Major Additions - DTO Garage - free garage features for all your members (vB 3.8.X)

Drive Thru Online ? Garage

Overview

DTO Garage is a free product allowing all members of a site to show off their car, truck, motorcycle or other powersports toy. Site owners can easily adapt the section and subsection titles to suit the attributes to the site's focus. Images are stored locally preventing broken links and over limit displays common with images linked offsite. Drive Thru Online has made upgrading to the paid version of DTO Garage Plus easy, all user data stored in DTO Garage is retained for a seamless transition.

For users, management of their vBulletin garage is conveniently handled through their user control panel. The intuitive user interface encourages even the most challenged to create a compelling Garage. Images are added via a wizard from either the users own computer or a specified URL. Thumbnails are dynamically created with high-resolution images displayed in a navigable Lytebox. Users can designate whether a garage is visible to the rest of the site members or hidden until they have time to polish the information and give it the debut it deserves. Other users can view garages using interactive pop-up menus embedded in each post or through the Garage owner's profile.

Key Features

• vBulletin Options-based customization of information collected and presented in garages
• User management of garages via User Control Panel
• Simple-to-use image uploads per garage
• Lytebox presentation of high resolution garage images
• bbCode supported in information areas
• Additional image placement in information area supported
• Dynamic presentation of garages in postbit and user profile
• Embedded full featured searchable and indexed Help
• Fully documented
• Fully supported

Language Translation
As of version 1.1.3 DTO Garage has not been fully phrased and only supports English. With a future release it is our intent to offer a fully phrased version to support language translation of the product. When the fully phrased version is available we will provide documentation and tools to speed translations of the product for use on your site. We will also encourage those who have performed a translation to contribute it for distribution to other members. Any contributed languages will be included with this thread and credit given to the author. Site owners are free to translate the product either in its current state or future releases as they see fit given that the note found in the following Upgrade section is followed when upgrading. While Drive Thru Online will provide information to translators regarding the context of wording we can not provide support to facilitate the actual translation itself.

Compatibility

• Fully compatible with vBulletin 3.6.8 through vBulletin 3.8.x
• PHP 5.X or later (compiled with GD support) and MySQL 5.X or later is required.

Upgrading from a previous version of DTO Garage

1. Prior to installation/upgrade we recommend that you perform a back up of your site's database and files.
2. After unzipping the attached package open readme.html in your browser.
3. Click on the ?Documentation & installation instructions? to view the complete documentation for Garage.
4. Note: If you have customized the DTO Garage templates in a previous release it is recommended that you make a copy of your changes, revert to the version of templates included with the new release and migrate your changes into the new version's templates. Failure to do this may cause the product to operate improperly and/or support new features that may have been added to the product.
5. If you use a custom style for your site you may have to modify the garage templates. For more information refer to this how-to written to address the most common modifications required.

Installation & Configuration for vB 3.6.x through vb 3.8.x

1. Prior to installation/upgrade we recommend that you perform a back up of your site's database and files.
2. After unzipping the attached package open readme.html in your browser.
3. Click on the ?Documentation & installation instructions? to view the complete documentation for Garage.
   
   Alternatively, you can also access documentation by visiting our web site under the Support tab.

Copyright & Licensing

• DTO Garage is copyright protected by Drive Thru Online, Inc.
• You are free to download and install this plugin on any vBulletin forum for which you hold a valid vB license.
• Unauthorized distribution of any code and/or documentation, whole or in part, included here is strictly prohibited.
• In addition, the supplied copyright notice must be maintained.

Other Drive Thru Online Products

• DTO Garage and Garage Plus vBadvanced Modules ? free vBadvanced modules for Garage and Garage Plus
• DTO Garage Plus ? paid version with vBSEO sitemap generator add-ons, usergroup permissions, and advanced search features. Click here for a comparison of Garage and Garage Plus.
• DTO Clubs, ShowCase, and Vendor Tools - paid products designed to grow your membership and create revenue from your site

Support

We will provide support in this thread on an as-needed basis to members that have marked this modification as Installed. Additional support resources can be found on our site under the Support tab.

Release and Version History
1.1.3 - October 7, 2009
New feature and bug fix release

New Features

• Changed orientation of images in garage display from vertical to horizontal orientation for cleaner display.
• Modified index page to provide paged display of most recently added garages.
• Added error handling for upload of unsupported image formats when adding a picture to a garage.

Fixes

• Added caching of garage-related templates for use in private message postbit display.

1.1.2 - August 21, 2009
New feature and bug fix release

Note: This release did not include updated documentation to reflect the new features below. As this is an interim release we will be updating documentation with the next 1.2.0 release of Garage and Garage Plus.

New Features

• Garage index page - index page accessible from breadcrumb when viewing a members garage. Displays a random selection of up to 25 member garages.
• Navbar menu - Added "My Garage" link when user is logged in
• Navbar menu - Added "Garages" to take user to garage index page
• With a garage index page member garages are no longer display in a new browser window (the only exception is if you preview your own garage when managing it).

Fixes

• Users currently not logged in are prevented from managing or adding a garage.
• When using quick reply the Garage link is shown in the user's postbit given that the user has a visible garage configured.

1.1.1 - July 6, 2009
Fix release

• Correct alignment of Garage/Garage Plus navbar pop-up menu.
• SQL error when rendering Garage postbit links for guest users - no longer attempts to render a link for Guest users.
• Corrected issue for sites using database table prefixes where a SQL error was generated when attempting to insert an image into a garage.

1.1.0 - June 19, 2009
Initial release

[mferguson]

Sorry I meant that the code should replace that found in the Garage Postbit Pop-up Menu plugin. It certainly wouldn't work well if placed in the template

I've updated my post above to indicate the plugin.

Sorry for the confusion!

Mark

[Scitz0]

Originally Posted by mferguson

Understood. I've used Photopost on sites that I've developed and I understand the need for a single image store on a site so that in the future you don't have to manage yet another product, migrate it to something new, etc.

If we were to consider adding support to use the vBulletin album functionality as the image store do you have any thoughts on how the permissions associated with the current album settings by usergroup should be handled? Right now, in our plugin, we allow approximately 20-22 images to be uploaded for one garage. In Garage Plus you can specify any number of garages per usergroup. With this in mind if the admin had not allowed for sufficient space in the vBulletin gallery but you had additional garages left what type of feedback should the user receive? Should it prevent additional garages from being created or should it just prevent new images from being uploaded?

Also, if using the vBulletin album store would it be ideal that the user already have the images he/she wanted in their albums and select those for use in their garage or, when creating a garage, allow the user to load new images and have those go into a given album? If the latter would the user want the ability to choose which album (or create a new album) to have the images placed into.

We're open to giving this consideration but we'll need to model the use cases carefully to make sure this would continue to be easy to use.

Thanks again for the feedbackk :up:

Mark

This sounds like a great thing, integrating it with the vBulletin album store.

My thoughts on the questions you have(they can change if someone come up with better one's ):

"the permissions associated with the current album settings by usergroup"
I think that when you reach vbulletin gallery max a message to the user that the maximum number of images is reached and that he should contact admin if he feels its wrong, or something like that. It should not prevent the creation of new garages, only new images from being uploaded.

"Also, if using the vBulletin album store would it be ideal that the user already have the images he/she wanted in their albums and select those for use in their garage or, when creating a garage, allow the user to load new images and have those go into a given album? If the latter would the user want the ability to choose which album (or create a new album) to have the images placed into."
I think it should go both ways, if the image exist in some album it should be possible to choose that one, but also the user should be able to upload new images through the garage and be able to either put it in a currently existing album or create a new one.

[Scitz0]

Another thing that would be great is to have some sort of blog function for each garage where you can blog about new things you have done to the car or adventures you have taken with it. And be able to upload images to that specific blog. I guess that gives us the same dilemma as my previous post about picture integration with vb gallery store. But im not sure if you should be limited by the vb gallery max images here. A max number of images/blog is enough i think. So im not sure if integrating it with vb gallery store is such a good idea after all. Maybe it could be solved somehow.

But a blog feature for the garages would be nice however you solve the picture thing .

What do you think, something that could be done?

[mferguson]

Thank you for taking the time to provide detailed feedback. I've added these items to our list of items to investigate further. I can't guarantee that we'll be able to address these in the release we are planning for sometime in August. That said we will look into your suggestions and see what would be involved in supporting them. I especially like the garage blogging concept :up:

Thanks again for taking the time to provide us with feedback!

Best regards,

Mark

[Scitz0]

Ok great, looking forward to the August release.
I have talked to the man in charge of $ for our forum and I think the plus version is very near

[mferguson]

Sounds good. Let me know if in the meantime you have any additional questions.

Thanks!

Mark

[Rich S]

Thanks for this mod.

I just installed the free version and created a garage.

Every thing seems to be working so far except for the "Garage" link in the navbar.

If I click it, the pull-down works but only the help link is active. Is this because it is the free version? Or is the Garage link supposed to work?

Thanks,
Rich S
http://www.kutsujuracing.com/forum/index.php


Edit:
I do have one real issue.... in adding pictures. I can upload a photo from my hard drive using the browse option. However if I link to a file on the internet I get a blank white screen.

Thanks again,
Rich S

[mferguson]

Originally Posted by Rich S

Thanks for this mod.

I just installed the free version and created a garage.

Every thing seems to be working so far except for the "Garage" link in the navbar.

If I click it, the pull-down works but only the help link is active. Is this because it is the free version? Or is the Garage link supposed to work?

Thanks,
Rich S
http://www.kutsujuracing.com/forum/index.php

In Garage Plus you'll see additional browse and search options under the menu. In the free version only the help link is displayed. The Garage text is just a title of the drop down menu and does not link to anything.

Originally Posted by Rich S

Edit:
I do have one real issue.... in adding pictures. I can upload a photo from my hard drive using the browse option. However if I link to a file on the internet I get a blank white screen.

Thanks again,
Rich S

When using the "URL to Image" option to add an image to a garage it actually pulls the image defined by the URL, resizes, and saves the actual image into your site. This way it insures that the image doesn't go away at the remote location and breaks an image in your garage. Given this make sure that you enter the full URL to an image. For example to use an image that is hosted on Photobucket you have to do a little digging for the full URL of an image:

1) Here is a page containing an image (http://media.photobucket.com/image/b...ture_st4pz.jpg)

2) Right click on the image and select the option to view the image in its own window

3) Right click on the image to copy its URL to your clipboard (or copy it from your browser's address bar). In this case the URL is http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...ture_st4pz.jpg

Note: the URL in #3 is similar to that in #2 but one displays surrounding page content while the other does not. If you were to use the URL in #2 in the URL to Image field you would get a white page - a bug that I'll address in our next release since it should error gracefully.

4) Paste the URL into the "URL to Image" field when adding an image in your garage.

5) Add a caption and click upload.

This should retrieve the image from the remote server, resize it if needed, and save it on your site's server.

If something else is occurring and causing a white page please PM me with the steps needed reproduce the problem along with the URL you are entering in the "URL to Image" field.

Thanks!

Mark

[Rich S]

sending now.

Thanks mark!

-Rich

[mferguson]

Got your PM and information. I'll test with the information you provided and also see if I can reproduce the issue here. I will follow up as soon as I have an update.

Thanks!

Mark