Introduction to Administering LDM

From EIRMA Wiki

Quick Links
Overview and Tutorial Introduction Quick Tutorial
Pre-Installation Site Configuration Installation Installing LDM Upgrading Removing Post-Installation Speed, Security and Server Load Uploads, Downloads and Media Filetypes
Administration Introduction Control Settings Permissions Controlling Access Monitoring and Controlling Usage Database Imports and Exports Content Overview/Mass Editing Entry Attributes Where are Files Stored?
Moderation Introduction Design Layout and Design Advanced vbAdvanced Subscriptions Add-on Extras Media Players Mirrors Synchronising Categories and Directories Hacking LDM Search Engine Optimisation
Other Known Bugs Common Problems Wish List Version History Acknowledgements

Contents 1 How LDM Behaves 2 Users 3 Data Content 4 Maintenance 5 Limits

LDM's administration interface is accessed via the Administer command on the LDM toolbar and via the Links and Downloads Manager section of the board's AdminCP.

By default, access is only available to members of the standard vBulletin Administrative usergroup (usergroup 6). Some commands, specifically those used to carry out a complete reinitialisation of the LDM database, are further restricted to users who are defined as superadministrators in the site's vBulletin config.php file. Hacking LDM explains how to change the usergroup(s) that can adminster LDM.

Commands are organised into series of page groups and selected using the menu box at the top left corner of LDM Administration pages, as shown in the illustration below. There are normally four groups of pages to control:

• How LDM Behaves
• User Rights and Actions
• Data Content
• Maintenance

(Some LDM extras will add entries to an additional group.)

How LDM Behaves

Settings		Modify parameters controlling LDM's behaviour. See also LDM Settings
Filetypes		Review how LDM handles various filetypes. See also Configuring Filetypes in vBulletin
Linkbits/Catbits		Overview and modify the layout options currently available in LDM.
Mirror Sites		Set up and control mirror servers
Media Players		Review the media players currently available within LDM, and modify settings such as player priority and filetype handling.

Users

Permissions		Specify which usergroups are permitted to make use of the various features in LDM. See LDM Permissions
Allowances		Control upload and download quotas. See also Monitoring and Controlling Usage
Hits		Analyse use of your LDM database.
Starred Nominations		Analyse current and historic entry nominations

Data Content

Entry Attributes		Manage additional entry attributes
Keywords		Tabulate and edit the master list of keywords assigned to LDM entries
Mass Edits		Overview category structure and mass edit categories and entries.
URL Validation		Revalidate the contents of your database

Maintenance

By default, the following commands are only available to users who are defined as superadministrators in config.php. (From version 2.3.0, this default can be changed by installing and configuring the admin_maintain extra.)

Debug		Enables debugging and tracing and analyses the results. You should not normally enable these features.
Import and Export		Save/restore contents of LDM databases
LDM Plugins		Overview and activate/deactive/delete LDM Add-on Extras
Reinitialise		Empty database and reinitialise LDM
SEO Options		Control LDM's SEO-friendly facilities.

Limits

In principle, LDM will support up to 32,767 categories and about four billion entries, although performance slows down when you have thousands of categories.

LDM places little load on your server when handling of bookmark links and moderately-sized downloads. It can handle large (multimegabyte) downloads, although this can be expensive in terms of server load if the files are not held on the local server.

There are several ways to improve performance and reduce server load.