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.

[Atlantean]

I have only just installed this mod - and so far I am only scratching at the surface of what it can do.

One thing - can the text in the Navbar be edited from Links/Downloads to just Links As I only intend using it for Links for the time being.

It is probably simple enough but I am not up to speed on all this.

[DJDrew]

Originally Posted by Atlantean

I have only just installed this mod - and so far I am only scratching at the surface of what it can do.

One thing - can the text in the Navbar be edited from Links/Downloads to just Links As I only intend using it for Links for the time being.

It is probably simple enough but I am not up to speed on all this.

Yes, edit the database_name field to "Links" in the LDM administrator control panel

[Atlantean]

Originally Posted by DJDrew

Yes, edit the database_name field to "Links" in the LDM administrator control panel

I have done that but it is still appearing as Links/Downloads in the navbar!

Wonder have I missed something?

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by Atlantean

I have done that but it is still appearing as Links/Downloads in the navbar!

Wonder have I missed something?

I imagine that you've enabled the "Add LDM to VB Navbar" plugin so that the access link appears in the navbar?

At the point where vb is generating its navbar, it doesn't have access to LDM's settings, so the text "Links/Downloads" has to be picked up from a phrase. You can change this text by going to vb/admincp/languages and phrases and finding and editing the phrase called ldm_vbmenu_ldm

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by vbboarder

Major Bug:[/B] Shadowbox does not display full-size images (magnifier link) for all image filetypes (jpg, png, gif, etc.). The Shadowbox pops up, but no images are displayed ? this occurs in both IE7 & Firefox 2. Could it be that the links_imgpage template is missing (I can?t find it anywhere, even in LDM 2.3.0-alpha1) so the image is not displayed? If not the case: to help debug, the Image Resizer mod can use its Shadowbox to display all images in LDM pages.

This, as you said, is because I forgot to give you the template - see separate post

Originally Posted by vbboarder

Minor Bug: When viewing a category?s entries list, clicking on an image thumbnail will show the full-size image in a new webpage. Can you fix it so that the full-size image shows in Shadowbox?

Will do

Originally Posted by vbboarder

Minor Bug: Since JWPlayer is no longer set to play swf files, the video is not shown in Shadowbox. But users with Adobe Flash Player installed can still view the swf video in a new page when the entry?s link is clicked. Can you fix it so that the swf video shows in Shadowbox?

Need to think about the best way to do this. The answer is, of course, yes.

Originally Posted by vbboarder

The ?open_musicbox_newwindow? setting must be enabled or else you?ll get the whole webpage embedded in the Shadowbox, which looks weird.
Shadowbox integrates fine with your flash-sites extra plugin.

The extra will be fixed to over-ride the open_musicbox_newwindow. (I had intended to do so, but forgot)

Originally Posted by vbboarder

Feature Request (luv this feature): when the WMP player is shown in the Shadowbox, there are ?+? & ?-? buttons below the player that can be clicked to enlarge or reduce the size of the player/ video. However, it appears only when the WMP player is used and only in IE7 ? can you enable those buttons for Firefox and all other players (Quicktime, Real, Flash)? If it?s just a WMP feature, then can you enable it for Firefox also?

I spent hours on this last year. The problem is that only certain players are easy to control with javascript. For WMP, the IE version can be controlled and the Firefox 2 version could not be (or at least there was no documentation to tell me how). I have not checked to see if Firefox 3 has a better WMP plugin which allows j/s resizing

Originally Posted by vbboarder

Feature Request: For the Filmstrip extra plugin, clicking on the image thumbnail takes the user to a page displaying just that one entry. There?s already a link below the thumbnail that links to the same single-entry page, so can you enable the Shadowbox to show the full-size image when the thumbnail is clicked? I know the magnifier link will do this, but it?s more user-friendly to also have the thumbnail link activate Shadowbox.

Yes

Originally Posted by vbboarder

Feature Request: Currently I think you have the media players embedded in the jukebox template which is embedded in the Shadowbox. Can you provide an option so that Shadowbox just shows the media player without the jukebox template? Also, if full-size images are embedded in a template, can you do the same for images? There?s 2 advantages to this: 1. the presentation looks cleaner (check out the demo movies on Shadowbox webpage for examples), and 2. the viewing is more streamlined because the user can navigate between entries within a category without leaving the Shadowbox (check out the ?Mixed Content Gallery? demo in Demos > Movies on Shadowbox webpage).

I have just tested the gallery feature in Shadowbox and it works perfectly. So the next version of this extra will enable it on all LDM pages.

The extra will also allow you to specify the templates to use, defaulting to a 'naked' player and naked image. It will be straightforward to go back to the normal Jukebox

Originally Posted by vbboarder

Question: what templates does Shadowbox use for the media players and enlarged images?

Exactly the same as the normal Jukebox (but see two of the answers above). This is all done using Shadowbox's "iframe" facility. It's not possible to access Shadowbox's inbuilt handling of movies and images, because Shadowbox works out what to do from the filetype it is processing rather than from the content it receives. LDM streams output via a php script.

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by Amaresh

Hi Andrew,

I'm trying to get this work but it seems that it is unable to scan and add files that have characters such as underscores or dashes in them.

Eg, I have a few files that look like [Hitode-AnimeSS]_Crystal_Blaze_-_03_[02376E4B].avi in a folder, but when i select all of them and try to add them,
the output is :



Clearly, it is having issues with such kinds of files, so do you know any work around for this ?

Thanks in advance!

Yes, this is a bug. The template processing doesn't like the square brackets. (Another part of the same code doesn't like apostrophes, but you haven't hit that one yet!) Unfortunately, it's not trivial to correct - I will work out a fix in the next 2.3.0 release.

[Atlantean]

Originally Posted by AndrewD

I imagine that you've enabled the "Add LDM to VB Navbar" plugin so that the access link appears in the navbar?

At the point where vb is generating its navbar, it doesn't have access to LDM's settings, so the text "Links/Downloads" has to be picked up from a phrase. You can change this text by going to vb/admincp/languages and phrases and finding and editing the phrase called ldm_vbmenu_ldm

Thanks a million Andrew - that worked a treat :up:

[abdelghani68]

Originally Posted by abdelghani68

Thanks !

I have a little probleme with the comments when I upgrade LDM 2.3.0.

why there is write 0 comments but there is a comment :

is it a bug please?

[vbboarder]

Thanks for the links_imgpage template. I tested Shadowbox with 6 image filetypes - no problems with jpg, png, & gif in IE7 & Firefox 2.

Image Bug: My current image processing library doesn't create thumbnails for bmp, tif, psd images. So I manually created jpg, png, gif thumbnails and added it to my bmp, tif, psd image entries. When I click on the magnifier, the Shadowbox appears but it shows the thumbnail, not the full-size bmp, tif, psd image. I know browsers can show bmp images, but can they show tif & psd images? If not, can you disable the magnifier link for them? If yes, can you enable Shadowbox for them?

links_imgpage Bug: There are some minor bugs with this template:
1. Image is not centered aligned for IE7, both horizontally & vertically.
2. No scrollbars in IE7 so larger images are cut off.
3. Template background/ "canvas" shows for smaller images.

Template Fix: Here's the template that I'm using:
1. Fixes horizontal alignment in IE7; still can't vertically align (even if I use tables).
2. Scrollbars in IE7 shows so larger images can be fully seen.
3. Template background/ "canvas" is minimized for smaller images.

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="$stylevar[textdirection]" lang="$stylevar[languagecode]">
<head>
<title></title>
$headinclude
</head>
<body>
<div style="width: 100%; height: 100%; text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">
    <img border="0" src="$pic_source" alt="" />
</div>
</body>
</html>

.
Image Tip: Currently, the plugin sets the image template width & height to the link_imagemagsize setting. This causes unnecessary scrollbars to appear for images equaling that size, probably because Shadowbox adds some margin or padding.
Solution: to show the full image without unnecessary scrollbars, add about 60 pixels to shadowbox_imgmag_width & shadowbox_imgmag_height in LDM settings. For example, my link_imagemagsize is set to 1024, so I used 1080.

Slow Image Loading: The images load slower than flash videos in Shadowbox. I have images about 1.5 Mb and flash about 15 Mb. Although the flash video is 10x larger, it loads up to 2x faster (~2 secs testing locally, whereas 1.5 Mb images can take up to ~4 secs - IE7 slower than Firefox 2, surprise.... surprise). Is it because the flash video is streamed but the image requires to be fully loaded? If that's the case, can you use the "lowsrc" attribute for <img> to load the thumbnail first?

Missed Click: Ok maybe I'm clumsy with my clicks , but can you make the 'X' button to close Shadowbox larger? When you implement the Next & Previous buttons for the gallery feature, please make them larger also.

Anticipating...: I'm looking forward to the gallery features & 'naked' players/ images that you'll be implementing in the next version of the Shadowbox plugin. I'll be glad to test it for you!

[DJDrew]

Does anyone have any idea why I have the "Downloads and links" title with nothing in the table, then I have the table underneath with all the catagories in. Please ask if you don't understand