Update: This is an old post that had a few broken links within it so it has been updated and hopefully free of any old broken links! This post should be valid for DOCman 1.5.x users also new features, icons and improvements are not included within this post.  DOCman 1.5.x is a superior product that is still evolving and improving

In my previous post I introduced you to DOCman a Joomla! component which allows you to manage your files and deliver them to the public in both a professional, secure and sleek way. This post looks at the actual configuration and usage of DOCman as the title would suggest.

If you have not already installed DOCman then go check out the previous post which walks you through it and tries to introduce you to the product a little bit as it goes. However this is a whole new post so here we go with this one and hopefully by the end of it you will be able to get around DOCman with little problems along the way.

the first thing we need to do is get into the DOCman control panel which we can do from the main navigational menu at the top of the ACP or as indicated on the image, Components -> DOCman is the one we want.

As you can see from the image the DOCman sub listings are quite complete with nearly every option listed. The one that isn’t is actually the clear data function for you enthusiast out there.

The control panel for DOCman is quite well put together but admitadly still does have that old Mambo feel about it using the older icons which of course is only a cosmetic thing and only really bugs those of you out there whom are inistent on the silly things becoming a major issue – that aside the control panel is neat, organized and does contain all the options.

It can be reached via components -> DOCman -> Home

As you can see from the screenshot the DOCman CP is as i said, clean and organized and has every option plus a few little extra.

One thing most people dont actually know about DOCman is that when you install it a new position for admin modules is created as well as a new plugin type. The new plugin type is named ‘docman’ and the new module position allows you to insert modules directly into DOCmans control panel. The default modules provided are:

  • News – The latest news from the J!Tools blog
  • Unapproved – Documents that have not yet been approved
  • Latest Docs – The newest (according to date) documents
  • Top Docs – The top downloaded documents DOCman currently has
  • Latest Logs – if you have logging enabled gives you the latest entries a summary if you will

Now that we have that out the way and you have a little information about the DOCman control panel lets pop the hood and get to work. The best place to start with any components is of course its configuration options, DOCman thankfully (or not for the squeamish out there) has extensive options for you to configure it to your needs near perfectly.

DOCmans configuration options are broken into tabs to make things easier to find quickly so lets start with the first tab which is the ‘General‘ tab

The general tab as you can see by the screenshot provided is a simple one, it contains the version of DOCman your currently running and the path to your DOCman repository (aka the folder that holds your files) there is of course the Reset default button which resets the path DOCman looks for your files to the default one DOCman will use which is /dmdocuments – thats about all for this tab so onto the next one.

The front-end tab is the next in line and this one allows you to control (obviously) some frontend options. The options broken down and explained are:

Section is down – This option basically closes down your DOCman repository from public eyes which is handy when your upgrading or you tampering with DOCman. It should be noted that ’special’ users will always have access to DOCman regardless of what this is set too.

Extensions for viewing – This controls which file extensions can be ‘viewed’ you should enter the extensions using a | to separate the extensions for example:
gif|png|jpeg|pdf|doc

Number of documents per page – This one speaks for itself, how many documents should be listed on anyone page at a time, you wont want to set this too high otherwise your user will have endless scrolling to do and nobody likes scrolling now really do they.

Default listing order – again another simple option this defines how your documents will be sorted. You get the choice of 3 sorting options with 2 additional sorting options on the original 3:

  • Sort by Document name
  • Sort by Document hits
  • Sort by Document date

and once you have selected one of the 3 above options you have two further options to select

  • ascending
  • descending

E-mail Group Users – email group users, I’m unsure if this option will remain or will possibly be removed or even ported into LETTERman according to the description of this feature it will place an email option on documents owned by a DOCman group allowing a user to email said group. However as mentioned the status of this feature is a little foggy.

Icon size – The icon size is a basic option will basically tells DOCman what image sizes to use either 16×16 or 32×32 (pixels)

Trim Whitespace – This one should be on in most every install of DOCman it in short it trims the white spaces from the theme and keeps everything nice and neat and tidy within the code and saves you that extra bandwidth. This is normally an option most of you will enable and would only disable in the event you we’re experiencing issues with it being on.

Days for new – How many days, based on the date YOU supply to DOCman should a download be thought of as new, the reason i say YOU supply to DOCman is when editing a Document you can specify a new date which is within the ‘days for new’ setting then it will be thought of as new.

Downloads to be hot – Again another simple option, i do like the simple ones, this one allows you define how many downloads a document must have prior to it being thought of as ‘hot’

Display Licenses – Should licenses be displayed prior to the user downloading the document, this can be overridden at document level anyway so if you use licenses for most your documents then its perhaps bst to set this to yes.

Process Content Mambots – Should DOCman process content mambots ? well if you read my first article i mentioned that plugins come in categories which usually specify what there task is, legacy being system, rating being content etc etc

If you wish to see which plugins DOCman can process then you simply need to go into the plugin manager and select ‘content’ from the drop down list and those are the plugins that will be processed by DOCman. It should be noted that not every plugin will play nice with DOCman.

The next tab in the list of options in the configuration section is the permissions tab, how many people including myself have suffered headaches in this section is .. well a lot so try take your time when going through this bit.

As with before each option is broken down and a short explantion is provided, again if you are unsure the DOCman community forums are very responsive so feel free to ask there.

Guests – What can guests do you have 3 options here each of them with there own advantages and disadvantages which i will leave for you to decide about but the options are:

  • No Access
  • Browse Only
  • Browse, Download & View

As a small hint if you want people to see your downloads but not be able to download them without logging in then browse only is the way to go!

Upload – Who can upload, you should always set this with caution there are always people out there whom are more than willing to upload naughty files to make you look a twit so be careful!

You can allow all registeard users to upload, you can remove access so nobody (via frontend) can upload, you can allow authors and above, publishers and above, editors and above or a specific DOCman group

Approve – Who can approve documents being uploaded ? well you have the same options as you had before with one additional one added to the mix which would be ‘Auto approve’ this bypasses the who and just automatically approves uploaded documents.

Publish – Same as above again and this time the additional option is there but the change being ‘Auto publish’ which is pretty much the same as the Approve option in that it bypasses the who. You should again use these options ( the auto ones ) with caution.

View – Who can view a document well again the groups are the same, the only new option in terms of permissions is ‘everybody’ is added which implies guests too! If you also recall the extensions you defines earlier are the ones that can be viewed.

Override View – If a document, at document level does not give say the maintainers of downloads or even the creator of downloads to manage there documents then you can define here if they can retain there access by using an override. The two override options are for:

  • Creator
  • Maintainers

Maintain – Who maintains documents on your repository, normally you would set this to No user access on small sites, the usual permissions from the above mentioned are continued in this option too but in terms of who can maintainw ell you wouldnt want anyone maintaining till you have moderators helping you out, trusted ones at that.

In short whatever you set here will have access to update the document, but possibly not the file (depending on permissions), links, images etc etc

Override Maintain – Much like the override view this works on the same guidelines but works on the basis of maintaining, it has the exact same options so no point on repeating myself.

Allow individual user permissions – First il make a point of saying if you have 1000 or > users then do not enable this option this is an option that allows you to set some options specifically to users, however it uses far too many resources when you have a large amount of users.

Creators can – This lets you set what a creator of a document can do there are three options:

  • No Access – they don’t get access
  • Download Only – they can download it
  • Download & Edit – they can download and edit the file, somewhat like they maintain that specific file

So thats a brief summary of your permission options remember that most of these can be overridden at document level so set your globals and customize for your special files at document level.

The next tab in our list of options is the upload tab which has a fair few options and they pretty much dictate how your files will be stored in the DOCman folder (dmdocuments)

Upload methods – The first of the upload options happens to be one of the coolest features DOCman has to offer it basically lets you define what upload methods your users can make use of. Normally with most document systems you get link remove or link local DOCman goes that touch further with 3 options:

  • Upload a file from your computers
  • Link a file from another server to this server (remote linking)
  • Transfer a file from another server to this server (remote importing)

In most cases you would use all 3 options as they allow both your slow ISP lot to add files to your repository without using htere own bandwidth – but it will use your servers bandwidth to import the file to your server.

Max. filesize allowed when uploading – The max size of a file that can be uploaded, note that this cannot be larger than the PHP value DOCman doesnt have such godly powers.. yet.

Overwrite files – When uploading if a filename already exists should it be overwritten or the new file rejected ?

  • Yes – files will be overwritten
  • No – New files with the same filename as an existing one will be rejected.

Extensions allowed – What extensions can users upload, same as the previously mentioned view configuration you need to seperate multiple extensions with a | example:
tar|gz|rar|7z|bz2

User can upload all file types – In the event your feeling lazy or you just dont care what extentions your users upload you can always just allow anything to be uploaded very simple: no then extensions allowed is followed yes then its a upload at will within max upload size value.

Lowercase names – Should uploaded filenames be coverted to lowecase, good practice suggests you would use this option – but each to there own on this one.

Filenames with blanks – What oh what do we do with blanks (spaces) in filenames, we have a few options and everyone has there own personal opinion on the best option for this one:

  • Allow Blanks – my filename.exe
  • Reject – Reject the file
  • Convert to underscores – my_filename.exe
  • Convert to dash – my-filename.exe
  • Remove Blanks – myfilename.exe

Reject filenames – what filenames do we reject, this is good as you dont wish to see your .htaccess or if you use index.html files on indexless folders then well you just dont want those listed as orphans now do you. If i recall by default it ads the following filename:
index.htm|index.html|index.php
which in most cases is perfectly fine.

For the record by the way i prefer the dash filenaming method, which if you review the screenshot filesnames you can clearly see. Now we will move onto the last tab.

The last tab is called ‘Security’ this tab in short offers you some functions to further help protect your DOCman install from possible leechers.

Anti-leech system - This prevents people from hotlinking and leeching your files, providing you set the next option correctly then you will have no problems with this option enabled.

Allowed hosts – Which hosts are allowed to hotlink to your files, by hitting the ‘Reset default’ which you should probably do on first install anyway it will apply your current websites url either mywebsite.com or www.mywebsite.com its suggested you add your site hosts like so:
mywebsite.com|www.mywebsite.com and all should be fine!

Log views – Should DOCman log views, this is not really a security option in my view, but i can see how it could be one.. statistical if you ask me anyway! Setting this option comes with its own warning, this will log a LOT of data about each dowload you receive such as:

  • Document Downloaded
  • Username Downloading
  • IP Address user downloading
  • OS of user download (mac/win/lin/unix)
  • Date downloaded

You should set this with caution to yes, if you have a very busy site (in terms of downloads) then you should not turn this on. However if your site has moderate to small downloads by all means turn it on but do clear the data before it clutters up your database.

Hide remote links – Hide the remote links, in other words dont let the user know they are downloading from a remote site when the document is linked to a file outside of your host.

Well i never thought this section would grow as large as it did, so a third document will be created which will be called DOCman: Usage coming soon!

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