Php Image Host Administration Guide

### Administration Guide

This document provides information on using the administration pages for Php Image Host to manage your image hosting site, its members, and the images they upload. There are eight separate sections in the admin area:

1. Admin Home: This page just displays a quick link to and brief description of all the other pages.
2. Images: Allows you to view and delete all uploaded images.
3. Users: Search for, list, view, edit, add, upgrade and downgrade all registered members.
4. Payments: List and view details of all account upgrade payments processed by the PayPal IPN script.
5. Site Settings: Main control panel for site options and editing templates for any email messages automatically sent by the site, for example when a new member signs up.
6. Plan Details: Configure the different features for the free and the paid image hosting account types.
7. Banners: Manage the banner ads that are rotated at the top and bottom of each page of the site.

### Images Admin

The images page lets you view a list of all images uploaded by your members. Each listing includes a thumbnail version of the image that displays the full image in a new window when clicked.

The size of the image (in pixels and kbytes) together with the format (jpeg, gif or png), the date it was uploaded and the member who uploaded it are also displayed next to each thumbnail. Clicking on the name of the member lists all the images uploaded by that member. A "View" link next to the member's username takes you to the member details page for that member.

You can filter the list of images using the search box on the left of the page. The list can be filtered by the following options: image name, dates uploaded between, member, format and filesize. Images can be listed in ascending or descending order of name, date uploaded, format and filesize.

Images can be deleted in bulk (for example if a member is abusing the service) with just a couple of clicks, by selecting the checkboxes next to the images to delete and clicking the "Delete Selected Images" button.

### Users Admin

The users admin page lets you manage all users who have signed up for your image hosting site. This page lists the following information about each user: username, name, email address, date joined (with I.P. address), the date they last logged in (with I.P. address), the number of images they have uploaded (as a link to the images themselves), their account status, and their account type (free or paid).

You can search for members by username, name and email, using * as a wildcard (for example, *sam matches all users whose name ends in sam). You can also search by the date that the users last logged in, or the date that they joined, in addition to their account type (free, paid or all) and account status (unconfirmed email address, confirmed, and suspended).

Users can be listed in ascending or descending order of name, username, date joined, last login date, email address, account status, account type, and number of images uploaded.

There are four bulk-edit options available for managing users. To bulk edit users you check the checkboxes next to the users you want to edit and click one of the buttons at the bottom of the list.

The options available are:

"Upgrade Selected Users For n Days" which makes gives the selected users "Paid Account" status for an additional n days

"Downgrade Selected Users" which makes all selected users' accounts "Free".

"Change Selected Users Status To" either unconfirmed (which means that they have to click a link in an email sent to their email address to confirm it is real before they can access their account, confirmed, which gives them access to their account, or suspended which stops them from accessing their account without actually deleting the account and the images in it - useful if you are looking into reports of abuse of your terms and conditions.

"Delete Selected Users" deletes all the selected users from the database, and also deletes all images they have uploaded from your server. This option is irreversible so should only be used as a last resort. If you just need to stop a user from accessing their account while you check if they are abusing your terms & conditions, please change the selected users' status to suspended instead.

You can also edit the account details for a single user by clicking on their name. This displays a form where you can edit their username, name, email address, password and account status. You can manually add a new user by clicking the "Add A New User" link on the bottom left of the page.

### Payments Admin

The payments page lists all payments that have been made via PayPal for account upgrades that have been logged by the included PayPal Instant Payment Notification script. The following information is displayed for each payment: PayPal transaction id#, the payer's PayPal email address, their username, account email address, the date of the transaction and the amount. Full PayPal details of the transaction can be viewed in a pop-up window by clicking the transaction id#.

The payments list can be filtered by username, user email address, PayPal email address, PayPal transaction id#, and date received, and can be displayed in ascending or descending order of date, transaction id#, amount, PayPal email address, user email address and username.

Payment records can be deleted from the database by checking the checkboxes next to the payments and clicking the "Delete Selected Payments" button. IMPORTANT: this does not refund, or affect in any way, the actual payments made or the balances of the PayPal accounts. It just removes the payment history from your site's database.

### Site Settings Page

This page is used to setup and configure most of your image hosting site's settings, and is divided into 7 sections:

Admin Settings include the username and password you use to login to the admin area (please change these from the default "admin" / "password" ASAP), your email address (that messages submitted via the contact form are sent to), and a checkbox that can be used to turn on or off the ability for new members to sign up for an account.

General Site Settings include the name for your site (modifying this here changes it on all pages of the site), the full url of your site (which should be in the format http://www.yoursite.com/), and an option to temporarily disable all image uploads (for example if you need time to investigate abuse of your terms & conditions).

Image Settings lets you set the maximum width and height for the thumbnail images automatically generated when a user uploads an image, as well as specifiying the urls and path to the folders on your servers where uploaded images and generated thumbnails are stored. These must be set correctly for your site to function properly.

Image Branding Options allow you to customize the branding watermark that can be added to images uploaded by your users (normally only used on free accounts). You can specify the text, size, color, background color and transparency, as well as set a minimum width and height for images that the branding will be added to.

Payment Settings lets you specify your PayPal email address (where payments are made to when users upgrade their accounts), as well as the subject and message for the confirmation email which is automatically sent to them if PayPal Instant Payment Notification is turned on for your account. The message can contain certain "tags" which are replaced with the relevant values (for example, {username} is replaced by the member's username). See the settings page itself for a full list of these tags.

Email Images Settings lets you customize the email subject and message that is sent when a member emails links to their uploaded images to their friends from within their control panel. You can add anything you want to this email message template, including your own advertising; just make sure you remember to include the {imagelinks} tag to provide the links back to their images.

Member Email Settings allows you to customize the email subject and message for emails sent to members when they sign up for a free account or request a password reminder. A full description of the tags that can be used in these messages is displayed on the settings page below the forms to edit them.

### Plan Details

The Plan Details page lets you specify the limits and featured for the free and paid account types that your member's can sign up for. In addition to setting the name for each type of account and the price for a paid account for 30 days, you can set the following options for each account type: total allowed images, maximum upload filesize, maximum image width and height (and whether to automatically resize oversized images, or reject them), as well as whether to automatically convert all uploads to jpegs (reducing your bandwidth usage) and the jpeg quality level to save them as (higher = better quality, larger file size).

Additionally, the simultaneous uploads number refers to the number of images a member can upload in one go, "thumbnails per page" refers to the number of their images that are listed on each page of their account page (less per page = more page impressions for you), and the "email images to friends" option specifies how many email addresses they can send links to their images to at one time.

The final option gives you the choice of adding your own branding watermark to every image uploaded for each account type. For more information, see the Image Branding Options section in the settings admin above.

### Page Content Admin

The page content admin area lets you edit most of the text that appears on the pages of your images hosting site. You can select which bit of content to edit by selecting it from the drop down box at the top of the page. You will then be able to edit the html content in the textarea. Remember to click the "Update Content" button to save your changes when you have finished editing them.

The option to create new page content only applies if you have added extra pages to your site and want to use this page to edit the content on them. For an example of displaying content edited here see the source code in the faq.php script.

When editing the page content, remember that it will be displayed directly as html, so you need to include the relevant html tags such as <br /> for a line break, etc.

### Banners Admin

Your image hosting site contains code to rotate banner adverts at the top and bottom of every page of the site. You can add and edit these banners in the "Banners" section of the site admin area.

To allow for the most flexibility in the type of banners displayed, you must enter the html to display the banner directly (this means that if you are displaying banners with your own images, you have to manually upload them to your site).

This does mean that the banners displayed can be in any format (image, flash, or even plain text or html, like google adsense). You can view banners, set them to active or inactive, and delete them in this section.