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

[mferguson]

I've updated this and it will be included in the next release.

Thanks!

Mark

[Wsh]

Hello,

I am having some issues with this mod. The installation was easy enough and I believe I have all the settings and permissions correctly.

However, when I try and upload an image, it does not create the image itself. It creates the folder in /user/1/ folder, but it does not upload the image and it leaves a broken link.

http://www.toyochat.com/forums/ <-- please note that this forum is not open yet to the public until I get the kinks taken out.

Thanks!

[mferguson]

Can you verify that you have the directory {FORUMROOT}/images/dto_garage/users in place and that the directory has full read/write permissions (777)?

If I try to go to

PHP Code:

http://www.toyochat.com/forums/images/dto_garage/ 


or

PHP Code:

http://www.toyochat.com/forums/images/dto_garage/users 


I get a forbidden message so I suspect that the directory doesn't exist or isn't readable/writable by all.

If you would like me to log in and look more closely just PM me and we can work out the details.

Thanks!

Mark

[Wsh]

Hey Mark,

Thanks for the quick reply. Yes the directories are there, directory browsing is not allowed on the site so that's why you may be getting the denial errors.

You have a PM with info.

Thanks for all your help!

[kjsmith84]

is there a way to see ALL of the garages and not just the random # garages

[gnatster]

The ability to view all of the Garages is one of the differences between the "lite" version we offer for free and the paid version.

[thesupermario69]

Hi,

Im having a problem when a member first creates their garage. The image folder that is automatically created for their user login, eg "forum/images/dto_garage/users/32" does not get the 0777 permissions that the rest of the folders have. Instead I am having to go in and manually change the permissions to 0777 each time a new user folder is created

The folder "forum/images/dto_garages/users" has been given 0777 permissions and told to give all sub-folders the same permissions

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

[gnatster]

Originally Posted by thesupermario69

Hi,

Im having a problem when a member first creates their garage. The image folder that is automatically created for their user login, eg "forum/images/dto_garage/users/32" does not get the 0777 permissions that the rest of the folders have. Instead I am having to go in and manually change the permissions to 0777 each time a new user folder is created

The folder "forum/images/dto_garages/users" has been given 0777 permissions and told to give all sub-folders the same permissions

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

What type of hosting do you have? Is it a shared server, VPS or dedicated?

In theory when the /images/dto_garage/users has the 0777 level of permissions this should ripple to all sub dirs on creation. You may want to contact your host to see if they have something in place to prevent this action.

[mferguson]

We had another customer with this same type of issue. In his case it was because his host was running PHP in safe mode. Often there is an option in your control panel to change this behavior or, at worst, you have to create a custom php.ini for your installation. Regardless its something that your host should be able to set up for you.

Thanks!

Mark

[thesupermario69]

Thank you both for the quick reply

I shall speak to the server host and get them to have a look at it

Thanks

Mario