Major Additions - Links and Downloads Manager

What this is and does

LDM is a general-purpose tool for managing libraries of links and files, and handling uploads and downloads in a flexible way, while tracking and control user access. It has a range of integrated media players and a large library of 'plugin' extras.

Installation and Usage Explained in the on-line Wiki, with a brief explanation in the file instructions.txt in the release zip. The recent revision history is given in the first post of this thread.

Please use carefully and always backup your database before upgrading. Post reports of problems and suggestions for enhancements in this thread.

14.06.09 Version 2.3.0 is now the the officially-supported version. Works with 3.7 and vb 3.8. Please post comments in this thread

22.06.08 Version 2.2.9-post1 - This is the previous supported version. Works fine with all versions of vb 3.6 and vb 3.7. All standard features except profile integration and forum prefix selection work fine with vb 3.8.

[sparklywater]

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Same here. Even jukebox player links dated many years ago are not in Googles cache, while Google did indexed most of my site.

Thanks Alfa1 for confirming that it's a reproducable problem.

[skol]

Well i've tried for months Andrew,to get the uploading part of the mod to work..and i thought it might be a path problem to where i created the upload folder..

No matter what i do as soon as i hit the submit upload i get a blank page with this http://forum/local_links_actions.php

[Alfa1]

When installing the plugin spider-url that addresses ldm_linkbit_create I get this error:

PHP Code:

Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected '[' in /public_html/forum/includes/local_links_include.php(3725) : eval()'d code on line 3 


Why does the forum home stats show that my entries are 6.17 GB, while my statistics in LDM's settings show 1.87 GB?

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by Alfa1

When installing the plugin spider-url that addresses ldm_linkbit_create I get this error:

PHP Code:

Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected '[' in /public_html/forum/includes/local_links_include.php(3725) : eval()'d code on line 3 


again, a character has gone astray.

Edit the Links and Downloads Manager - Spider external urls plugin attached to the ldm_linkbit_create hook. It starts off with a line

if (links_defaults['spider_urls_active'] and substr($linkurl,0,4)=="http") {

There should be a dollar sign $ immediately before links_defaults, i.e.

if ($links_defaults['spider_urls_active'] and substr($linkurl,0,4)=="http") {

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Why does the forum home stats show that my entries are 6.17 GB, while my statistics in LDM's settings show 1.87 GB?

These pages are not calculating the same thing. The LDM settings page shows the size of uploads. The forum home figure is the total size of all files which are considered to be downloads.

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by Alfa1

How does the LDM Similarthreads plug-in calculate similar files on showthread? I really like this feature, but it shows completely irrelevant files.

It's doing a match of the thread title against the entry title and description, not on the content of the file.

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by sparklywater

I have a category with lots of links to Jukebox audio files. The category page has been indexed by Google, but not a single Jukebox player link has been indexed even after several months. These links do have some text content so Google should be able to index them. I'm wondering if anything in the LDM setup is preventing these pages from being indexed?

Several thoughts:

1) When Google visits your site, it does so as an unregistered user. Unless you have enabled the Jukebox for unregistered users, the links will not be there for Google to see.

2) Each LDM page includes a meta tag of the form:

<meta name="robots" content="index, nofollow" />

This tells Google to index the content of the page but not to follow any urls on the page. This was done for a reason (although I can't quite recall what the reason was - I think we wanted to stop Google accessing the actual files). You can change this on the LDM settings page with the robots_meta_tag setting, try "index, follow".

3) Does Google actually index urls with long "?action=xxx..." params? Do you need a search engine optimiser? (I don't know)

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by skol

Well i've tried for months Andrew,to get the uploading part of the mod to work..and i thought it might be a path problem to where i created the upload folder..

No matter what i do as soon as i hit the submit upload i get a blank page with this http://forum/local_links_actions.php

Sorry to hear this. Do you want me to take a look - I can't easily suggest a solution otherwise. Send me a PM with site details + a full admin account.

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by Alfa1

How can I edit the text that is displayed on forum home stats? I want to add a link to the file archive.

You should edit the Links and Downloads Manager - Patch forumhome stats plugin that is attached to the forumhome_complete hook. Find the lines:

$template_hook['forumhome_wgo_stats'] .= "
	<div>
		$vbphrase[ldm_links_database] $vbphrase[ldm_categories]: $totalcats, $vbphrase[ldm_entries]: $totallinks$totalspace, $vbphrase[ldm_comments]: $totalcomments
	</div>
        ";

and change it to (e.g.)

$template_hook['forumhome_wgo_stats'] .= "
	<div>
		<a href='".LINKS_SCRIPT."'>$vbphrase[ldm_links_database]</a> $vbphrase[ldm_categories]: $totalcats, $vbphrase[ldm_entries]: $totallinks$totalspace, $vbphrase[ldm_comments]: $totalcomments
		</div>
        ";

Originally Posted by Alfa1

I have 3 different main categories in my LDM: documents, video and audio. Is it possible to display the forum home stats for each of these main categories?

I deliberately avoided giving this plugin many features, because it requires loading all the LDM code base and can involve carrying out quite heavy database queries, which will increase the cost of viewing the forum home. So the answer to your question is "yes in principle" but I would be reluctant to make this an easy/reliable feature of the plugin.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Is it possible to use patch-forumhome-newlinks or another function to display latest new files on /search.php?do=getnew ?

Not currently. Again, I have tried to keep integration with other parts of vb limited, so as to keep down the cost of running (and maintaining ) LDM.

[Alfa1]

Originally Posted by AndrewD

again, a character has gone astray.

Edit the Links and Downloads Manager - Spider external urls plugin attached to the ldm_linkbit_create hook. It starts off with a line

if (links_defaults['spider_urls_active'] and substr($linkurl,0,4)=="http") {

There should be a dollar sign $ immediately before links_defaults, i.e.

if ($links_defaults['spider_urls_active'] and substr($linkurl,0,4)=="http") {

Thanks. That fixed it.

Originally Posted by AndrewD

It's doing a match of the thread title against the entry title and description, not on the content of the file.

Even though most of my thread titles are descriptive, they will always contain words that do not relate to the topic. For example: 'What is xxx?' 'How can you do xxx?' 'a question about xxx'
Would it be possible to have the addon take tags into account?

Originally Posted by AndrewD

When Google visits your site, it does so as an unregistered user. Unless you have enabled the Jukebox for unregistered users, the links will not be there for Google to see.

Where do I check this setting?

Originally Posted by AndrewD

Does Google actually index urls with long "?action=xxx..." params? Do you need a search engine optimiser? (I don't know)

I think this is indeed needed.

Originally Posted by AndrewD

You should edit the Links and Downloads Manager - Patch forumhome stats plugin that is attached to the forumhome_complete hook. Find the lines:

$template_hook['forumhome_wgo_stats'] .= "
    <div>
        $vbphrase[ldm_links_database] $vbphrase[ldm_categories]: $totalcats, $vbphrase[ldm_entries]: $totallinks$totalspace, $vbphrase[ldm_comments]: $totalcomments
    </div>
        ";

and change it to (e.g.)

$template_hook['forumhome_wgo_stats'] .= "
    <div>
        <a href='".LINKS_SCRIPT."'>$vbphrase[ldm_links_database]</a> $vbphrase[ldm_categories]: $totalcats, $vbphrase[ldm_entries]: $totallinks$totalspace, $vbphrase[ldm_comments]: $totalcomments
        </div>
        ";

<a href='".LINKS_SCRIPT."'> does not work for me as that points to /local_links instead of /local_links.php So I used the full url instead. I tweaked the code to use this:

$template_hook['forumhome_wgo_stats'] .= "
    <br><div>
        <a href='http://www.mysite.com/forum/local_links.php'>Files</a>: $totallinks$totalspace, $vbphrase[ldm_comments]: $totalcomments, $vbphrase[ldm_categories]: $totalcats 
        </div>
        ";

Originally Posted by AndrewD

I deliberately avoided giving this plugin many features, because it requires loading all the LDM code base and can involve carrying out quite heavy database queries, which will increase the cost of viewing the forum home. So the answer to your question is "yes in principle" but I would be reluctant to make this an easy/reliable feature of the plugin.

Thats understandable. I guess my LDM has grown so big, that I have come to a point where I need multiple instances of LDM, to handle each section.

My members keep getting confused whether they are in the video, the documents or the audio section and are uploading to the wrong parts. For this reason I would 3 different category selectors on the upload page. So that it will not be possible to choose a category in the video section, if one is in the document section. Do you see a possibility for me to accomplish this or something similar?

Originally Posted by AndrewD

Not currently. Again, I have tried to keep integration with other parts of vb limited, so as to keep down the cost of running (and maintaining ) LDM.

Showing the latest files is possible within a vba module and on forum home. I am not that technical, but can you please explain why the same already coded functionality would not work on search.php? Is there anything that I can do toget it working?

[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Where do I check this setting?

LDM/admin/permissions/can_play_musicbox

Originally Posted by Alfa1

My members keep getting confused whether they are in the video, the documents or the audio section and are uploading to the wrong parts. For this reason I would 3 different category selectors on the upload page. So that it will not be possible to choose a category in the video section, if one is in the document section. Do you see a possibility for me to accomplish this or something similar?

Showing the latest files is possible within a vba module and on forum home. I am not that technical, but can you please explain why the same already coded functionality would not work on search.php? Is there anything that I can do toget it working?

I'll give these points some thought