Major Additions - AME 2.5 - Media Embedding for posts, sigs, vm's, groups and blogs

From the makers of the letters O and Yea comes the hottest 'must have mod' of the season: AME 2.5 - The Return of The Hot Mama.

Thanks everyone for making AME 2.5 Mod of the Month

AME is the multi award winning modification that smartly scans new and edited posts for URLs from a customisable variety of web sites (i.e. YouTube or Amazon or about 200 others). If it finds a match, AME will 'transform' the URL into inline embedded media without your users ever having to even think about it.

It was important for me to create a system that did not need updating (and subsequent reinstalling) every time one of the sites it supported decided to change the way it displayed its media (which is all the fricken time). Therefore I built a system in which the 'definitions' for each site could be imported, exported, tweaked and shared on a whim. This way, you only have to import the definitions that you want. It also allows the vB community to get creative and share definitions that I wouldn't of thought of!

Which sites are supported?

Included in the default installation is YouTube and Amazon. At time of posting this, I believe that there are over 180 sites supported that have been created by the vBulletin community. These range from sites that stream videos to Amazon referral links to locally hosted music and video files.

Check out the 'add ons' section of this post below to see availible add-ons.

For a total list of features and an FAQ, see click here.
For a post on troubleshooting, click here.

Though not tested on any version of vBulletin lower than 3.7.4, in theory it should work on versions 3.5 and higher (just dont quote this bit!).

Big thanks goes out to all those in the community that have supported this mod. Especially Digital Jedi who gives great support on this mod and has created over 160 definitions for this system alone!


Installation/Upgrade

• Upload the contents of the forums folder into your forums directory and import the product-ame.xml file into your product manager (if upgrading, choose 'yes' to overwrite previous installation).
• After installation, make sure that the system is on (admincp->AME CP->Settings)
• Then you may want to try to rebuild old URLs via the tools option.

Change Log

• 20/1/09 - Uploaded to vb.org
• 22/1/09 - v. 2.5.2. Adresses a couple minor issues and character sets
• 23/1/09 - v. 2.5.3 minor update: Fixed ksort error on import and nomedia display
• 3/2/09 - v. 2.5.4 minor update to address rare bug with some page titles
• 3/7/09 - v.2.5.5 minor updates to address rare bug editing media with brackets in name
• 9/12/09 - v.2.5.6 minor updates youtubes validation process, a ccurl bug and rebuild not using the date like a good girl

nJoy

[Gladhatter]

Originally Posted by Phaedrus

Well, I just added that table field list where it kept trying to find it. It works.

Have you read the bug list that is fixed in 3.81? I think you will find your answer there.

[Armyqt]

I installed this but I don't see an AME CP.

[JulianD]

My god, I can't believe there are such great modifications still depending on modifying the post table. Do you know what it takes to do an ALTER TABLE to a table with millions of records?

[Gladhatter]

Originally Posted by JulianD

My god, I can't believe there are such great modifications still depending on modifying the post table. Do you know what it takes to do an ALTER TABLE to a table with millions of records?

Well I am going way out on a limb here and going to say that about millions of us have not a clue of what it takes to alter a table with millions of records.

I could suggest a small earth quake under the building with that table full or LP's or possibly 45's on it may well alter it.

Now I do have a couple sincere questions here however.

1. Are you intimating by your post that altering a table with a mod is a poor coder choice of methodoloy?
2. You seem to find favor with the mod and yet some slanting there is a bad method used in the fruition of making this all happen in heavily populated tables. What I am concerned about is really two fold.

• One is if you think this is a poorly written program do you also have a solution to it or are you a problem only type coder that sees others mistakes but has no valid solution to share with the class?
• Have I some how misunderstood your post and you find all things about this mod of a pleasing nature?
• If the first assumption is the correct one, will you tell us your proposed solution for it?
• If above is true, do you plan on releasing the "fix" for this and if so when is the anticipated release date?
• Further and probably finally, do you have some mods you have created with similar complexity so we can see your brilliance in work and not just in word?
• Really finally now, I am convinced this mod is a God send and a wonderful one that brings enjoyment to all that either know how to install it and negotiate the hurdles they run into or else the ones that choose a professional programmer to install it for them and they simply or complexly enjoy it period. Do you think you may be a bit harsh should you be judging the mod is poorly written and not offering any valid solutions for the fix of it and have coder as your title?

Just curious you please understand.

Oh and if you can make it work on wimp.com then I will join your cause! Help DJ and GEEK.

[JulianD]

I understand your sarcastic tone and let me tell you it's not my intention to criticize the author's work. I know his work because I used to be his customer. I haven't seen the source code to even understand how it works and I don't plan to do it.

My point is that not everyone has super fast arrays of hard disks to modify a big table in a reasonable amount of time. I'm sure there are other ways to approach the same solution. Saddly I don't have the time to do it right now.

My mysql server has spent over an hour altering that table. That's my point. There's nothing wrong in altering a table but the post table as well as the attachment table or the search table are usually very big tables on big forums. I think it's something to care about when developing the mod.

Any way, I'm not killing the alter table process. I'm sure it's a great product and I want to see it for my self. But I'm not even done installing it and I'm already thinking about the nightmare when I have to uninstall it in the future.

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by JulianD

My god, I can't believe there are such great modifications still depending on modifying the post table. Do you know what it takes to do an ALTER TABLE to a table with millions of records?

Hey Julian, I wouldn't have added the flag field if it didn't provide a tangible performance benefit. I tried many other methods like a lookup table, however all methods meant that while I was avoiding adding a flag field, I was arbitrarily adding a lookup (or similar process) when it wasn't needed 99.9% of the time.

The reason behind the alter is that it I add a tinyint field that will flag if the post (or thread) contains AME code. If it does, the relevant AME definitions will get loaded, otherwise it won't. Since the vast majority of threads do not contain embedded media, it seemed like a waste to load the AME subsystem (and the users definitions) when it wasn't used.

So, my options were to add a field to maximise performance or slow down all performance regardless of if it was needed or not. I chose the former

Out of all the commercial and free modifications I have released over the years, it is the only alteration (apart from usergroup permissions) that I have done and I think it is a pretty wise move.

HTHs

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by Armyqt

I installed this but I don't see an AME CP.

Make sure you have uploaded all the files to the correct location

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by Phaedrus

I'm having database issues after loading this. When I try to save my Usergroup settings it gives me database errors. What is happening?

This is the MySql error:

MySQL Error : Unknown column 'ms_searchsocialgroups_permissions' in 'field list'

Doesnt have anything to do with AME, but glad its sorted

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by fkatzenb

Now for the problem. Before I had Goldbrick, I used an embedded thing that used the following as an example...
[YOUTUBE="Warrant - Uncle Tom's Cabin"]te1iSbyaR9I[/YOUTUBE]

Tough one here... see, that isn't a format that will change easily because the parameters are backwards to normal formats. The conversion system may be able to do it, but remember that the system is there as a bonus tool to get rid of other codes that didnt install correctly. TBH, I would first do a search in phpmyadmin to see how many posts contain the code. If it is only a few, manually change them.

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by jellybeanz

Yes, I deleted the stock amazon and youtube definitions. The definition is fine and still works but manually only. Just trying to find out if there is something wrong with my board or installation.

Sounds like it could be a conflict with another modification. Try disabling your other mods except for this one. Also check usergroup permissions.

HTHs