Add-On Releases - Roaming Threads - Mobile Image Uploads Directly To Forum

This plug-in will give you a quick and effective way to allow your mobile forum members to upload images to threads and posts in real-time. Your members will reply to secure emails sent to them from our platform and if they attach images to their replies- voila- mobile image uploads! RoamingThreads Basic is a free service that allows each of your forums to use our platform to process up to 99 emails per month and only 1 image attachment per email. For most forums this will be more than enough to handle your member?s needs since our plug-in gives you full control of which usergroups can make RoamingThreads and RoamingPosts. This is a great benefit to your VIP members if you have a subscription program, and it also makes for a great resource for your news team if you have one. Users with the need for more messages per month can easily upgrade to get more credits by following the instructions on our site once they have installed the plug-in and activated the service for their forum. All images are stored locally on your servers, but we handle the image parsing and mail server responsibilities for you! Go to the Roaming Threads forum if you want to try the service out as a user before you install.

Roaming Threads

Requirements:

• vBulletin 4.0.1 or higher
• Root Access to forums area on your server
• FTP Client to access a remote server
• Account with the Roaming Threads site

Features:

• Supported
• Free Standard Version
• Premium Version Upgrade available soon (including Video and Multimedia)
• Single and Multiple Images upload
• Image Captioning
• MMS Enabled
• Forum Owner Admin/Control

Installation:

1. Extract the contents of vb_roamingthreads.zip to your computer.
2. FTP the content of the upload directory to the vBulletin installation directory on your server. For example if your vBulletin installation is referenced as http://www.EXAMPLE.com/forums FTP the contents of the upload directory to your server's "forums" directory.
3. Upload the product-roaming_threads.xml product file, located in the do_not_upload directory, via the Add/Import Product interface found by navigating to vBulletin Admin CP=>Plugins and Products=>Manage Products.
4. Refresh the Admin CP page; the Roaming Threads menu will now be visible.
5. Rebuild bitfields
6. Configure Roaming Threads and all options if applicable.
7. Enter your domain name on the Add Domain page located within your account on the Roaming Threads site. Note: When you add your domain you have the option of all of your Roaming Thread images displayed on the Roaming Threads home page. By default this is set to sharing.

Use and configuration:
You?ve captured a bunch of photos using the camera of your mobile phone ? now how do you upload these pictures directly to a forum thread without having to transfer them to a desktop computer?

With RoamingThreads you can either add images to an existing thread or start your own thread.

To create a new thread:

1. Navigate to your forum?s thread listing page and click on the roaming thread icon.
   
2. You will be prompted to enter an email address that is accessible by your mobile device. Write up the title and intro text and submit. Your thread will not be visible to other users until you send your images.
   
3. After the thread is submitted you will receive a unique email address designated to your thread and user account.
   
4. Reply to the email with your images as attachments.
   
5. RoamingThreads will create a new thread with your images. Images will continue to be added to your first post until the max number of images per post is reached. After the max number of posts has been reached, new posts will be created using your account.
   
   
   

Breaking out of the first post:
If you would like for uploaded images to create new posts instead of being added to the first post before you reach the max number of images, change the subject line of your email to 'new post'. This will cause all additional uploaded images to be created as new posts in the thread.

Adding Images to an Existing Thread

1. Click on the ?Roaming Post? icon found next to the ?Post Reply? icon on a thread.
   
2. This will take you to a page with a pre-filled thread ID. Fill in an email address that is accessible by your mobile device.
   
3. An email from RoamingThreads will arrive on your mobile phone with an email address designated to the thread that you have selected.
   
4. Reply to the email with your images as attachments.
   

It?s as simple as that. RoamingThreads will add your images to the thread.

Image Captions:
Each image can now have its own caption. In the body of your email, you will need to use the following format to caption your images.

@image_number your image caption@

example, assuming we have attached 3 images

@1 the first caption@
@3 some other caption@

Troubleshooting and Support
We are more than happy to lend a hand getting your Roaming Threads install working properly on your forum. Jump over to the troubleshooting section of our forum, and we will do our best to offer any help that you may need: http://www.roamingthreads.com/forums...isplay.php?f=3

Changes
v1.0.1: Fixed minor issue with non-urlencoded characters in image captions.
v1.0.2: Fixed minor issue with quote characters when inserting new posts.
v1.0.3: NEW FEATURE: Added the ability to use the Roaming Threads functionality from quickreply on showthread.php.


To see RoamingThreads in action, visit these forums:
Roaming Threads
Motoring Alliance
Walt Disney Boards

[mokujin]

good idea, thanks

[JAFRI]

nice...................................thanks

[cosy]

interesting mode
tagged

[mickknutson]

I installed this, but do not get the Roaming Threads Post button. I did allow this setting in the Usergroup.

[mickknutson]

So is there nobody actually using this mod? The thing does not work! I installed as described...

[glen290]

I just installed it on my test board and although its a good idea, not how i hoped it would work, was looking for something similar to facebook, where i could upload straight to a users album rather than create a thread and reply via email with attachments

[sailnet]

Originally Posted by glen290

I just installed it on my test board and although its a good idea, not how i hoped it would work, was looking for something similar to facebook, where i could upload straight to a users album rather than create a thread and reply via email with attachments

I developed code like that for my vb3.8 forum and never released it to the public. It's working well on my 3.8 forum. I've had to write my own code to handle different image types from different cell phone carriers and I like the way it works.

I have people 'register' by sending a text message from their cell phone to a specific email address I've set up. I extract their cell phone number "email address" from the text message and have them enter their cell phone number into one of the additional fields.

each provider is different: for instance sprint is nnnnnnnnnn@messaging.sprintpcs.com and image come through different from different providers. The code took a long time to develop and test.

I have a cron job that runs every 5 minutes to check the inbox of the email address to process the uploaded pics.

After they're registered I sent them an email much like FB does that gives them the email address to sent their mobile uploads to. I can also extract text along with the picture. I create a Mobile Uploads Gallery for them.

It works great. After the new years I'll be redoing the code for VB4 and will offer the package for sale at probably $99 per site.

Facebook uses a third party company that developed all of the code for nearly all of the major carriers. My code supports AT&T, Sprint and Verizon.

here's the announcement on my forum about how it works.

http://www.speedwake.com/forums/showthread.php?t=63279

[Brandon Sheley]

nice idea, thanks for upgrading it to 4.x

Originally Posted by glen290

I just installed it on my test board and although its a good idea, not how i hoped it would work, was looking for something similar to facebook, where i could upload straight to a users album rather than create a thread and reply via email with attachments

uploading to the user albums from the phone would be awesome!

[cTak]

Nice idea, still a bit difficult in my opinion.

I think an album that the user could directly send to from their phone would be awesome. Could just send the images to images@forumname.com and it was see the users phone number and assign the images to the correct album.

Then the user can create a new thread and pull images from his album.