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 3.6.x 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.


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

[crowdgather]

Originally Posted by realdx

Nice hack! Tagged! But one question, from the description sounds like that we can send 99 emails with no limit on the number of attachments per mail. While on your site you clearly state that only 1 attachment per mail is allowed. What is right? Thank you again for this!!

For the basic service, it is one image per email. The premium service allows for up to 7 megs of images per email. Thanks for checking out the plugin!

[sanjay369]

Just to clarify- it's 99 emails per month for free. Each with one image attached.

[sailnet]

Hey folks with all due respect this is cool, but unfortunately members on the road and out an about like my members never know when they'll want to upload an image and a caption.

what you guys really need to do is to allow people to simply get registered on the forum to upload images and then allow them to upload images to their gallery. I would pay for this because it will spur more usage of my forum. My members constantly upload pictures to their facebook accounts and I'd pay a monthly fee to allow them to do the same thing on my forum.

You could use your current backend to send authorization messages to the phone (from a new link on the control panel you'd create) and once registered they'd be free to upload.

You'd simply link the auth message to their userid on the forum like you're doing now but not have to worry about the threadid like you do now.

trust me guys when I tell you that I know how to make money and this would be gang busters.

I'll even test it for you.

Jeff

[ArnyVee]

I've been testing the mod out and it's been great! Now, I'm opening it up for my moderators and admins for phase 2 of the testing process and ease of use. We're setting up a thread on the site in order for folks to be able to follow the process properly and avoid issues as well

Myself and one of our moderators will be using it to update our members as we take a trip through Walt Disney World in a couple of weeks! :up:

[sanjay369]

Originally Posted by ArnyVee

I've been testing the mod out and it's been great! Now, I'm opening it up for my moderators and admins for phase 2 of the testing process and ease of use. We're setting up a thread on the site in order for folks to be able to follow the process properly and avoid issues as well

Myself and one of our moderators will be using it to update our members as we take a trip through Walt Disney World in a couple of weeks! :up:

Exciting progress- let us know if we can help in any way!

Originally Posted by sailnet

Hey folks with all due respect this is cool, but unfortunately members on the road and out an about like my members never know when they'll want to upload an image and a caption.

what you guys really need to do is to allow people to simply get registered on the forum to upload images and then allow them to upload images to their gallery. I would pay for this because it will spur more usage of my forum. My members constantly upload pictures to their facebook accounts and I'd pay a monthly fee to allow them to do the same thing on my forum.

You could use your current backend to send authorization messages to the phone (from a new link on the control panel you'd create) and once registered they'd be free to upload.

You'd simply link the auth message to their userid on the forum like you're doing now but not have to worry about the threadid like you do now.

trust me guys when I tell you that I know how to make money and this would be gang busters.


I'll even test it for you.

Jeff

I am not sure I understand why someone would need roaming capability to upload to their gallery versus a thread? Is your forum set up in a way that people get updates on gallery images in real time? Threads and posts are usually where people see images and where members want the ability to be able to post images to share....like they do on Facebook. If they are just adding to their albums then what is the need for real-time capability?

That said, it would not be too hard for us to fix this issue by having the uploads go straight to a members gallery instead of a a separate roaming upload folder on your site. PM me details about your forum and gallery software and maybe we can try it out for you.

[sailnet]

Originally Posted by sanjay369

Exciting progress- let us know if we can help in any way!



I am not sure I understand why someone would need roaming capability to upload to their gallery versus a thread? Is your forum set up in a way that people get updates on gallery images in real time? Threads and posts are usually where people see images and where members want the ability to be able to post images to share....like they do on Facebook. If they are just adding to their albums then what is the need for real-time capability?

That said, it would not be too hard for us to fix this issue by having the uploads go straight to a members gallery instead of a a separate roaming upload folder on your site. PM me details about your forum and gallery software and maybe we can try it out for you.

if you don't get it - I suggest you take a look at a little website that allows people to upload images and not attach them to threads...they simply go into someone's album.

oh - and by the way - they're very successful and people love the feature

it's called

FACEBOOK

I'm not trying to be facetious but IMHO the reasons are self-evident for a feature like this.

My members are very mobile and love to post pictures and my members spend hours looking at other people's pictures and the more pages that get served the more ads I can and serve and the more ads I can server the money money I make.



ps: It's not about 'real time' it's all about convenience and making it easy for people to add content to your website....

at least easier than all of your competitors!!!!!

[sanjay369]

Sounds like you know what you want- best of luck.

[sailnet]

yes I do.

I just released it today.

I went a different route and gave my users a special email address to send photoS to.

I say "photo" because some providers including Verizon wind up appending a different TLD for MMS as opposed to SMS. Once the photo email is received I send them a reply with their Mobile Device Email Address (IN CASE THEY DON'T KNOW IT AND MOST DO NOT) and I've added a user profile field where they can enter their Mobile Device email address field. This links their uploads to the forum account.

In all it took me about 3 days of coding and this included all of the necessary table inserts and updates to add the photos to albums, picture table, albumupdate etc along with the standard code to protect against sql injection via the text that may accompany a picture, resizing and thumbnail creation. I also interrogate the actual image uploaded to protect against "exe's" masquerading as images to protect against hackers, root kits etc.

To my knowledge no one else is doing this with VB and Ive had over 300 people signup today after I announced the release this morning.

When combined with the mod that allows album pics to be selected and inserted into posts I think it's a great solution.

[ArnyVee]

Originally Posted by crowdgather

v1.0.1: Fixed minor issue with non-urlencoded characters in image captions.

Please reupload roaming.php to your forum home directory to update your install.

I just realized that I hadn't updated to the 1.0.1 version.

Did I need to do anything other than the roaming.php change? Should I import the xml as well?

[ArnyVee]

Uploaded to the 1.0.2 version and it's working perfectly now!

Thanks guys! :up: