How to add total photo views anywhere

[Steve_UK]

Hi,

I would like to be able to display the total photo views anywhere on my vb4/PP based site. I use 2 databases, one for vb and one for pp.

I just want to be able to add $totalviews or similar and see the total photo views count for the site. If what I do also adds comment counts and similar great.. it is the photo view count I really need though.

I've tried to do this myself by looking at codes used in various photopost files, and I thought this might do it as a plugin, it doesn't seem to be right though. Help!

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Thanks for any help you can give.

Steve

[Chuck S]

well when making your plugin you need to do many things. One being write the plugin so it works meaning have you defined the actual database info. Next after defining the variable you then need to declare it properly in the vb4 template you need it and your plugin also needs to be set to the right location.

vb has tutorials on how to write vb4 plugins.

[Steve_UK]

Chuck,

I doubt if I'll ever be able to write serious plugins, I've never learnt PHP for a start.

We've had the PP total views live count on our site front page for years - it was done by adding a little of the code from the normal stats count to your inc_features.php file.

We feel the best way to promote the PP part of the site to those passing through the site via the front page is to show them a live count for photo views, which are around 29 million and will be ever higher each time they view them.

The site uses your great hack for putting vbCMS 4.2 and PP7.1 together - and that defines heaps of variables and does most things we would have wanted to do. Only putting the photo views count on the front page, and adding a random photo to the front page to promote the PP part of the site are needed now.

If you can help by actually telling us how to do it that would be great. If not we'll keep playing with adding bits to what you've done to try and get there ourselves.

Have a great Easter.

Steve

[Chuck S]

Steve I really can't nudge you in the right direction without knowing where your trying to know where your doing it. We do not really get into code mods for vb in product support here.

1. For instance if you want to show the totalviews on the forumhome template you need to make sure to place your plugin code to execute at that location and maybe define your query variable a unique name like $pptotalviews.

2. THE COMPLICATED PART. Your mysql query looks valid but nothing works in vb4 without defining it within the template. Look at the rest of the forumhome plugin for instance in the vb4 code I released. You will see how we define the pppro_imagebits variable into the forumhome template. That variable is not valid in vb4 until you define it.

This is why I suggested you read up on the vb4 plugin system.

[Steve_UK]

Chuck,

Thanks for the extra pointers anyway, I'm sure they will help. I'm expecting to get this done today and it will probably be fun to try a few things.

Steve

[Chuck S]

yeah you can look at my mod for pointers indeed.

The real mystery of course to anyone pointing you anywhere is where your putting things. vb4 is very very specific and the template stuff needs to be done right.