Geeklog Forums

I have been thinking about a file-attachment plugin/hack.
The advantage towards the normal file-mgmt-plugin would be that the file would be deleted once the story is deleted. Also, it is not too good to have attachments that are within a story as a seperate download in some downloads-area. Specially large sites with many admins would rather attach than handle another plugin.

There are three ways to handle this as far as I can see:

1. Adjust the picture-upload to accept also other files and simply create an icon in case the linked file is not a picture.

Advantage: very easy to handle, small implementation efforts, inline-attachments
Disadvantage: This would work only for Stories.

2. Create something new that is very similar to the comments function, just with attachments instead of comments

Advantage: More flexible, usable by all plugins and stories
Disadvantage: Much more develeopment needed, Attachments would not appear in-line

3. A mix of the two. The Auto-link feature could be used for this. Also, the links could point to files in the filemgmt plugin. The Autolink would just create an icon, and the file would be a specially flagged file in the download section. The file would be only visible from the story, not in the downloads-section.

Advantage: only one file-repository in the site, inline-files
Disadvantage: one would have to modify both the plugin and the core code. would only work for stories.

so what are your opinions? Do you need something like this? what is your favorite way to do it, or do you have another solution?