A major attachment modification

[amykhar]

I think attachments would be a much better thing if they were not associated with threads and if we could set permissions based on the type of attachment.

Attachments would be files that are available for all users to include in a post, private message or external modification such as the quiz or userpage mod. Ideally, users could access the upload utility when creating a new post or message or through the usercp.

In any message, you could pull up a list of all available files and attach any of them in the message. Perhaps sorting the attachments by categories would help keep the list from being overwhelming.

When you delete a post or private message or whatever that has an attachment, it would check to see if any other post or message is using that file. If not, it would offer to delete the attachment if the person deleting it is the file owner or a mod with permissions.

Finally, permissions could be set so that unregistered people could see images, for example, but not zips. Or paying members could see mp3 files, but nobody else could.

If done properly, any hack that needs file uploads could hook into this new attachment system.

Amy