The ideas just keep coming... ;)

WWWThreads allows a user graphic. This image is served by the user, and linked to by the scripts.

I'm against this, for a wide range of reasons, since poor performance and broken images reflects on the webmaster _not_ the user.

Anyway... I was thinking about a user_graphic in Links. I need to work out the subtleties, but I think I can add this in to both the upload scripts.

What it would do is allow a registered user to upload a graphic. That graphic could be shown next to their links, in leiu of a logo.

When adding a link, the user is presented with the option (if enabled) to add a logo, or use their default graphic. This default graphic is uploaded to a central directory and can be modified with the user profile. Of course, I need to add in the code for approving the user graphic, and re-approving it if they modify it, since I don't trust anyone :)

This way, a company could upload a single graphic that could be used on all their links as a default. This is different from a logo, which assumes each link is different. On a site where links are articles, helps, or things where one user may submit many,many links, it's a way of visually keying the links.

Suggestions, comments?

BTW: With a central registry system, it would seem uploading one graphic would be good, and using the WWWThreads graphic would be good, but that has real-world problems, and specifically attaching an image to the Links/User record is a better idea.

Also... I need to look at how users are "deleted". The user record probably needs to have several other flags -- 'banned', 'deleted', and 'expired' at minimum. (of course, this then moves to a full user management system, and paid registration.... <sigh> it just doesn't stop! :O)

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sounds good, i like the idea of having a small graphic for my editors that i can put next to each link if they put it there. I reconed i could put this there with a bit of fancy templates like calling www.domain.com/images/%editor%.gif or something like that (havn't thought this through yet) but using it with your system sounds great.

Secondly, on forums. Vbulletin 2.0 has an image upload feature but it sucks bad. It stores the images on the mySQL database (please don't get me started on this) so I am hoping i am going to be able to use this system somehow to get round that as your file managment systems are going to be sooooo much better anyway. Need the vbulletin/linkssql plugin first of course :)

p.s. i love the idea of users being registered etc.. one part of my directory i want is links to sci-fi dvds etc. Basically i want to be able to let people add their products, and they either pay per product or perhaps as many as they want in a time period, so they pay to have them there for x months. This type of system would be perfect for that - of course i would want multiple image uploads per "link" as well as a logo as well.. nice hey :) combine it with a modified goto.com mod.. hehehe :)

http://www.ASciFi.com/ - The Science Fiction Portal