Major Additions - AME 2.5 - Media Embedding for posts, sigs, vm's, groups and blogs

From the makers of the letters O and Yea comes the hottest 'must have mod' of the season: AME 2.5 - The Return of The Hot Mama.

Thanks everyone for making AME 2.5 Mod of the Month

AME is the multi award winning modification that smartly scans new and edited posts for URLs from a customisable variety of web sites (i.e. YouTube or Amazon or about 200 others). If it finds a match, AME will 'transform' the URL into inline embedded media without your users ever having to even think about it.

It was important for me to create a system that did not need updating (and subsequent reinstalling) every time one of the sites it supported decided to change the way it displayed its media (which is all the fricken time). Therefore I built a system in which the 'definitions' for each site could be imported, exported, tweaked and shared on a whim. This way, you only have to import the definitions that you want. It also allows the vB community to get creative and share definitions that I wouldn't of thought of!

Which sites are supported?

Included in the default installation is YouTube and Amazon. At time of posting this, I believe that there are over 180 sites supported that have been created by the vBulletin community. These range from sites that stream videos to Amazon referral links to locally hosted music and video files.

Check out the 'add ons' section of this post below to see availible add-ons.

For a total list of features and an FAQ, see click here.
For a post on troubleshooting, click here.

Though not tested on any version of vBulletin lower than 3.7.4, in theory it should work on versions 3.5 and higher (just dont quote this bit!).

Big thanks goes out to all those in the community that have supported this mod. Especially Digital Jedi who gives great support on this mod and has created over 160 definitions for this system alone!


Installation/Upgrade

• Upload the contents of the forums folder into your forums directory and import the product-ame.xml file into your product manager (if upgrading, choose 'yes' to overwrite previous installation).
• After installation, make sure that the system is on (admincp->AME CP->Settings)
• Then you may want to try to rebuild old URLs via the tools option.

Change Log

• 20/1/09 - Uploaded to vb.org
• 22/1/09 - v. 2.5.2. Adresses a couple minor issues and character sets
• 23/1/09 - v. 2.5.3 minor update: Fixed ksort error on import and nomedia display
• 3/2/09 - v. 2.5.4 minor update to address rare bug with some page titles
• 3/7/09 - v.2.5.5 minor updates to address rare bug editing media with brackets in name
• 9/12/09 - v.2.5.6 minor updates youtubes validation process, a ccurl bug and rebuild not using the date like a good girl

nJoy

[ncangler]

Thank you Geek. I will give that a try. I uninstalled the software last night because we were having post edit response issues. Once I removed it everything went back to normal. So there must be something going on with the file cache. I'll reinstall AME and turn that off. Thanks for your help and for this great mod!

Originally Posted by The Geek

It means that AME is being told to use your file cache, but the file cache isn't there (or isnt readable). Check your chmod for the folder and try resaving your definitions. If that fails, disable file caching. File caching improves performance, but mainly with a garantuan amount of definitions and/or posts with embeded media.

[The Geek]

No problem. If you are having edit response issues (i.e. its taking a long time to save a post with media in it) that could be because the extraction setting is on and the detination site is being unresponsive. Normally, the extraction method is pretty unnoticable, however in the event that you post a media link that has it on, it will try to download the destination page to extract information from it (i.e. the title, run check to see if embedding is allowed, etc...). If the destination server is taking its own sweet time and/or you have A LOT of media in a single post, well... you get the picture

You can always turn that feature off, though many other features and definitions may require it and in normal operation, it seldom causes a problem.

[ncangler]

One more quick question Geek. I have successfully installed a definition for my new fishing CMS site based on the Social Media script and have it embedding clips via AME correctly on my other website. But when I click on an embedded clip it takes me to the originating video site in the same window. I would like for it to open in a new window so that the viewer does not leave the website where the video clip is embedded. Obviously I need a target="_blank" code added somewhere but where do I add that to accomplish this? Thanks!

[The Geek]

You should be able to add that to one of the AME templates. If not, then in the definition you made.

HTHs!

[edit]
After re-reading your post, I would think you would want to look at either the definition or the media that is being embeded. If its the media, AME won't be able to do anything about it as it just embeds.

[ncangler]

Hmmm.. I see that the new window code is already in the ame_output template (below) but it is not opening in a new page. I'll keep looking.

<div style="display: none;" id="ame_noshow_$ameinfo[id_tag]">
<a href="$ameinfo[url]" title="$ameinfo[title]" target="_blank">$ameinfo[title]</a>
</div>
<div style="display: inline;" id="ame_doshow_$ameinfo[id_tag]">
$ame_results
</div>

Originally Posted by The Geek

You should be able to add that to one of the AME templates. If not, then in the definition you made.
HTHs!

[edit]
After re-reading your post, I would think you would want to look at either the definition or the media that is being embeded. If its the media, AME won't be able to do anything about it as it just embeds.

[soundbarrierpro]

Originally Posted by The Geek

Where have I ever stated that those sites are supported? Repeatedly I have stated that if you have a problem with a custom definition, take it to the author!

AME was designed so that other users could create, update and share definitions at their own whim without the need for the actual mod to change every time a media site was changed or added. Think of AME as a framework that comes with a couple of definitions that satisfy most users requirements right out of the box. For those it doesn't, you can easily create your own custom definitions, or upload someone else's. There are several contributors that have done this, DJ being a major one.

In the end, I don't think its fair to criticise AME if you have a problem with a definition that was created by another user or if there isn't a definition out there that you need. If there isn't a solution out there, release one. If whats out there doesnt work as you need it to, make one that does. Just don't get upset if someone doesn't do it for you in a 12 hour time span.

Or just use bbcode

Ok, then I apologize for my ignorance. I was confused by all the different AME mod posts which all seem to be for AME. I assumed by DJ's signature that he was part of your project and that the Delta xml is part of the overall project. Those two video sites are in the delta xml and neither work.

Again, my apolgies and I didn't critisize the AME, as I find it to be more superior than "the other one", plus you offer it for free.

Hope you understand.

[ablaye]

I installed this mod on my new health forum and it works great.

[ncangler]

Geek, I did a clean install on the site that was giving me trouble and it reinstalled beautifully and worked the first time. I don't know what the issue was before but all is good now. Now all I have to do is to figure out how to submit my custom definition for my new video site for others to use. THanks again for all your help and for this great software mod!

[kyrenator]

thanks!
i works perfect

[EagleNick]

This all of a sudden stopped working and I'm puzzled...
It keeps videos in old posts embedded, but new posts are not being embedded.
Yes, I checked the ACP settings and ticked the "Automatically Embed" box when making a post.

Any ideas?

Edit: I realize that it works if I wrap the link in "[ame]" tags. How do I disable this requirement?