Links and Downloads Manager

LDM extends VBulletin to manage a library of documents, files and links to other web sites. Documents can be stored on your own web site, stored on your server separate from the web site, uploaded by your user community, or held somewhere else altogether. So you can use LDM to provide your user community with access to your own files and allow them to share files with each other.

12/08/06 - Versions that work with vb36 are available and supported in the VB36 thread. Version 2.2.1, which works with VB 3.5 but not with VB 3.6, remains available here.

Thanks to everyone who has helped with all the design, testing, etc.
Translations are provided (thanks dLutt and LeeWicked) into German, (thanks to Allan) into French, and (thanks to Hugo) into Spanish. Harry1951 has handled the Dutch translation.

Screenshots, Instructions and How to Install

Full details and instructions are available as a Wiki at http://www.eirma.org/wikis/index.php...nloads_Manager

LDM installs as a VBulletin product. There are no modifications required to standard VB code.

Basically - upload php files and run the installer through VB's Product installer. No changes needed to VB code. Remember to BACKUP YOUR DATABASE. By default, LDM prefixes its database tables 'local_'. Edit the configuration file, local_links_init.php, if you need/wish to change this.

LDM can handle an essentially unlimited number of categories and nested subcategories, and an unlimited number of entries (hyperlinks or downloadable files). Each entry can be placed in one or several categories. Categories can have styles. Descriptions and titles can optionally include BBcodes, smilies, images and html, giving the possibility to add images, colouring, etc. File types can be flagged using icons and individual entries can also have associated thumbnail images.

Standards templates are provided for libraries of links, files, documents, and photographs.

Users can offer comments and rate the links/downloads. Each user is allowed one rating and many comments per entry, and can freely edit these if they change their mind.

Permission to use specific features is established via the product's admin page, where the administrator specifies which usergroups can add and edit entries, comment and rate these entries, moderate, etc.

By default, all entries are visible to all users. You can restrict visibility/access to links and categories by using the permissions masks from your board's forums.

Moderation of new entries is available but turned off by default.

Users can report bad links to the relevant moderators/administrators.

Each user can flag links as his/her "Favourites".

Modules are provided for VBAdvanced.

Hooks are provided in suitable places in LDM and sample plugins are included in the release (see extras directory), for example to integrate with ID3 tags in mp3 files, for slideshows, to autocreate new threads in your forums, etc.

Plus much more.

[BeasTboyz]

Originally Posted by AndrewD

You said that it has slowed down - which version of LDM were you running before? The only change I can think of is that LDM now uses the cURL library when it is available. (You can see what is being used by looking at the table which is printed at the bottom left of the LDM admin pages.) I wonder if curl is slower than fopen?

I believe it was 1.26 I was running before. Would it be hard for me to change it over to fopen instead of cURL?

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by BeasTboyz

I believe it was 1.26 I was running before. Would it be hard for me to change it over to fopen instead of cURL?

AS far as I can tell from the code, if nothing has changed on your site, then the guts of LDM that handle the download have not changed. cURL is only used if your site admin has switched off the allow_url_fopen switch in your php.ini file. As I said, you can tell that by checking at the bottom of one of the LDM admin pages - if it says 'allow_fopen' is 0 and cURL 1 then it's using cURL rather than the simpler php code. In that case, you would have to re-enable allow_fopen.

If fopen is on, then I'm stuck. I attach some code that you can use to check the raw download speed from your site to a pc - just unzip and upload it into a subdirectory called eg speedtest and point your browser at speedtest/speedtest4.php

[BeasTboyz]

Originally Posted by AndrewD

AS far as I can tell from the code, if nothing has changed on your site, then the guts of LDM that handle the download have not changed. cURL is only used if your site admin has switched off the allow_url_fopen switch in your php.ini file. As I said, you can tell that by checking at the bottom of one of the LDM admin pages - if it says 'allow_fopen' is 0 and cURL 1 then it's using cURL rather than the simpler php code. In that case, you would have to re-enable allow_fopen.

If fopen is on, then I'm stuck. I attach some code that you can use to check the raw download speed from your site to a pc - just unzip and upload it into a subdirectory called eg speedtest and point your browser at speedtest/speedtest4.php

I really appreciate you working with me on this one, so Thank you again!

Anyhow, it appears its using fopen:

Links and Downloads Database
Code 2.0.6
MySQL 4.0.21-nt
PHP 4.3.9
allow_url_fopen Yes
cURL Yes
GD2 Yes
open_basedir

Here's the speedtest link, I got 24KBps. Here's a link to a video file on the same server so you can test your normal speeds: http://videos.observedtrials.net/coustellier.mpg

Matt

[welo]

Originally Posted by BeasTboyz

Here's the speedtest link, I got 24KBps.

Is giving me 333.808 Kbps. I think the fault lies not in ourselves, but your ISP.

[BeasTboyz]

Originally Posted by welo

Is giving me 333.808 Kbps. I think the fault lies not in ourselves, but your ISP.

Theres a difference between KB and Kb.

little b = bits, as in 8 bits per byte
big B = bytes, as in 8x the size of a bit.

so if you were getting 333Kbps, that would be 333/8 = 41.625KBps, a pretty shabby speed considering most cable nowadays is 3-5Mbit/sec or like 375-625KBps Besides, I have testers everywhere, its not my ISP .

Try getting the video, welo.

Matt

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by BeasTboyz

Theres a difference between KB and Kb.

little b = bits, as in 8 bits per byte
big B = bytes, as in 8x the size of a bit.

so if you were getting 333Kbps, that would be 333/8 = 41.625KBps, a pretty shabby speed considering most cable nowadays is 3-5Mbit/sec or like 375-625KBps Besides, I have testers everywhere, its not my ISP .

Try getting the video, welo.

Matt

Matt, the straight link to the mpg comes to me at 230 KB/s, i.e a couple of minutes for the 35meg file. The php speed test is reporting 26 KB/sec, i.e. abouit one tenth of that speed. That speed test is a standard script I pulled from a French website which throws a large file at the browser and times the delivery. There's a bottleneck somewhere.

[BeasTboyz]

Originally Posted by AndrewD

Matt, the straight link to the mpg comes to me at 230 KB/s, i.e a couple of minutes for the 35meg file. The php speed test is reporting 26 KB/sec, i.e. abouit one tenth of that speed. That speed test is a standard script I pulled from a French website which throws a large file at the browser and times the delivery. There's a bottleneck somewhere.

Yeah, I wish I knew where the bottleneck was.

my php info: http://www.observedtrials.net/info.php

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by BeasTboyz

Yeah, I wish I knew where the bottleneck was.

my php info: http://www.observedtrials.net/info.php

I notice that your php has output_buffering set to 4096 and you're running a windows box. A google search took me to an article http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/show...php?t=10257783 which suggests putting output_buffering to On. You'll find a similar comment in http://fr.php.net/configuration

Worth trying?

[welo]

Originally Posted by BeasTboyz

Theres a difference between KB and Kb.

little b = bits, as in 8 bits per byte
big B = bytes, as in 8x the size of a bit.

so if you were getting 333Kbps, that would be 333/8 = 41.625KBps, a pretty shabby speed considering most cable nowadays is 3-5Mbit/sec or like 375-625KBps

My bust. 330.947 Kbps = 41.368 KBs. For me your video comes in at a straight download of ~170KBs. Since you're on a Win box not much coherent advice I can offer.

[BeasTboyz]

Originally Posted by AndrewD

I notice that your php has output_buffering set to 4096 and you're running a windows box. A google search took me to an article http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/show...php?t=10257783 which suggests putting output_buffering to On. You'll find a similar comment in http://fr.php.net/configuration

Worth trying?

Definitely worth trying, I'll change it when I get home and have my php book

Welo, thanks for clarifying... I thought that there was just miscommunication .

Thanks guys,

Matt