Administrative and Maintenance Tools - Import External Images

This vBulletin 4 product imports external images in your posts from external servers or paths into a specific path, normally your forum's image folder.

Differently than the previous product Image Cache for vBulletin 3.x., it parses the posts at regular intervals for new images and replaces the external references in the background. Also, instead of using only a single folder, it creates folders for years and months, making it much easier to handle large quantities of images. The source and destination image URL's are stored into database, too, avoiding unnecessary duplicates.

It moves and optionally converts images from one place to another. It is a handy tool in order to keep your images local to your forums.

Version 1.0.4 is temporarily in BETA stage until the users have confirmed the newly requested features.
Version 1.0.5 is still in BETA stage. It adds a new bunch of additional features, one of which allows you to test your mathematical understanding ... and a few other to fine-tune CURL and socket timeouts, and resizing on the fly of too large images. If you don't know what these options do, please leave them at their default values.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by kether1

Thank you, Giovanni, for answering my question! I want to use your new version on my vb4 forum instead of the vb3 version, I just wanted to know what to do before installing the vb4 version. I did not want a conflict. This has been an excellent product for me. One of my favorite modifications I use on my forum. Thank you for sharing your work and time.

Kether

There should be no conflict at all, since it uses a different table and an additional field to distinguish parsed posts from new or modified ones. Just disable the 3.x one and install this ... you are ready to go. Please don't forget to enable the product once you have chmodded the imported file folder and setup the options, since it installs disabled.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by BirdOPrey5

Can someone who has been using this give me some idea how much disk space this uses in a real world environment? Obviously it's different for everyone but just an idea- how long you had it? how many posts you get? how much disk space is the folder taking up each month?

I have this installed on a site with about 3.000 pasted images each month, which translates in about 30 MB imported images monthly.

[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

I have this installed on a site with about 3.000 pasted images each month, which translates in about 30 MB imported images monthly.

Thank you.

[sticky]

Originally Posted by BirdOPrey5

Ever think about an option to keep the original file name rather than renaming it to a number?

That would be incredibly useful! Or to at least append #.

[sticky]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Yes. But under Windows, file names cannot contain ? and other strange things you may find in an image URL, some Linux versions may not love excessively + and *, and numbers are a good solution for all imaginable file systems one can come across

Could you specify for it just to use the letters in the title, and to avoid those characters entirely?

[john h]

When I ran this manually in the task scheduler I get this:

Warning: curl_setopt() [function.curl-setopt]: CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION cannot be activated when in safe_mode or an open_basedir is set in [path]/includes/cron/iei_cron.php on line 148

[sticky]

Another reason to consider allowing the files to keep their names is how much it will help with google image searches driving a lot of traffic.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by sticky

Could you specify for it just to use the letters in the title, and to avoid those characters entirely?

I'm not particularily interested of forging file names in a different way. Progressive numbers appear to work for everybody without additional options and international conflicts. Please see this plugin as an attempt to avoid missing images over time, and not as an alternative attachment manager.

Also, while I was reasoning about your request, occasionally duplicate file names would be then really annoying. Then I would have to use what? Numbers again? And what about the case insensitivity of Windows?

No, really, I see your point, but I can't see an easy and always working solution, which will not require me to add a lot more of code and support just to make it possible to use the same file names...

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by john h

When I ran this manually in the task scheduler I get this:

As a warning it will proceed. Anyways, you may comment this line out. In this case, if an image URL is redirected, it will not follow and try to get the image there, but report a missing image. You may have to add the domains with redirects to your ignore list, in order to keep the original images.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by sticky

Another reason to consider allowing the files to keep their names is how much it will help with google image searches driving a lot of traffic.

An efficient SEO also requires titles and image descriptions, which are not given by pasted images. A possible solution would be to import images as real attachments in an album, where eventually somebody will add a title and a description.

In real life nobody will add titles and descriptions to automatically added images, ever! The efford to correctly insert images in the old and new attachment system is much higher than just copying a file to one place, and the never-or-once-used additional feature would be overdoing this product.

I agree, this is not a perfect addition, but it is surely much better than having missing images after a few days, weeks or months