This plugin is great but there is one thing that i cant do with this. If only this can be configured to support multiple Root Download Folders, so that i can set files from different directories to be access. Currently, all accessing files have to be in the same directories in order for the super admin to configure the access permission. A little improvement on this and its totally perfect

The subject is the easiest solution to share all your files & subfolders with one click (with permissions!).

Had an interesting issue on deployment:
My site's codepage is UTF8. All my stored files are named with cp1251 codepage (windows-1251, cyrillic). So i spent some hours patching VFM with:
echo iconv('windows-1251', 'utf-8', $entry['title']);

Unfortunatelly, ZIP-function doesn't work for checkboxed files&folders with non-Latin names (checked this function after patching, so i'm not sure about original VFM).

The only problem I've been noticing is that whenever someone tries to access a client area on my site from a Mac (using Safari or Firefox) they can't use the "Create Zip" feature.

Using a Mac and Firefox, after downloading, they have been reporting an error message that says "Unable to unarchive "[FILENAME].zip" into "[FOLDER]". Error 1 - Operation not permitted."

That's the only think that kept me from giving it a 5 star rating.

If you use Chronoforms and need a simple, but very good, extension to access uploaded files from the frontend....then VFM is for you! Point it to your Uploads folder and all files, forms subfolders and their files, are automatically listed. Set your security privileges and you are good to go!

This component made my day!
Everything went without hassle and its easy to set up and all you have to do is upload your files to the folder.

Thank you joomstudio . net

The simplicity of this component is what i love the most. You don't have to set up almost anything (but have your files and folders organized) in order for it to work.

This extension was the only reason why i was still using Joomla 1.0x but now that it supports 1.5 there's no reason to keep using the old version.

Had a little problem when i switched to legacy mode to use another component but Giao replied immediately with a patch! AWESOME!

This extension does what I need, and does it well. Once I followed the instructions that "cybecom" (below) offered, installation was very simple and a breeze.

I only have 2 issues with thi component.
1-no documentation made it (for me) impossible to setup
2-frontend uploads would be nice, but I guess I can't have everything

I am using it on a J! 1.0.X site. As more of my sites are moving to 1.5, 1.5 support will become vital (my wishlist)

Thanks for a great extension.

This appears to be a great tool for a simple document repository.

All I had to do was run up my FTP program, create a master directory for my downloads and then some sub-directories under that related to the types of document for downloads. Eg: downloads/Minutes, downloads/Templates, etc. I dragged a few files into those directories as a test. I then went into the component from Joomla's backed administration making sure that I had a nice title for the Component Heading, put /downloads at the end of the default Root download folder, changed the default permission to View and I disabled the Rating because I don't want to use that. Then I linked it to my usermenu, ran up my frontend website, logged in as a user and selected the menu item. Straight away, I could see the download directories nicely formatted to my site template and hyperlinked automatically to the document directories. I clicked into one with a document and it was easy to see the document/s with a file size automatically tagged. Downloading was a breeze. Voila! How simple is that?

Pros
- Installed in a breeze
- Took about 15 seconds to set up the parameters I wanted (and about a minute behind-the-scenes setting up the directories and dragging some documents using my FTP software)
- A few more seconds saw me linking a menu item to the right component
- Seemed to handle my template style easily
- A strength is its automatic detection of download directories and files within those. Assuming you name the directories and the files with meaningful names, uploading files is as simple as FTP'ing them from your computer.
- It works!

Cons
- Can't see any yet although perhaps lack of documentation.
- Basic but perfect if that's all you want

Thanks!

This file download component beats them all. I have tried all of them and VFM is the best in terms of speed, simplicity, and usability. It does exactly what is needed of a file download component. Dump your files in the download folders and subfolders and they get listed automatically in VFM for authorised users to view and download. The feature that allows you to give descriptive names to files and folders without actually changing the name of the file on the server is very useful.
I would have given this component 5 stars instead of 4 if only it had JACL groups recognition capability (Presently VFM only recognises core Joomla user groups and its own VFM groups )

A File download log capability which would tell me who has downloaded which file how many number of times would be the crowning glory for this component making it the king of the Joomla file-download territory !!

Thanks to the Author for giving us such a superb component.

A common complaint is that there is no documentation. Seems to work, just no docs to tell you how to use it, and it's not evident. I'll stick to remository.

I've searched and searched and there are really only a couple of tools available that allow folder permissions beyond the basic Public, Registered and Special. I needed to allow each user to access only their folder(s) and no one else's. With over 500 user folders, I also needed the process to be fast and without the site crashing.

I tried ReMOSitory since it was packaged with my installation. It was fine at first. I could quickly manage permissions by basically allowing access to just the user and the admins. Unfortunately, my host didn't like how long it took to run things and kept shutting it down. I couldn't make any changes except through phpMyAdmin.

With VFM you don't have to add files, they're added simply by puting them in your download directory which saved me many hours of work. If you're new to Joomla and you just need something that works, without lots to configure, this is a great extension and since it's in Ajax the page doesn't have to refresh every time you make a change so it's quick.

There are down sides, however. With 500+ folders, 2000+ files and 480+ users, it's going to be very time consuming to set up the proper permissions. It just might be easier for me to write my own code where permissions are involved. This isn't just a VFM problem though, it's really most extensions availble that requre permissions. I wish there was quicker way than having to set each folder's permissions one by one, other than doing an SQL query in phpMyAdmin. For instance, I want to deny all guests, deny everyone who doesn't own the folder, allow all administraters "management" access, and then individually apply "view" access by user. That would be ideal.

I really like the layout, it fits perfectly with my site without any modification because it's simple and clean. It would be nice if the developer had a working website, demo, video as mentioned, and documentation. Feature requests: if the user doesn't have permission to access any files, I'd prefer it just told them they didn't have any files rather than showing a blank page with "Category" and "File" floating aimlessly. It'd also be nice to have a backend administration so I don't have to work in two places. I'd also really like to see the file count in the administration area -- I'd like to know if a folder is accidentally empty at the very least.

I have tried ALL of the download/file management extensions that are offered here, VFM beats them all.

I tried RSfiles, it lags behind in 3 ways, it's not free, it doesn't support zipping of files, and it WAY TOO heavy on the server. To list a folder with 50 files, it runs almost 1000 SQL queries!! That's just nuts. VFM runs but 17 for any amount of files/folders.

DocMan is OK, but it lacks the ease. With VFM, you drop your files in a folder, upload with FTP, point VFM to that folder, done! All files and folders are automatically linked and listed. With DocMan or Remository, it just takes ages to add each file manually, and I just happened to have 30,000+ files on my website.

Now, I think what people underestimate with VFM is the amount of control you get with it!! You can set each file/folder to be viewed/downloaded/denied to any of the joomla user groups. There are also VFM usergroups that you can create. When you apply specific permission setting to a folder, all files and subfolders within that folder are also affect. You can then go inside that folder and set permissions to files/subfolders specifically which will overwrite home directory settings. This is very very very usefull function.

I have a very complex website, and this component delivers. This is what my website requires
Visitors can view most of the files/folders, but not all.
Visitors can not download any files, aside from very few special files.
Regular Registered members can view ALL of the files/folders.
Regular Registered members can download most of the content, but not all.
Subscribers (Authors in my case) can view all of the files, and they can also download all of these files.

Pretty much, if you can dream of any combination of permissions, this component will allow it.

NOTE: Visit DEMO website and check out "Installation Video", there is a comment page there that helps people that have problems. Also, Always download latest subversion (SVN - located in trunk/build on "homepage" link of the component), Giao regulary adds things to and tweaks this component and posts those builds there.

Having previously used download tools such as docman, I have finally found a tool that is clearly the best component for managing my files.

It is so intuitive and yet has many powerful features such as the ability to zip files and download or select user groups. Also, the simple and clean manner in which files are displayed means that this component will blend in with any site.

Well done!

I like the AJAX features, but there appears to be no way to categorize downloads despite there being a category heading. No documentation, but it works pretty well. There is a bug in the AJAX editing -- quotes are not handled properly. They are not properly unescaped after retrieval from the DB. So if the category function and the quotes were fixed, it would be great.

IMHO, much easier to use than Docman or Remository. I just ftp a file to the appropriate directory, and it shows up as a link.
Only real trick is figuring out the AJAX administrator frontend, which isn't well documented, but with a little experimentation makes perfect sense. You can change Title, Description, Manager(s), allowed Viewer(s) and Denied viewer(s) on each category or item. You can also create Groups for fine grain control of each item.
Another excellent feature is the ability to check multiple items and add them to a single .zip download.

It works for what I need, or I would have given it a 1 star.

No documentation.
No video as mentioned in description.
No working demo.
Website only has 1 forum post where it is stated that component not ready for 1.5.
No instructions.

Administrative options are very minimal, and not self-evident.

Without documentation, all I can tell is that this simply opens up a file browser to a directory of your choice making it "browsable" and the files downloadable by the visitor. Luckily this is all I need, but the programmer really needs a working website with details about anything else this component can do.

Excellent permission functionality.

No documentation but it doesn't take long to figure it out after you poke at it for a several minutes.

Thanks!

wolfix

This Repository is very nice component! ;) And the support ...WOW... super, thx Giao.

Great component and super support by Giao.
I had problem in having it working in other languages. Speaking with Giao, we understood it was due to the fact he used Singleton pattern and I was using it on php4.
So with a little search over the net I found Algis Alekna workaround to use Singleton pattern on php4.
I modified the script according to that workaround and everything is ok.
I suppose this workaround will be included in next release.

VFM is a very promising component, in that it provides eyecandy and a granular ACL which empowers site admins to set access levels on files per user or group, without patching any core file.

I'd just like a little detail to be modified. In the current version, most admin tasks take place in the frontend. I think it would be a lot better to handle these tasks in the backend, for the sake of convenience and consistency.