want a user friendly way to insert Media into an Article

[profgerdes]

I am looking for a clean, easy user interface to upload and automatically insert media into an article, with the option to either link or show the content.
I think ideally I would have a simple textbox where I can select a file from my computer, a set of checkboxes to indicate either show, link, or both. Clicking submit would upload the file, save it in Joomla, then either display the media in a new article, or insert a link to the media. I don't want the user to have to upload the media, then navigate to it in the Joomla directory when they already specified what they wanted.

The purpose is to allow non-technical, casual users to submit content including PDF and Images easily. Having to interact with a plugin would be challenging. I did find plugins for embedding a PDF, but the complexity of having authors trying to use this from the front end makes them not useful for my application.

Anyone have a solution for this?

[sozzled]

That's a "tricky" problem: submit something, display it nor not (but allow others to download it) ...

I'm not sure I can think of a way to do that. I do have a mechanism for letting people download product (e.g. a PDF file or video or ZIP) from a website, if that's something useful to you? I can't say anything else about it because it could be considered "self-promotional" (and that's against the forum rules).

As for the product submission phase, that's fairly straightforward. People can just email their product to you. You can't get much more "user friendly"/non-technical than that, can you?

Do you have an example of where you've see it done before?

[profgerdes]

After a bit of digging around, I do believe I found a solution to at least the upload part, and maybe the display part also. The extension has a drag and drop capability for file uploads in custom fields on Article submission page. That is something my people can handle. It apparently handles both pdf, images and maybe other formats. i believe it results in a link on the article page. If so it might address everything I want. I am not naming the extension because I don't want to break forum rules (although I have no association with the extension). If it is ok to post I can do that.

What I am looking to do is create a site where the community can upload articles, pictures, videos, pdfs, etc. which would then be moderated by the admin. So I need a very intuitive interface for the casual user to enter information. The goal would be to be able to provide curated content to the community (sort of like the old Ask Jeeves).

[sozzled]

Thanks for your reply. Good ideas (having product submission moderated before approval)! If you know of something simple—drag and drop is pretty simple—then I'd go with that.

I'm still struggling to comprehend the "total solution"—forgive me, it's been a long day! If it would help to talk it over a cup of coffee, in real time, I may be able to (a) understand better what you want, (b) help you describe better on the forum what you need, and (c) get you to where you want to get. Would that idea be good for you?

Please note—here comes the whole disclaimer thing—I am not soliciting work on this forum; I have never solicited work, sought or received payment of any kind for any "services" that I offer via this forum, nor do would I ever do that to any person. I don't guarantee success (but I've had a goodly sum of successes) and I don't offer this to everyone on the forum. The forum is a self-help resource where discussions should, in the main, be conducted openly and transparently. I'm only saying that, from time to time, some things can be accomplished quicker by other means.

[brian]

Please be aware that even though the content is to be moderated before publishing, any uploaded files will be accessible immediately. So you need to be vary careful about who you allow to upload media and ensure that when any content is not published it also has any uploaded files removed from the server.