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]

Thank you for the follow up. Glad everything is working!

Best regards,

Mark

[powerbook]

Cool hack thanks

It would've been nice if it was possible to integrate something like (Photo Popup - Insert pictures easily from vB Albums, Photopost, vBGallery, Photoplog) for image attach purposes. You know where you are able to piggyback on whatever software you have installed. That keeps images central. Bit just a penny..

[mferguson]

Thanks for the feedback. The reason that we didn't use other products/plugins is because we didn't want to depend on specific versions of other products to operate properly. Given that we have a testing and release process adding additional dependencies would further complicate an already complex testing matrix. For example we test against three major releases of vBulletin (vB 3.6, 3.7, and 3.8) and, in one package, address any differences in the vB versions.

All of the above said we do appreciate the feeback and I would encourage everyone using this modification to post your suggestions, new features, and requests so we can continue to improve this and our other products.

Best regards,

Mark

[THE__DRIFTER]

Twice I have added a response here tonight regarding the exact same opinion. Since it is quite obvious that the intent of this is to promote a "paid" version then speak up and say so. Don't hedge around the topic but own up to what it is. If this is useful then members will more than likely pay. For those of us that test the code it is an insult. I suppose this is the path VB is going down more these days so I am not surprised...

[powerbook]

I know what you mean and I understand where you are coming from.

It is not a big issue if the functionality is not there I was just thinking that people like Photopost have been around forver and giving site admins the option in the admin panel if they want to use/integrate their Garage software they can. Even the vBulletin album included would've been nice.

At least Garage doesn't just link to images on other sites which I find the biggest pain on any site.

Originally Posted by mferguson

Thanks for the feedback. The reason that we didn't use other products/plugins is because we didn't want to depend on specific versions of other products to operate properly. Given that we have a testing and release process adding additional dependencies would further complicate an already complex testing matrix. For example we test against three major releases of vBulletin (vB 3.6, 3.7, and 3.8) and, in one package, address any differences in the vB versions.

All of the above said we do appreciate the feeback and I would encourage everyone using this modification to post your suggestions, new features, and requests so we can continue to improve this and our other products.

Best regards,

Mark

[mferguson]

Originally Posted by powerbook

I know what you mean and I understand where you are coming from.

It is not a big issue if the functionality is not there I was just thinking that people like Photopost have been around forver and giving site admins the option in the admin panel if they want to use/integrate their Garage software they can. Even the vBulletin album included would've been nice.

At least Garage doesn't just link to images on other sites which I find the biggest pain on any site.

Understood. I've used Photopost on sites that I've developed and I understand the need for a single image store on a site so that in the future you don't have to manage yet another product, migrate it to something new, etc.

If we were to consider adding support to use the vBulletin album functionality as the image store do you have any thoughts on how the permissions associated with the current album settings by usergroup should be handled? Right now, in our plugin, we allow approximately 20-22 images to be uploaded for one garage. In Garage Plus you can specify any number of garages per usergroup. With this in mind if the admin had not allowed for sufficient space in the vBulletin gallery but you had additional garages left what type of feedback should the user receive? Should it prevent additional garages from being created or should it just prevent new images from being uploaded?

Also, if using the vBulletin album store would it be ideal that the user already have the images he/she wanted in their albums and select those for use in their garage or, when creating a garage, allow the user to load new images and have those go into a given album? If the latter would the user want the ability to choose which album (or create a new album) to have the images placed into.

We're open to giving this consideration but we'll need to model the use cases carefully to make sure this would continue to be easy to use.

Thanks again for the feedbackk :up:

Mark

[powerbook]

Would you mind in telling me what I should add/remove if I don't want the popup but instead taking you directly to the garage.

Thanks

[mferguson]

Originally Posted by powerbook

Would you mind in telling me what I should add/remove if I don't want the popup but instead taking you directly to the garage.

Thanks

Sure. This isn't supported out of the box so I put together some plugin code to support this. Just replace the contents of the DTO Garage Postbit Pop-up Menu plugin with the code below, save, and you will have a single link in the postbit that will take you to that user's garage.

Note: The link won't be display if the user has no garage entry or the garage setting "Allow others to view this vehicle" is set to no.

PHP Code:

global $pm, $threadpm;

$show['dto_garage_has_vehicles'] = false;

$usepostid = false;
$doable = false;

// If this is a private message postbit draw then retrieve the userinfo of the user that the PM is from
if (THIS_SCRIPT == 'private') {
  if ($_REQUEST['do']!= 'showhistory')
  {
    $userinfo = fetch_userinfo($pm['fromuserid']);
    $doable = true;
  }
}
else if ((THIS_SCRIPT == 'showpost' || THIS_SCRIPT == 'showthread') && $post['visible'] != 2)
{
  $usepostid = true;
  
  // Get the poster's userinfo
  $userinfo = fetch_userinfo($post['userid']);
  $doable = true;  
}   

if($doable && !empty($userinfo))
{
    global $db;

    $userID = $userinfo['userid'];

    $vehicle = $db->query_first("SELECT * FROM " . 
                    TABLE_PREFIX . "DTO_garage_vehicle WHERE userid = ". $userID . " AND display='1'");  
    $content = '';

    if($vehicle) 
    {      
      $vehicle_id = $vehicle['vehicle_id']; 
      $content = "<a target=\"_dto\" href=\"dto_garage.php?do=viewvehicle&amp;vehicle_id=$vehicle_id\">Garage</a>";    
    }

    $template_hook[postbit_userinfo_right] .= $content;
} 


Best regards,

Mark

[Kolbi]

Perhaps you can add this in the readme file for those who want to do this, too

[powerbook]

Thanks Mark

Somehow that code seems very odd to go into the "dto_garage_popup_menu" template... Unless I missing something..