prototype, jQuery, Dojo, etc. In my experience from trying both media viewers with the Image Resizer mod, I found that Shadowbox is more compatible with vBulletin than LightWindow - ie: it can show images in posts, profiles, groups, albums, and even LDM!
You can find out more about the media viewers at:
Shadowbox: http://mjijackson.com/shadowbox/
LightWindow: http://stickmanlabs.com/lightwindow/#why

Thanks for considering.

I will certainly consider these. Web presentation of videos has moved on quite a lot since 2004, when the players were originally coded. I think that a javascript based approach is the right way to go at the moment.

However, there are limits to the time I have available for this work and each new feature added is one more item to support. This is a particular problem when there are several interdependent pieces of software which are not under my own control - there are not many good people like you who are willing to devote time to debugging and documenting.

So the short answer is, I'll see what I can do, but I'm not going to commit to anything at this stage.

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by vbboarder

There were some bugs in the flash-sites extras plugin, so I decided to debug them. There are a total of 10 video sites whose videos can be embedded. Here are the fixes:

1. Added ?transparent? wmode to all flash sites so videos can be played in Firefox 2.
2. Changed allowScriptAccess from ?always? to ?sameDomain? to reduce security risks.
3. Added 4 missing icons for supported video sites.
4. Added Spike video site. Actually, this is a pattern & embed fix for the iFilm site, which was bought by Spike so iFilm is not accessible.

Known Issues:
DailyMotion & ThatVideoSite embedding do not work. VSocial works, but has limited use since it?s a paid service.
Request: Andrew, can you debug the DailyMotion pattern matching so videos can be embedded (no rush, not a top request)?

Included in zip file (for release with the next LDM version):
flash-sites-plugin.xml ? no change
sample-test-videos.xml ? changed iFilm link to Spike link
readme.txt ? added note about above known issues
local_links_flashsites.php ? fixed 4 bugs mentioned above
icon folder ? added 4 more icons

To install, read the readme.txt file?. that's what it?s for

Thanks - will include in next release.

[Simon Lloyd]

Andrew i know you're busy but i asked a question at VBulletin.com about notices in 3.7.3 PL1 because i couldnt set a notice to be shown if a user was viewing http://www.thecodecage.com/forumz/local_links.php they told me to ask back here, of course local links is your page in VB, i was wondering whether you can help me with this issue?

[abdelghani68]

I have a suggestion please if it's possible :

l want that we can choose for all modules of vbadvanced the id of categorie.

exemple :

we can do that the module ldm_tagcloud works only with the categorie 3.

thanks very mush.

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by Simon Lloyd

Andrew i know you're busy but i asked a question at VBulletin.com about notices in 3.7.3 PL1 because i couldnt set a notice to be shown if a user was viewing http://www.thecodecage.com/forumz/local_links.php they told me to ask back here, of course local links is your page in VB, i was wondering whether you can help me with this issue?

It's straightforward to write a plugin which will display a notice when users visit LDM. What do you want to say and how do you want it said? (i.e. is this to be added to the page layout, to be a popup or what?)