IndexU Support

Just so that premium users are aware, the imagemap mod for 5.x works perfectly for IndexU Deluxe as well.

You can find the imagemap mods at the URL’s below

• USA Imagemap
• Canada Imagemap
• Custom Imagemaps

Someone today asked about users uploading an image from a remote server when submitting a link. While I don’t know how to do that simply and easily, here’s what I did say about a similar method that can work.

One of the biggest issues with that is IF you’re going to be linking to an external image you have no contol over what that image is and no way to moderate it.

A user could link to a simple screenshot during submission and after approval change the image to an ad for an adult site.

Or what if the user replaced the image with a script meant to alter your site or worse, attack users. That would find your site listed on search engines as a phishing site and you’d lose all traffic.

I seriously caution you against this. Losing control of your site is not a good thing.

You can do this quite easily, but yet again, I suggest against it.

Add a new custom field as below.

Field imageurl
Text Image URL
Type TEXT
Required No
Searchable No
Permission All Users
Option (Leave Blank)
Max Image Dimension (Leave Blank)
Max File Size (Leave Blank)
Allowed File Extension (Leave Blank)

Why leave those items blank? Because IndexU cannot control those fields because you are adding this as TEXT. So how do you control it? Read on.

Add another custom field
Field imagewidth
Text Image Width
Type TEXT
Required No
Searchable No
Permission All Users
Option (Leave Blank)
Max Image Dimension (Leave Blank)
Max File Size (Leave Blank)
Allowed File Extension (Leave Blank)

And yes we need another one

Field imageheight
Text Image Height
Type TEXT
Required No
Searchable No
Permission All Users
Option (Leave Blank)
Max Image Dimension (Leave Blank)
Max File Size (Leave Blank)
Allowed File Extension (Leave Blank)

So now we have an image URL, height and width. Now we need to put them on detail_link.html (and upgrade_form.html as well)

Remove <%custom_form_field%> as this will NOT work with that enabled.

Now you simply create your link to the image as below

<img src=”<%$imageurl%>” height=”<%$imagewidth%>” width=”<%$imageheight%>” alt=”" border=”0″ />

Now with this type of system you can NOT control how big or small the images that the user links to. If they enter an image that’s 1500px by 1500px then you’re stuck with it and there’s nothing you can do.

It might just be better to force a single image size, perhaps 468×60 which is a typical banner size. This way if a user changes the image, it will display as a 468×60 image no matter what they do.

I hope you see the pitfalls of allowing something like this, which is the only reason I wrote all of it out. It’s a bad idea but yes, it’s very easy to do.

The IndexU 5.x admin panel update offers users some nice additions that IndexU Deluxe users already have and one that they don’t!

Benefits
A new menu called “New Tools” with the following tools installed

1) New Sitemap. This will generate the new sitemap that IndexU Deluxe v1.1 is now using. This sitemap automatically pings Google, Ask, Yahoo and Live Search

2) Old Sitemap. This will generate the standard IndexU sitemap for you.

3) Massedit. This is a tool to mass edit your links and change their categories. Useful if you have imported a database or DMOZ slice and want to move things around

4) Fetch Meta. An excellent tool that will fetch the current meta descriptio, keywords and title from the websites listed in your directory and insert them into the database!

5) Update All Links. This tool updates your link counts. This tool is very useful for sites with very large link counts as it is designed so that it will not timeout.

6) Spam Links. This link will show you any listings that were flagged as spam when they were submitted. This is a function that is hiding in the admin panel, this link simply makes it easier to see this listings.

Members Download

This “mod” will allow you to add page numbers to the title of your site on the browse pages.

The following changes were made in 5.40. If you have 5.41 it should be the same but my test install has not been upgraded yet. You may need to look at different lines but the text should be the same.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this content.

I gave some thought to my last addon for social bookmarks and while it was nice, I wanted to expand on the list a little.

This new social bookmarking addon is a huge change from the last one. This one actually does it’s best to hide the URL’s to the social bookmarking sites to prevent diluting your own site.

I’ve attached a screen shot and if you want a demo just let me know. The site that it is running on right now is just a test install and it changes constantly so there is no point in putting that URL up here.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this content.

An image map for your categories using Canadian provinces and cities.

We start with an image and do lots of fun stuff with image mapping software, then we add our categories and a simple change in index.html and blam! You’ve got a nice map instead of plain boring text.

To be honest, the way it’s done you will only be able to use your site for Canadian based sites.

You must also use the database of categories I have created because the image map is hard coded for the categories. You must also have mod_rewrite enabled and the mod_rewrite settings must be set at default.

NOTE – Due to the size of the image it may not fit in all templates. This image is more than 600px wide so please check to make sure you can use it first.

Price: $15.00

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this content.

The coolest ideas usually come from other sources. Today someone asked me what I would charge for a mod like this. I quoted them a price and then thought about it and decided to release it as a mod for paid members.

It’s an image map for your categories, and as far as I know, no one’s ever done anything like this before.

We start with an image and do lots of fun stuff with image mapping software, then we add our categories and a simple change in index.html and blam! You’ve got a nice map instead of plain boring text.

To be honest, the way it’s done you will only be able to use your site for United States based sites, but of course you’re welcome to imagemap anything you want and use this idea.

You must also use the database of categories I have created because the image map is hard coded for the categories. You must also have mod_rewrite enabled and the mod_rewrite settings must be set at default.

Price: $20.00

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this content.

The Google Checkout payment method is a simple payment method that uses the Google Checkout API to accept payments.

Note that since it uses the HTML API there is no return to your site upon completion of payment. This is the simplest method of using Google Checkout payments. The XML API does offer more features, but it also requires that users have an SSL certificate. Since most SSL certificates require a unique IP address for each domain I felt that using the XML API would not benefit most users due to the cost involved.

Cost: $20.00

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this content.

I found that a great feature of the admin panel was to include the last five postings from the Nicecoder forum, so I decided why not add the same thing for Indexsupport.com?

Of course this gets my site more exporure, but since a lot of my visitors visit their admin panels more often than they visit the blog I figured this would be a great addition to your new site.

This mod/addon is only for the SVN version of IndexU, or what is being called IndexU Deluxe.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this content.

I’ve had this idea for a while, but since I had no use for it I didn’t do anything with it. Another user on the forum posted details about him using a visual editor on his site but did not post details on how to do it. I do hope he posts it as a mod.

This mod is all about the free TinyMCE editor. It can be used to offer a very simple editor, or a complex editor like you would see on MS Word.

Installation and the actual modification are very simple. I should have done this long ago and if I knew it was this easy I would have.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this content.