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cpmfetch_config.php Welcome to CpmFetch Coppermine Photo Gallery

Embedding

Using CpmFetch in portals, forums, galleries, etc.

Vuud

Embedding

Since about 2 days after I released CpmFetch, people have been trying with varying degrees of success to use CpmFetch in Forums, Blogs, Portals, Avatars, and more. Most of the time this can be done with varying degrees of success. I am going to try to gather relevant information here, and when I can, try them out at home. The first section lists what has been found to work, followed by specific issues faced by specific programs.

For lack of a better name, I will describe the process of using CpmFetch inside the templates or themes or code of another content management system. For example, SMF Forum, PHPBB, WordPress, etc. Since this can be tricky I am including notes and lessons learned from the countless people who have tried before you.

What will CpmFetch work in?

CpmFetch will work in many different programs. My general rule of thumb is that if you can execute PHP from a template inside the desired system, you should be able to make CpmFetch work.

Over the past few years, I have seen CpmFetch work with a whole bunch of them. Regrettably I have not documented what made them work, but I remember it being possible with the following: Coppermine Photo Gallery Simple Machines Forum (SMF) PHPBB Joomla Mambo TinyCMS Wordpress and more

Third Party Plugins

Thankfully, there are more and more plugins for the various systems to make CpmFetch easier to use. Some people have also written concise tutorials. I will like these on the CpmFetch web site if the authors would like them. I will not make any guarentee to the effectiveness of them.

I have seen some limit the types of calls you can make to CpmFetch however. If the functions provided suit you, then it may be a good fit for you.

NOTE: I would recommend not using plugins that require modifications to CpmFetch or that provide CpmFetch as part of the download. This will make it harder for you to stay up to date with bug fixes and enhancements in CpmFetch.

Challenges of Embedding

here is some basic information you need to know if you are going to attempt to get a program not listed here to work. If you succeed or do not succeed, please let us know what happened and how you did it. I will try to include it here so others may benefit from your work. Credit will be given.

The largest challenge to embedding CpmFetch is executing the PHP. If your product provides a way to paste in PHP code to be executed, then you are 80% done.

Another challenge is the path to the cpmfetch.php file. Generally, you want to figure the path out from where your product executes, not where you are putting in your template.

Database interference is also an issue. If you put in your CpmFetch code and suddenly get a lot of MySQL errors with your forum, try leaving off the cpm_close() statement.

Poor forum programming. I have seen at least one forum make the poor assumption that it is the only database connection. This is bad and causes much pain for you.

Suggestions, Comments, Corrections...

Please let me know if there are any errors in the above or following sections. I cannot keep up with everything.

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cpmfetch_config.php Welcome to CpmFetch Coppermine Photo Gallery

Documentation generated on Tue, 10 Apr 2007 23:00:31 -0400 by phpDocumentor 1.3.0