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[RELEASED] Postcards.cgi
Ok,

It's ready for release. Might still have some buglets, but it is plugin enabled, and seems to work ok.

I also noticed I had started to enable support for the file field - if the image was stored in there. I also edited the templates down, so you can probably just insert what is between the <body> tags into your template.

Given Aki's recent post, I may hold off further development of that aspect, pending some more musing on the arbitrary attachment table idea.

Still to do:

1) auto expunge/delete of old cards
2) more robust admin view/edit/delete

Upcoming features:

1) unsend
2) favorites
3) address book
4) recent sends/stats/etc


PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

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Re: [pugdog] [RELEASED] Postcards.cgi In reply to
I set up a demo -- it may go up and down as i work on it, but this is the current install of the .tar file, no "extras"

http://betterbeads.com/...&p=anythinggoes2

The anythinggoes2.html is just a standard HTML page (not included) that is the entry way to the postcards system. You could make it a thumbnail gallery page, or whatever you want.

You just link in to step2.html (or really the prefix_step2.html) and go from there.


PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
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Re: [pugdog] [RELEASED] Postcards.cgi In reply to
I went to your page and noticed that the image you want to send already has to be somewhere on the internet. Wouldn't it be more user-friendly to ask people if they want to upload an image?

Ivan
-----
Iyengar Yoga Resources / GT Plugins
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Re: [yogi] [RELEASED] Postcards.cgi In reply to
Hi,

I have strong feelings on this, I posted on the original threads. To summarize:

We don't actually send the image. We only send a reference to it.

There are a lot of reasons for this -- legal, ethical, and technical.

The "anything goes" idea was an add on, the main program is set up to send from a list of images in your gallery. It's just that the way the program functions, the image can be *any* URL.

By sending a reference, we are not liable for the content of the image -- it's not on our servers, we only have a link to it. We do not "send" any file that may contain a virus, contains adult or nasty content, etc. We only send a notice that someone has sent a message to you, and you can pick it up -- the *choice* is yours.

Our program wraps this image in some text, and formatting (you can even pick the format of the card, that's a feature that's coming -- ie: vertical, horizontal, layout, etc).

What I *would* like to do is check to make sure that a remote file is *really* an image file, before displaying the card, but that requires some internal routines that may or may not be on people's systems. If I can find some perl modules to check for jpg, gif, png, bmp, etc, it would be a good thing to add (actually, you really only need to check the extension, and then the first few hundred bytes of the file for a reasonable check).

We do not send 1000's of megs of data to your email box you have to download when you *thought* you were doing a quick mail scan -- only a short message of 1 or 2 k in length, with a pick up URL.

We dont send attached sound files, or other mixed media that a person may not have the plugin for, or may crash their system at a critical time.

Gossamer Mail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, etc all will let you send a message with attachments :)

We are sending postcards.


PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
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Re: [pugdog] [RELEASED] Postcards.cgi In reply to
Hi Pugdog,



I can see some advantages to an uploaded image though.



What if the sender had an address book with up to 5 images that they can use to send? This umage portfolio would be theirs and theirs alone to use (not shared with other users) and they can also have the image reference option as well as builtin images on the hosting site.

Any thoughts on this?
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Re: [Teambldr] [RELEASED] Postcards.cgi In reply to
>> What if the sender had an address book with up to 5 images that they can use to send?

You are now providing disk space to your users. How do you manage the account?

Why can't the user keep the images on their own personal webspace? Once you start to allow users to upload images, you are now a hosting company, and all the rules change. How do you stop users from using your bandwidth to serve images? Way too many problems all around.

If you have a "community" or "hosting" package, this will fit right in to it ;)


PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

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Re: [pugdog] [RELEASED] Postcards.cgi In reply to
How about making it an option?

This way the choice is up to the website owner rather than the design!Smile
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Re: [Teambldr] [RELEASED] Postcards.cgi In reply to
Well... that's really out of the scope of the program. It was never meant to be a file management program.

The postcards script doesn't limit you. All it wants is a URL to an image, and that URL can be any web-accessible image. What other features you want to provide to your users is up to you. This script will let them take their images, your images, or actually any images, and "send" them as a postcard.

I'm working on file and image uploads, but they are their own program, just as the postcards script is it's own program.

The beauty of this postcards script is that it does NOT mess around with any files, it only acts as an intermediary. It doesn't clutter your bandwith or your end users email box. If the image files are on a person's personal webspace, your actual bandwidth is almost trivial.


PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
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Re: [pugdog] [RELEASED] Postcards.cgi In reply to
Well, having the option allows the site owner the choice. And really the bandwidth issue is not that large of an issue for some. And for most the option would be big.



These of course are just ideas and you can obviously do with your plugin as you see fit. I just thought you might like to have opinion from a potential buyer.



Thanks!Smile
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Re: [Teambldr] [RELEASED] Postcards.cgi In reply to
Hi,

As I said, the file upload/download is something that is a different program. It's all completely different logic, code, and problems.

The first step here is to make the column_name variable work with the Links "file" field, such that if you have a File field in your links for images, you can pass the ID of the link, and the postcards script will look up the column_name in it's parameter, and then reformat the data to use the jump.cgi method to display an image. It almost does that now, just have to fix a few things that never got implemented.

In that case, you can just use the existing features of links, and if you want a "my" list, use the my_links plugin that is already available.


PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
Please leave a PM here.