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

[Ryloth]

So this step:

Adding index to post table. Please standy by.... this bit can take a few...

Has now been running for over 30 hours.

I am running it in a browser window from my server. It hangs on trying to create an index apparently. What is your suggestion? I am half tempted to remove this step from the product and create the index in mysql on my own. The post table has over 2 million rows and is myisam.

[Kavadas]

Alright, I finally got AME working (and it's great!) but I have one more n00b question. I went ahead and created a custom BBCode entry for AME through the AdminCP. The button is up on my post editor toolbar and it correctly adds the BBCode tags. When I submit a post it displays correctly and works fine but when I hit preview or go to edit the AME tags simply revert to URL tags the message field itself.

Meaning that if I preview something and submit my AME tags switch to URL tags in the message editor box. Or if I go to edit something they'll switch to URL and screw up the post unless you manually change the URL tags back into AME tags.

In the "replacement" field I currently have:

<div class="ame"> {param} </div>

What should I stick in here to prevent this from happening?

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by Kavadas

Alright, I finally got AME working (and it's great!) but I have one more n00b question. I went ahead and created a custom BBCode entry for AME through the AdminCP. The button is up on my post editor toolbar and it correctly adds the BBCode tags. When I submit a post it displays correctly and works fine but when I hit preview or go to edit the AME tags simply revert to URL tags the message field itself.

Meaning that if I preview something and submit my AME tags switch to URL tags in the message editor box. Or if I go to edit something they'll switch to URL and screw up the post unless you manually change the URL tags back into AME tags.

In the "replacement" field I currently have:

<div class="ame"> {param} </div>

What should I stick in here to prevent this from happening?

I am not sure why you would do this? AME was designed so that you and your users just had to paste the URLs in the post. AME will do the rest.

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by Ryloth

So this step:

Adding index to post table. Please standy by.... this bit can take a few...

Has now been running for over 30 hours.


I am running it in a browser window from my server. It hangs on trying to create an index apparently. What is your suggestion? I am half tempted to remove this step from the product and create the index in mysql on my own. The post table has over 2 million rows and is myisam.

That would indeed work, but you wouldnt have to take the step out of the product file, ame will silently skip the step if the column is already there.

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by Kavadas

No, it's definitely set to "No" in that disable new stuff option and when it wasn't working my usergroup permissions was one of the first things I checked but that's kosher too.

I thought maybe I had fudged the chmod on that amecache folder or something but it was all sevens so... yeah, I'm lost on this one

I lay money on the fact that something is being overlooked. The most common mistakes centred around the 'it doesn't work' arena are:

1- Users install product and go 'refresh' a page that has a media URL in it. AME doesn't work this way. AME will sprinkle its magic onto a post only when AME is installed and the post is saved (or rebuilt using the tools)

2- Users are pasting a youtube video into a post, but the video they are posting has external embedding disabled so AME just links to the video instead of showing you a broken one (in other words, it is actually working)

3- Usergroup permissions are wrong

4- Cache setup wrong (disable the file cache to test).

5- They are trying to install on phpBB. Fail.

[Chadi]

Originally Posted by The Geek

I am sure this could be done by just editing the templates, but currently have no plans to expand the feature set. I assume next time I crack open the code will be to develop a version for vb4.0.

Nice effect though

Thanks.

[Kavadas]

Originally Posted by The Geek

I am not sure why you would do this? AME was designed so that you and your users just had to paste the URLs in the post. AME will do the rest.

AME only works for me when I surround the media's URL with AME and /AME (bracketed, of course).

Originally Posted by The Geek

I lay money on the fact that something is being overlooked. The most common mistakes centred around the 'it doesn't work' arena are:

1- Users install product and go 'refresh' a page that has a media URL in it. AME doesn't work this way. AME will sprinkle its magic onto a post only when AME is installed and the post is saved (or rebuilt using the tools)

2- Users are pasting a youtube video into a post, but the video they are posting has external embedding disabled so AME just links to the video instead of showing you a broken one (in other words, it is actually working)

3- Usergroup permissions are wrong

4- Cache setup wrong (disable the file cache to test).

5- They are trying to install on phpBB. Fail.

1. I didn't refresh a page to see if it worked. I created a new post with several links from various video tube sites (G4TV, YouTube, Google Video).

2. Like I said, I posted multiple videos from multiple sites.

3. I've checked and rechecked usergroup permissions. Everything is kosher here (as mentioned in a previous post this was the first thing I checked for troubleshooting).

4. Cache setup is not wrong. It's currently set as enabled, the folder is place in the correct directory, and it is CHMODded to "777." There are no cache alerts at the top of the AME CP options page.

5. My site utilizes vBulletin 3.8.3.

[Ohiosweetheart]

Are there any known issues concerning AME and the vBBlog?

I just tried posting to our blog, and got the following database error, which would seem to involve AME?

Database error in vBulletin 3.8.2:

Invalid SQL:
UPDATE blog_text SET ame_flag=0 WHERE blogtextid = 0;

MySQL Error : Unknown column 'ame_flag' in 'field list'
Error Number : 1054
Request Date : Thursday, June 18th 2009 @ 12:25:30 PM
Error Date : Thursday, June 18th 2009 @ 12:25:31 PM
Script : http://rushhourmadness.com/blog_post...teblog&blogid=
Referrer : http://rushhourmadness.com/blog_post.php?do=newblog
IP Address : 99.138.12.173
Username : Peggy
Classname : vB_Database
MySQL Version : 5.0.77-community

any ideas here?
Thanks in advance.

[The Geek]

That means AME was installed before vbBlog. Check the AME tools menu in the admincp. There is an option to add the ame_flag column you need

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by Kavadas

AME only works for me when I surround the media's URL with AME and /AME (bracketed, of course).

Do you have vbseo running and if so, are you using it to track outbound links? Or maybe any other link modifying hack?