Links and Downloads Manager

LDM extends VBulletin to manage a library of documents, files and links to other web sites. Documents can be stored on your own web site, stored on your server separate from the web site, uploaded by your user community, or held somewhere else altogether. So you can use LDM to provide your user community with access to your own files and allow them to share files with each other.

12/08/06 - Versions that work with vb36 are available and supported in the VB36 thread. Version 2.2.1, which works with VB 3.5 but not with VB 3.6, remains available here.

Thanks to everyone who has helped with all the design, testing, etc.
Translations are provided (thanks dLutt and LeeWicked) into German, (thanks to Allan) into French, and (thanks to Hugo) into Spanish. Harry1951 has handled the Dutch translation.

Screenshots, Instructions and How to Install

Full details and instructions are available as a Wiki at http://www.eirma.org/wikis/index.php...nloads_Manager

LDM installs as a VBulletin product. There are no modifications required to standard VB code.

Basically - upload php files and run the installer through VB's Product installer. No changes needed to VB code. Remember to BACKUP YOUR DATABASE. By default, LDM prefixes its database tables 'local_'. Edit the configuration file, local_links_init.php, if you need/wish to change this.

LDM can handle an essentially unlimited number of categories and nested subcategories, and an unlimited number of entries (hyperlinks or downloadable files). Each entry can be placed in one or several categories. Categories can have styles. Descriptions and titles can optionally include BBcodes, smilies, images and html, giving the possibility to add images, colouring, etc. File types can be flagged using icons and individual entries can also have associated thumbnail images.

Standards templates are provided for libraries of links, files, documents, and photographs.

Users can offer comments and rate the links/downloads. Each user is allowed one rating and many comments per entry, and can freely edit these if they change their mind.

Permission to use specific features is established via the product's admin page, where the administrator specifies which usergroups can add and edit entries, comment and rate these entries, moderate, etc.

By default, all entries are visible to all users. You can restrict visibility/access to links and categories by using the permissions masks from your board's forums.

Moderation of new entries is available but turned off by default.

Users can report bad links to the relevant moderators/administrators.

Each user can flag links as his/her "Favourites".

Modules are provided for VBAdvanced.

Hooks are provided in suitable places in LDM and sample plugins are included in the release (see extras directory), for example to integrate with ID3 tags in mp3 files, for slideshows, to autocreate new threads in your forums, etc.

Plus much more.

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by |oR|Greg

Andrew, I changed line 813 to read:

global $vbulletin, $vbphrase, $forumperms;

Is that correct? I had someone make an item that wasn't an admin, the thread was auto-created as it should have been, but was moderated.

That's correct.

The way this behaves (is written to behave) is as follows:

- When the new thread is autocreated, it is placed in the forum associated with the entry
- If the main VB board requires moderation of new threads in this forum, then the thread is placed in the moderation queue. Otherwise it is displayed immediately

Moderation of the new entry itself is a separate process, and depends on the settings within LDM.

Is this reasonable, do you think?

[|oR|Greg]

I'm just confused as to why it happened at all, nothing on my board is moderated anywhere, and poof, this occured today. I added that code, went in as a user with the same rights as the guy that prompted the moderation "error" and posted a link in the same place he did. With the code in place everything is ok again, however people have been posting links prior to this in the same fasion with the auto-thread creation turned on, and it never happened before this morning. That's the strange part. Hopefully that Global var is all that is needed to fix it. Otherwise, things are as smooth as can be.

I think the way you have moderation setup is as good as it can be.

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by |oR|Greg

I'm just confused as to why it happened at all, nothing on my board is moderated anywhere, and poof, this occured today. I added that code, went in as a user with the same rights as the guy that prompted the moderation "error" and posted a link in the same place he did. With the code in place everything is ok again, however people have been posting links prior to this in the same fasion with the auto-thread creation turned on, and it never happened before this morning. That's the strange part. Hopefully that Global var is all that is needed to fix it. Otherwise, things are as smooth as can be.

I think the way you have moderation setup is as good as it can be.

Yes, without the 'global' statement, the behaviour was unpredictable but presumably depended on how many other hacks, etc, were loaded on the board, day of the week, etc.

[aramik]

AndrewD - yeah, I just fixied it, wasn't anything on LDM's end.

Hey LDM is awesome just one thing, usually LDM logs my users out.. not a big deal, but they have to re-login, is this something to do with the script or is that my end?

[Akagi]

got a question for fellow LDM users and AndrewD, now that LDM is working fine, anyone of you have tried adding adsense to LDM? Just thought of this and would like to seek your opinions regarding the placement of adsense. I feel that perhaps links_main as well as links_linksbit would be good places to put adsense? who have tried? perhaps you wanna share what you have done?

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by aramik

AndrewD - yeah, I just fixied it, wasn't anything on LDM's end.

Hey LDM is awesome just one thing, usually LDM logs my users out.. not a big deal, but they have to re-login, is this something to do with the script or is that my end?

I don't know of anything in LDM that could cause this,but I may be missing something. Is anyone else having this problem?

[|oR|Greg]

Originally Posted by Akagi

got a question for fellow LDM users and AndrewD, now that LDM is working fine, anyone of you have tried adding adsense to LDM? Just thought of this and would like to seek your opinions regarding the placement of adsense. I feel that perhaps links_main as well as links_linksbit would be good places to put adsense? who have tried? perhaps you wanna share what you have done?

I'll be adding it soon, and my plan was to have it under the navbar, that way it's on all pages.

Originally Posted by AndrewD

I don't know of anything in LDM that could cause this,but I may be missing something. Is anyone else having this problem?

Nope.
:banana:

[|oR|Greg]

Oh Mr. Andrew, I was searching for 2 things and couldn't find them, don't know if they exist or if they're possible, so here we go!

1. Is there a variable to check if the description field is filled out? The purpose of this would be, that if it isn't, have in IF statement in the template(s) that checks and if no description, then to use the title instead.
2. Is there a way to include, IF available, the thumbnail picture of a link in the auto-created thread? Not as an attachment, but with the IMG tags.

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by |oR|Greg

Oh Mr. Andrew, I was searching for 2 things and couldn't find them, don't know if they exist or if they're possible, so here we go!

1. Is there a variable to check if the description field is filled out? The purpose of this would be, that if it isn't, have in IF statement in the template(s) that checks and if no description, then to use the title instead.

Ideally this would be a test on $linkdesc, but it's made slightly more complicated because a blank description is actually passed to the template as a non-breaking space to avoid producing a null table cell (which is invalid html). The most reliable approach would be to edit local_links_include.php, find function get_linklistbit, then find the line:

if (!trim($linkdesc)) $linkdesc = " ";

Either add yourself a new variable which you test against, or change the assignment so that $linkdesc is assigned a normal space character and then you can test against that in the template.

Originally Posted by |oR|Greg

2. Is there a way to include, IF available, the thumbnail picture of a link in the auto-created thread? Not as an attachment, but with the IMG tags.

For this, I think you should edit the autothread plugin. After line:

construct_phrase($vbphrase['ldm_thread_create_body'], $linkname, $linkdesc, $gotolink, $master_title);

add the line

if ($imgthumb) $thread_message = '[img]'.$vbulletin->options['homeurl'].$imgthumb.'[/img] '.$thread_message;

[|oR|Greg]

I went for the plugin first. I added it and it works great!

If I do the link_desc I'll let you know.