Puting a picture in a message

For a quick and dirty solution, the justboil.me image uploader/inserter worked in older versions of the code; I haven't tried to see about the current release.  You can find it here: https://github.com/vikdiesel/justboil.me.  It is not being maintained but if it works then it is a quick way to insert images.  You can set the config for limits on file types and sizes and have it resize larger images.  One thing I did with the code is that if someone uploads an image with the exact file name to overwrite the existing one.  This keeps from having a thousand smileys of the same image from a member; if they like to include say, "big-hugs.gif" smiley in their messages it won't keep uploading it over and over and over; it will replace the existing file.  It is easy to also integrate into Dolphin with a bit of php code.  What I did was to grab the member's id from the cookie, get the member's nickname (the site used nicknames instead of full names) from the database, then create a directory on the server for them to store their files; each member gets their own directory.  I also tied this into the file manager on the site.  One thing I want to look at is the responsive filemanager for using as a full blown file manager instead of Moxie Manager which Boonex added to their Dolphin license (I think that has expired as the current Moxie offering is from 2016).

I need to add that this is a TinyMCE plugin.  You will upload it to the plugins directory of TinyMCE and have to edit the ChBaseEditorTinyMCE.php to add the plugin and button to the toolbar.  I do custom work if you can't do this on your own.

One more edit.  This will also allow insertions of images in any area of the site that uses the same TinyMCE init that the messenger uses.  To avoid this, you would create a new TinyMCE init and load it into messenger instead of the default TinyMCE init.

Quote:  this is an option that I have used before.

That's fine provided you wish to send a photo that's already in your gallery. 

Sometimes people want to send private photos and that's what I based my reply on. You could do it by adding the photo to your gallery and marking it "Only Me", but I have that option switched off on my site. I don't see why I should be offering free storage space for people to store photos nobody else can see.

Currently there is no provision to send photos in Messenger without Moxie manager.

 this is an option that I have used before.

1 - install the photos module on your site

2 - upload picture using photos module.

3 - once image is uploaded, there should be a box with a link to the image on the photo page.

4 - copy that link - this is what you put into the address field when adding an image to your message.

Hi Steve, This has been discussed somewhere as a possible addition to Cheetah  but I'm not sure what Deano plans to do about it. This problem comes from the original Dolphin and it was a feature that was only available to people who paid for Dolphin. Even then, they had to install a script called Moxie Manager.

Geek_Girl, Deano and I discussed various file managers that would do something similar, but they aren't designed to easily give you the feature you want. Deano may be able to build it in to the messaging system, but he's made a self-imposed set of rules that keeps him focused on other problems first.

There are other issues involved. One includes the size of the image. Most modern mobile phones produce massive images of 4meg or more. If one of your members decided to send hundreds of images to friends, your server storage limits would be quickly stressed. Cheetah automatically reduces images in the photos gallery to very small files, but it does hang on to the originals. Even though you can set the maximum upload limit, a member posting hundreds of images can easily choke your server.

This could be one of the reasons why Dolphin didn't allow for images in Messager, but I'm not sure. Hopefully Deano will address the problem, reduce images to a much more manageable size and discard the original.

My suggestion is, don't worry about allowing people to include images in messages at this time.

To do it if you must, you need to upload an image to your server. You can do this by creating a folder in Cheetah's Root called images (or whatever) and uploading the photos there. Then, when you click on images in Messenger, enter the URL for that image: http:www.mysite/images/myimage.jpg

The image will then be embeded in the message.

Note: This is something admins can only do because you shouldn't allow others to access your server.

The best program to do it with is https://sourceforge.net/projects/tinyphpfilemanager/

I use it regularly. Just upload the single PHP File into a folder in your Cheetah Root http:/www.mysite/manager/

Change the file name to index.php

Then enter http://www.mysite.com/manager

Enter the password and you're in.

How do you put a picture into a message? It asks for an address. What address? There is no "Browse" button for putting photos in messages like there is to add an attachment on this page.