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.

[derfelix]

just installed new version.. 2.29 post1 very very nice..2 little things though.. I use human verification system, and in LL if you go on search
i.e. advanced search ... as unregged user.. the template is not cached.. see attached screenshot
I'll just add it to the templates to cache.. no problem.. but i thought i'd let you know.. to fix for next release

and for the language files... french, and german are correctly encoded UTF-8.. but, unless u use vbulletin from vbulletin-china ( they have changed the main vb code) the header in the xml file should still be
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
and not
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
but thats minor...

thx again for the great work..

Felix

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by derfelix

and for the language files... french, and german are correctly encoded UTF-8.. but, unless u use vbulletin from vbulletin-china ( they have changed the main vb code) the header in the xml file should still be
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
and not
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
but thats minor...

Thanks - just to be clear on this - the phrases file should be ISO-8859-1 and the product file should be UTF-8, right?

[derfelix]

nooo !!!

Sorry.. english is not my mother tongue...

What works for me:

1. If you use standard vbulletin from vbulletin.com without having modified the vbulletin xml parser class...
then the first line of ALL xml files should be:

PHP Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

Same thing for the product files...

OK?

If you use UTF-8 for the languages, then you open the xml file in your favorite editor.. ( I use "edit plus") and without modifying anything you do a "save as".
There you select encoding: UTF-8 in the dropdown. Then simply click save and overwrite the old file.
(Most editors have that option.. even notepad has UTF-8 when you do "save as")

Of course this is the standard.. IF the user uses english vbulletin and adds the other languages as custom languages with UTF-8 charset.

-----------

2. IF the user uses chinese product and the other languages as custom languages it is different. He probably has the chinese vbulletin installed. It is patched to accept the utf-8 first line for xml files..
In that case the chinese product is correct as it is in the package..
but he has to change the other language files..
All the first lines of the language files will have to be :

PHP Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

And all language files saved as UTF-8 in editor..

It doesnt matter for the product file it will import correctly whatever the header is.. its just for the phrases in the product file.


The major problem is.. NOT all users use UTF-8 encoding.. or mix encodings when importing languages
Example:

french language Charset: ISO 8859-1
and chinese language Charset: UTF-8
both on the same board!!!

This will seem to work at first.. but is bad.. because your problems will appear as soon as you post in the forums...

In this example:
If a french user posts.. (when the board is set to french) he will post in ISO 8859-1... and the chinese user will post in UTF-8 because he will have chosen to view the board in chinese.
So if the french user looks at the post of the chinese user.. (even if the chinese user posted in french!!!! ) he will not see the special charachters correctly.. because he will be looking at the page in ISO 8859-1 and the chinese user posted the special characters in UTF-8..

That is why you sould always use the SAME encoding for ALL languages... (and only UTF-8 works with ALL languages) I think that is why vbulletin 4.0 will be UTF-8 only.



Hope that was clear..
If not I will try to do some further explanations..

Felix..

[IR15H]

Is this normal behaviour?;




This was obtained by nominating a star entry, then changing to nominate a different entry. I expected it to only save the latest, current, nominated entry.

----------------------------

The comments/rating count only registers the number of different users who comment/rate, it doesn't account for the same user posting more than once;


----------------------------

If I enable the hide-magnifier extra, with a local_file_root_prefix set, then I receive the following error at the top of any page containing an external image (for use as thumbnail);

Warning: getimagesize(Local File Root Prefix/http://www.somesite.com/image.png) [function.getimagesize]: failed to open stream: Invalid argument in [path]\includes\local_links_include.php(3190) : eval()'d code on line 8

----------------------------

The upload permissions don't appear to follow those set in forum/admincp/attachmentpermission.php. I prevented all users from uploading png's, but was still able to upload a png using a regular Registered User's account;




Have I set something wrong?

----------------------------

I found the description of autocreate_active a bit confusing - "Automatic forum announcement of new entries enabled". I originally thought it'd make an actual announcement, not a thread.

----------------------------

How would I go about making ldm_post_addrating_title follow the default format of Re: Thread Title (as defined in ADMIN CP > vBulletin Options > Message Posting and Editing Options >Automatically Quote Post / Thread Title). I tried editing the phrase to RE: {1}, but that appears as Re: %1$s in the actual thread.

----------------------------

Thank you once again for such an excellent mod .

[RikiB]

Ive noticed a pattern, every time I upgrade my ldlm version it resets the "hidden" attribute on files to visible. Its not a huge deal now that I know it will happen, but I think it would be classified as a bug.

Riki

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by IR15H

Is this normal behaviour?;




This was obtained by nominating a star entry, then changing to nominate a different entry. I expected it to only save the latest, current, nominated entry.

It records them all, but only counts a user's most recent nomination per period. That way, it continues to work correctly if the admin changes his/her mind about the collection period, e.g. decides to switch from months to weeks.

Originally Posted by IR15H

The comments/rating count only registers the number of different users who comment/rate, it doesn't account for the same user posting more than once;

This is true. Fixing this in an efficient manner requires a slight change to the database structure, which I have put off making. I was thinking of making version 2.3.0 an 'efficiency' release, with points like this addressed.

Originally Posted by IR15H

If I enable the hide-magnifier extra, with a local_file_root_prefix set, then I receive the following error at the top of any page containing an external image (for use as thumbnail);

Warning: getimagesize(Local File Root Prefix/http://www.somesite.com/image.png) [function.getimagesize]: failed to open stream: Invalid argument in [path]\includes\local_links_include.php(3190) : eval()'d code on line 8

OK, will fix in the next 2.2.9 upload.

Originally Posted by IR15H

The upload permissions don't appear to follow those set in forum/admincp/attachmentpermission.php. I prevented all users from uploading png's, but was still able to upload a png using a regular Registered User's account;




Have I set something wrong?

The code in its current form does not check against those vb per-filetype permissions- I'm not sure - are these a relatively recent extension to vbulletin? I'll add it to the list of things to do, maybe 2.2.9 or 2.3.0.

Originally Posted by IR15H

I found the description of autocreate_active a bit confusing - "Automatic forum announcement of new entries enabled". I originally thought it'd make an actual announcement, not a thread.

OK, will change the wording in next 2.2.9 upload

Originally Posted by IR15H

How would I go about making ldm_post_addrating_title follow the default format of Re: Thread Title (as defined in ADMIN CP > vBulletin Options > Message Posting and Editing Options >Automatically Quote Post / Thread Title). I tried editing the phrase to RE: {1}, but that appears as Re: %1$s in the actual thread.

This requires a minor change to the code, which I will make available in the next 2.2.9 in the next few days.

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by RikiB

Ive noticed a pattern, every time I upgrade my ldlm version it resets the "hidden" attribute on files to visible. Its not a huge deal now that I know it will happen, but I think it would be classified as a bug.

Riki

I'm not sure how this can happen, but I'll check.

[mhmd1983]

Originally Posted by AndrewD

When you enable this extra, users in the indicated user groups have the allowances specified here until their post count reaches the specified level. It seems to work for me.

You seem to have set this to limit root admins to 1 file maximum until they have 1000 posts. The attachment shows the message that should be displayed.

Question: is your root admin account also a member of another usergroup? LDM always grants the most generous usergroup allowances. You have not limited other groups.

Ok , it keeps saying 0 used


I'm linking to a remote files using redirect links , it counts the hit , but doesn't limit it

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by mhmd1983

Ok , it keeps saying 0 used


I'm linking to a remote files using redirect links , it counts the hit , but doesn't limit it

That's why. Since LDM is not handling the download, it doesn't try to restrict it. This is generally true of the files/bandwidth limits.

[kris]

AndrewD , thank you this MOD (add-on) very well done.
I was hopping to find one thing in configuration that I would like to have on my very large board , but it looks like you dont have it yet. It a possibilities of using your add-on to sync all user attachments (old and new) to special category, if its possible please let me know how ? if its not so may be you can add this to your future version. I have 20GB of users attachments (mostly jpegs) stored on the hard disk that they uploaded to my forum posts for over 8 years and I would like to have some kind of interface to view and manage them.