Administrative and Maintenance Tools - Import External Images

This vBulletin 4 product imports external images in your posts from external servers or paths into a specific path, normally your forum's image folder.

Differently than the previous product Image Cache for vBulletin 3.x., it parses the posts at regular intervals for new images and replaces the external references in the background. Also, instead of using only a single folder, it creates folders for years and months, making it much easier to handle large quantities of images. The source and destination image URL's are stored into database, too, avoiding unnecessary duplicates.

It moves and optionally converts images from one place to another. It is a handy tool in order to keep your images local to your forums.

Version 1.0.4 is temporarily in BETA stage until the users have confirmed the newly requested features.
Version 1.0.5 is still in BETA stage. It adds a new bunch of additional features, one of which allows you to test your mathematical understanding ... and a few other to fine-tune CURL and socket timeouts, and resizing on the fly of too large images. If you don't know what these options do, please leave them at their default values.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by sticky

I understand, but why does it replace incorrectly sometimes?

It works about 90% of the time correctly but sometimes it will replace an image with the wrong image.

And can it be edited to use the same image name as the source?

If, for example, the source does not allow hot linking, they send usually a dummy image of 1x1 pixel in order to save bandwidth. If you have CURL enabled, more images are correctly downloaded, since CURL simulates a browser, while raw sockets (fopen) don't.

If you have known sites where you get always wrong images, you may include them into the Ignore list. This way the images are kept on the original server, although you may loose them over time.

[kether1]

Thanks so much, Giovanni! I use your 3.X version of this and love it.

When upgrading to 4.x should I uninstall your 3.X version and install this version?

The 3.X appears to still work after my upgrade. I see this version puts the images in a different location and in sub-folders. I think that is a great idea. My 3.X version folder is huge.

Again, thanks for your good work.

Kether

[Brandon Sheley]

I've been looking for a mod like this, I'm going to tag it for now and will check it out later

a few questions
I see you mentioned it only grabs thumbnails, can that be changed?
Also can we place the images before the forum root, like how we can optimize the attachments by pulling them out of the DB and placing them on the file server?

thx

[kether1]

Originally Posted by kether1

Thanks so much, Giovanni! I use your 3.X version of this and love it.

When upgrading to 4.x should I uninstall your 3.X version and install this version?

The 3.X appears to still work after my upgrade. I see this version puts the images in a different location and in sub-folders. I think that is a great idea. My 3.X version folder is huge.

Again, thanks for your good work.

Kether

Hi Giovanni, do I need to uninstall the 3x version before installing this version on my 4.1.0 forum? Thanks man!

Kether

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by kether1

Hi Giovanni, do I need to uninstall the 3x version before installing this version on my 4.1.0 forum? Thanks man!

Kether

If the 3.x product continues to work for you on vBulletin 4.x, you need not to upgrade. However, I would try the new version on a test board, since it allows you to store images in a more efficient way and classified by date. I would not use both solutions though.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Brandon Sheley

I've been looking for a mod like this, I'm going to tag it for now and will check it out later

a few questions
I see you mentioned it only grabs thumbnails, can that be changed?
Also can we place the images before the forum root, like how we can optimize the attachments by pulling them out of the DB and placing them on the file server?

thx

Theorically it can be changed in order to download the source images and the thumbnails. However, each system has different ways and changes them from time to time, in order to avoid direct downloading. Since this is freeware and I have no income with it, nor are there enough customers for asking this feature, it is unlikely it will be ever implemented.

Similarily, the file server/gallery issue has been discussed before. If there was a consistent number of users requesting to move files to another server, I may look into moving files via FTP and/or PHP's fopen and updating queries and so stuff. But until now you are only about the third person asking for this feature. Instead, you may use fsftp for Linux, which transparently links another server to a symbolic link of your forum root subfolder of your choice. There may be other solutions too. I do not support any of those solutions

[BirdOPrey5]

I installed this on a VB 3.8 test forum and it appears to be working well. :up:
Thank You...

Ever think about an option to keep the original file name rather than renaming it to a number?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by BirdOPrey5

I installed this on a VB 3.8 test forum and it appears to be working well. :up:
Thank You...

Ever think about an option to keep the original file name rather than renaming it to a number?

Yes. But under Windows, file names cannot contain ? and other strange things you may find in an image URL, some Linux versions may not love excessively + and *, and numbers are a good solution for all imaginable file systems one can come across

[kether1]

Thank you, Giovanni, for answering my question! I want to use your new version on my vb4 forum instead of the vb3 version, I just wanted to know what to do before installing the vb4 version. I did not want a conflict. This has been an excellent product for me. One of my favorite modifications I use on my forum. Thank you for sharing your work and time.

Kether

[BirdOPrey5]

Can someone who has been using this give me some idea how much disk space this uses in a real world environment? Obviously it's different for everyone but just an idea- how long you had it? how many posts you get? how much disk space is the folder taking up each month?