Preview button not displayed (and other questions)

[Jynxx]

Hi! I am brand new to this forum, using Phoca Download, and Joomla altogether. I have a lot of web experience, mostly with html and php, so I grasped Joomla very quickly... but there are some things on Phoca Download that I just can not figure out, so I am hoping someone can help



One of my problems is that the PREVIEW button is missing, and I can't figure out how to get it to show. I have used the {pdbuttonpreview} tag in a few different places on the layout manager, but it just won't show anywhere. All I get is a "Details" and "Download" button. I would like to get it so that when you click "Play" or "Preview" it opens a player in a new window. The site I mentioned earlier uses "Flow Player" for both audio and video files, and they open in a second window when you click a "Play" button. That's what I am trying to do. The rest of my questions are just extra, they are not as pressing as this issue is, but if someone can answer them, I would be eternally grateful

Ok, so my next question is... once I get the "preview" button to work, is there a way I can make it preview the main file, without having to have two files on my server taking up space? The site I mentioned before... when you upload a track, it automatically makes a preview, or maybe it links the preview to the main track, I am not sure.... all I know is that you only have to upload once, and you get both a downloadable file and a preview of that file. I would like to be able to do that.

Next is it possible to use a different folder for different file types? For example, I have to upload both audio and video, and sometimes they have the same file name. I would like to be able to select the video folder when I upload a video and the audio folder when I upload an audio track.


Lastly, this is totally off topic, but can someone recommend some sort of subscription based user manager that works with Phoca Download? I want to be able to have someone register, pay via paypal, and be able to enter the download area while their subscription is active, and have it do the user management and all that automatically, so that it doesn't require my attention for every new member.


Thank you in advance (and I will thank you 100x after) if you can help me! I know this is a lot, but this is the PERFECT solution to what I am trying to do, and I really would like to learn how to do these things!

[Jan]

Hi,

1) subscription - see com_ose which works with Phoca Download
2) different folder for different file types - needs to be customized in the code
3) preview the main file - needs to be customized - see similar posts in this forum, why it is important to have different files for preview and download
4) preview button - did you enable it in Options?

Jan

[Jynxx]

I actually fixed most of this. I didn't see the "Options" button up there.
Most of what I asked for I have already done (it took a couple weeks for this post to be approved).

I am trying to use SP Paypal Subscriptions or something like that. I have it mostly working, but am having trouble getting the group to change once a subscription becomes active. I am working with the Author though, so I hope to have it sorted out.
As far as my other questions, I will post what I did so that if someone else has the same problems and finds this thread, they know how I fixed it.

Having a different folder for different file types was easy. Just go to the phocadownload folder and add folders for what file types or groups you want. For instance I now have ../phocadownload/audio, ../phocadownload/video, and ../phocadownload/archives. Then when I upload the songs/videos I just put them in those specific folders, and when I add the files into Phoca Download, I know which file is which by what folder it was in.

Previewing the main file was easy enough... just change the preview folder in the options to ../phocadownload/ instead of ../phocadownloadpap/ and you can then preview the files directly without having to upload a second file. The only exception is for videos. I needed to create a FLV folder for video previews, as playing a 150mb mp4 file just wasn't going to work. Instead I made a short (1:30 or so) clip as an FLV and upload that to use as a video preview, and it works great.

As far as the preview button, as I said, I just didn't even see the options button. Being new to Joomla, I didn't even know it existed until I accidentally saw it. In case someone reading this can't find the options, it is in the control panel... you know where you click to add a new file or article, etc? It is just to the right of that lol. Once I got into the options, just about everything I was trying to do was available! I saw the options to play it in a new window, etc. in the options, and I knew that that was the answer to all my questions.

So hopefully this helps out people that were in a similar situation. Everything is working fine for me, and I have even added Phoca Guestbook as a way for people to leave feedback on the various files they download. Thank you so much for making such a great plugin!!

[nicsterh]

for your two files taking space problem, from the control panel of your joomla! site, go to components, then scroll down to phoca download and click on it. on the phoca download control panel, go to the top right corner and click options. at the bottom of the general tab, it has "download folder" and "download folder (play/preview)" if you set these folders to be the same, (i recommend changing them both to "phocadownload") then you can chose the same file for the main file option AND the play/preview file. and also, once you have that done it should also solve the play/preview button showing problem.

[thel33tone]

i figured it out! which surprises me to say the least but ive been trying for 3 days straight.
i added the following to the bottom of the users index.php for phocadownload in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\components\com_phocadownload\views\user\tmpl\default_files.php

i added it at line 311

<?php
mysql_select_db("brickfire", $con);
mysql_query("UPDATE brickf_phocadownload SET filename_preview = filename");

mysql_close($con);
?>

[Jan]

Ok

[jacek_arwal]

thel33tone - your solution is good but I think, that it should be resolved in options. There should be a setting use normal file as preview file.

[Jan]

Hi, I will add this parameter to Phoca Download 3

Jan