Show Thread Enhancements - AME 2.0 -Auto Media Embedding for posts, blogs, visitor and group messsages

From the creators of French and Toast comes a sweet and sticky enchanement to the New York Times best-seller: AME - Auto Media Embedding

AME 2.0 - The Embedder Strikes Back!

AME has won Mod of the Month for Spetember 08. Thanks!

Note that 2.5 Gold has been released. Click Here.

Discussions for AME 2.5 RC 1 start here

AME 2.0 is the next version of the "Mod of the Month" winning media embedder that:

• Allows user to simply 'paste' in a URL (i.e. a youtube link) without needing to know any special tags. However instead of displaying just the URL, it will show the media within the post
• is lightweight as it does all of her chores without the overhead of having 1 bbcode per pattern or trying to parse a post every single time it gets displayed with a bunch of patterns. AME radically reduces overhead and speeds up processing. The only time ame will kick in is after creating a new post or after editing an existing one (or if an ame tag is found)
• is extensible. She allows you to add, edit, delete, import and export patterns. That way you can decide which services to support, how they should look and then share them with others! At time of typing this, there are over 150 media sites that have been contributed by vBulletin.org members
• can extract the title (requires your server to allow url wrappers with fetch_contents)
• can extract embed code from sites whose URLs do not contain sufficient information to embed the video
• can rebuild your old posts to convert your 'other' mediaish tags into URL tags.
• can rebuild your old posts, blogs, comments, visitor and social group messages to convert URL tags into ame tags where needed
• can convert her codes BACK to url codes so you're not stuffed with a bunch of dead tags if you uninstall!
• won't uglify your site by having videos appear in quotes, php, code or html blocks (blech!)
• can be globally disabled
• can be excluded from forums
• can exclude usergroups
• can be toggled on/off per post, blog, comment, visitor and social group message
• would cook dinner for you if she had arms
• can wrap the output in a 'container' with original URL
• has a super comprehensive admincp help system. Yes, I actually took the bloody time to add all the info you need into vB's admincp help system. If you ask a silly question in this thread that is addressed in the help system, you will be taunted.
• is fully phrased
• has hooks around integral operations so you can extend it
• Supports embedding in vbBlog, Visitor Messages and Social Groups.
• Can be disabled in one or more of the following sections: Posts, vbBlog, Visitor Messages and/or Social Groups

Apart from the additional areas of support around vbBlog, Visitor Messages and Social Groups, little has changed about AME since version 1.0 released over a year ago. I cleaned up a few minor bugs, trimmed and updated the default definitions.

Which sites are supported?

At time of counting this, there are about 170 sites supported. But I have only included a few common standards as default (yahoo, youtube, myspace, google and Amazon). Why only these? AME was designed with its own import and export system that enables users to create or modify definitions and share them with the community. This keeps the system lightweight, customisable and saves us all from having to upgrade every time a media site changes their URL structure or if I add another site.

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



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.

Big thanks goes out to all those in the community that have supported this mod. Especially Digital Jedi Who has created about 155 definitions for this system alone!

Change Log


2.0.2 - fixed added slashes in quote blocks (DoH!), vm advanced error and incrimented product version. You need to replace include/ame_bb_code.php and re-import the product-ame.xml to upgrade
2.0.1 - fixed missing backslashes in code blocks

2.5 Pre-Release information

Attached to this post is pre-release of version 2.5

2.5 is a pretty major upgrade from the 2.0 series and adds the following functionality to 2.0:

• New in Beta 3 - Validation ability. This will help prevent media being embedded that can not be embedded (i.e. youtube videos that the author has stipulated can not be shown off of youtube). This option requires the extraction option to be turned on and a valid validation regexp. I have included one in the default youtube version. When a video on you tube gets embedded, but the author doesnt allow embedding, a link (with icon) is shown instead.
• Ability to prevent non authorised usergroups from viewing (see Readme file in zip for more info)
• Usergroup permissions (edit usergroup to adjust edit/view permissions)
• Template driven system - uses templates now instead of 1 master replacement (see Readme file in zip for more info)
• Signatures supported
• Different sizes and template configurations for each supported zone (posts, blogs, groups, visitor messages and signatures)
• A couple new hooks (Mainly to support a future add on for AME media in profiles)
• Notfication system (similar to vB's to check for errors)
• Definition keys for easier updating of definitions and to use in templates
• File caching system which radically reduces processing
• And more that I cant think of off the top of my head!

Note that while previous definitions will work with the new system, they will not be sizeable by zone. Since DJ helped with the private beta testing, I am sure he will be releasing 2.5 versions of his definitions soon.

Please note that 2.5 is a pre-release so there will be issues. If you want more stability, use 2.x until this version becomes gold FWIW: The only items currently outstanding are to add some missing admincp help. The rest is working as intended as far as I can tell

nJoy

[struff]

Originally Posted by The Geek

It shouldnt take anything like that amount of time. You can try adding the flag to your posts table ahead of the install. To do so, use phpmyadmin or similar and add a column called ame_flag of type tinyint to your posts table.

Please note that you should backup first.

HTHs

Any chance you can give me a little more detail how to do this in phpmyadmin? My experience in phpmyadmin is limited although I've had no problems doing things in there with more details.

If I understand this correctly, in the Post table I would be adding a field - does it matter if it is at the beginning or end of the table or after any particular field? I'm guessing that the Field Name would be "ame_flag"? Do I need any values after the Type?

Thanks.

[58D]

Great Mod...but having a problem. The youtube video plays fine until you try to go to full screen mode. If you select the full screen mode, the sound continues but the video freezes. When you hit the escape key to go back to minimized mode, the video plays correctly but the rest of the webpage goes pure white. Here is a link to what I'm talking about:
http://www.homebuiltairplanes.com/te...est-video.html

[58D]

Update: It only appears to be happening in IE. Not Safari, Netscape, or Firefox.

[58D]

Update: Now it seems to only be in my home browser IE7 Browser. At work it's fine but at home it's broke. I'm using IE7 in both places. I updated my Java at home to no effect. Is there something else I should check? 80% of my users use IE so I'd like to figure it out before it goes to my live board. Any ideas?

[Emunator]

The Geek, i also have a problem with showing the youtube videos as no longer available.

I noticed that you said extraction needs to be on and the server needs to support it.

Wich option on the server should i chance, i guess it has something to do with php.

[wAnBoA]

Thanks for this awesome mod. But i have a question.
How do i edit the Post Width and Height? I edited them to 500x500 under Posting Zone Settings. It's still intact with the default settings.

[Verbose]

Does anyone know why sometimes a posted YouTube video will just show the "loading" animated circle image and hang?

[58D]

Update: Now it seems to only be in my home browser IE7 Browser

It appears I needed to update my flash player. It's working now.

[Digital Jedi]

Originally Posted by sweeps78

Unfortunately, It is not this easy. It works just fine for some of my members, but not all. In fact, I have a coworker who sits right next to me and the videos do not work for him, yet the videos work just fine for me. What makes it even stranger, is that we have the same computers practically and are on the same network...

I wasn't suggesting it was easily dismissed, what I'm suggesting is that it's not a modification issue. All AME does is replicate the embed code provided by YouTube. It would either work, or it wouldn't. Bizzare behavior is generally an indication of a problem with the source of the video, which would explain why it's different for different users/computers.

Originally Posted by stlcard_25

I downloaded and followed the instructions here (put the forums folder in my forum directory, imported the ame.xml file) , yet I'm not sure if it's installed or if there's some other step I have to take (?). The AME CP is not there and if I turn the product on, I get this error when I try to make any posts:

Warning: require_once([path]/includes/ame_bbcode.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in [path]/newreply.php(739) : eval()'d code on line 1
 
Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required '/home/
*****/public_html/forum/includes/ame_bbcode.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/*****public_html/forum/newreply.php(739) : eval()'d code on line 1

What have I done wrong?

Did you upload the contentsof the forums folder to your forums directory, or did you just put the entire folder there? The reason it's called forums is because most folks have their forum located in a folder called forums. Whatever folder you keep your forum in is your forum's root directory. So that's where the contents of the forums folder should go.

[zeaphyr]

great mod ..