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

[Kolbi]

It doesn?t creates an issue, I only wanted to give you an advice to correct it.

But it isn?t as necessary, because a search engine can?t crawle this template, because it only for registered members.

Another question to the postbit legacy include, how can i include the link to the garage like carlosacgj wants to have?
Have I overread a passage in the installation manual?

[mferguson]

Originally Posted by Kolbi

It doesn?t creates an issue, I only wanted to give you an advice to correct it.

Thanks! I'll add this to our list of items for the next product revision.

Originally Posted by Kolbi

But it isn?t as necessary, because a search engine can?t crawle this template, because it only for registered members.

The pop-up menu and its links are, technically, visible to everyone, including search engines, visiting your forums if you have your permissions set to allow visitors to view your forums and threads. Keep in mind though that the Garage link only displays if the owner of that post has a garage entry saved and Allow others to view this vehicle is set to Yes.

The real crawlable content is in the garage itself. In the paid version, one of the features included, is a vBSEO sitemap generator add-on to insure that all visible garage content is crawled by the search engines. In our testing we've found the sitemap to more quickly push the content into Google than just the vBSEO custom rewrite rules. In one case a customer created an entry that had some unique keywords in it. Within 24 hours searching for these keywords via Google showed this in the first page of results.

To see a comparison of the features of Garage versus Garage Plus click here.

Originally Posted by Kolbi

Another question to the postbit legacy include, how can i include the link to the garage like carlosacgj wants to have?
Have I overread a passage in the installation manual?

You should only have to do the following:

1. Go to vBulletin Options
2. Select Style & Language Settings
3. Set Use Legacy (Vertical) Postbit Template to Yes
4. Save

Again, in order for the Garage link to display requires that the owner of the post have a garage entry saved and set to visible. I usually test this by creating a test thread myself after building a sample garage for myself and set "Allow others to view this vehicle" to yes.

If it doesn't work for you in this fashion please PM me and I work with you to get it working (please note that I'm traveling right now with family and may not have Internet access for a several hours).

Thanks!

Mark

[nalexandre]

Hello, in case i install it and good working, i´m thinking in the plus version, but my question is, am i aloud to translate it to my native language=Portuguese?

Thanks

[mferguson]

Originally Posted by nalexandre

Hello, in case i install it and good working, i?m thinking in the plus version, but my question is, am i aloud to translate it to my native language=Portuguese?



Thanks

The products are about 80-90% phrased right now. I know that another user was interested in providing a German translation. If both of you would be willing to provide the translations after we fully phrase everything I would like to include that in our general distributions and manage it in our product release cycles. Let me know if you would be interested in this and we'll coordinate a release to incorporate these translations. Feel free to contact me via PM to discuss further.

Thanks!

Mark

[carlosacgj]

in my forum I do not see "garage"

this is your forum


this is my forum


i do not see "garage" on postbit_legacy or posbit

i have on my "garage" one car

i have on my template the hook "postbit_userinfo_right"

[Kolbi]

You have the same problem as I have. The hook is correctly installed in the template. The plugin is correct, but it doesn?t appears in the postbit...


@nalexandre To translate your garage manually, you have first to translate all phrases and then translate the templates

The German translation can I do, tell me then I shall start.

[MustangLisa]

This looks cool, thanks! I'll probably try it on one/all of my auto sites!

[mferguson]

carlosacgj and Kolbi,
It will be difficult to debug the issues you are seeing without being able to see the installation itself and insert some debugging code into the plug-in. Being able to do this would be insure that the plug-in is operating correctly and where the problem may be.

If you would be open to this we can do it one of two ways. The easiest and if you would be comfortable with it (and given I would be able to use the English translation) would be to log into your admincp and add the debugging code to the plugin, do the testing, and determine where the problem lies.

The other method would be to arrange some type of screen sharing and instant messaging session and have you be my remote hands.

As I'll be traveling until June 30 I am not online until each evening (Mountain Time) the first option would be more expeditious and you can remove whatever account you created for me as soon as I have completed the debugging. The admin permissions I would need are:

Can Administer Settings - to access the Garage settings
Can Administer Styles - to access the Garage templates
Can Administer Plugins - to access the Garage plugins

If you want to take the second approach we would have to schedule a time and arrange the technology to communicate effectively.

PM me with your preference and I will work with you to get these issues resolved.

Thanks!

Mark

[R.Solutions]

this looks awesome! Will try this out.

[motoxer311]

I don't seem to see where I can enable the garage for user groups.. Please advise...