File downloads in a vBulletin forum.

[Janovetz]

Hello-

I apologize if this has been asked. My searches turned up -way- too many hits due to the overuse of the terms 'download' 'files' and so on.

I'd like to better regulate some downloads from my website. I think placing those downloads in a forum would be useful as it would require membership to access them (sort of akin to product registration).

Have folks done this successfully? Do you just do it as attachments or is there a better way to handle file lists and downloads? As an attachment, the file is stored in the database, right? What are the server load consequences of this? Most downloads will be less than 5 MB, I would expect.

Cheers,
Jake

[Floris]

You can setup forum permissions so that only certain usergroups have access to this forum.

You can setup additional usergroups that are the ones with this permission.

You can add this usergroup to the users who should have this permission.

Example, if you want users with 500+ posts to have access, you can setup a promotion.

[Janovetz]

Thanks. I'm familiar with the permissions aspect of the issue. I'm mostly concerned with server-side load, database size, and so on if I start posting 3-5 MB files. I'd like to know if there are other alternatives to posting them directly into the database.

A plugin perhaps?

[ericgtr]

You can change the way it stores attachments so it puts them in a directory on your server instead of in the DB.

AdminCP> Attachments> Attachment Storage Type

This will allow you to specifiy a directory on your server that you must create (or use an existing one) you will need to make sure it's CHMOD 777.

[Janovetz]

Ah.. Very nice. Thank you.