Storage Locations

During the installation of Simple:Press, several special storage locations are defined. The install will attempt to create these special locations outside of the WordPress plugins folder which ensures that they will not be destroyed by future Simple:Press upgrades.

What Are Storage Locations?

Storage Locations are simply a set of folders (or directories) where special forum-related components and items can be safely located safe from upgrades. The only rule is that they must exist under the default WordPress ‘wp-content‘ folder – the same folder where your WordPress ‘plugins’ and ‘themes’ folders reside.

Simple:Press uses these folders to store some components – such as SP plugins – but others are created to enable users to have safe locations for their own custom items – such as icons.

Check Your Storage Locations

Before you start using Simple:Press it is worth checking all of the storage locations were safely and properly created. It is also worth checking this after activating a Simple:Press plugin that may also have created a new location. Navigate to the forum admin > Integration > Storage Locations panel which will inform you of all the locations defined, where they are located and if they are all available for use. If any do not exist, or are not readable or writable then you will need to create them or change their permissions accordingly. Leaving them unavailable will stop some functions of Simple:Press from working.

By default, storage locations are created under the ‘/wp-content‘ folder in a new sub-folder called ‘/sp-resources‘ but you can change this at any time if you prefer.

Core Storage Locations Created

The following list describes the storage locations created by the core Simple:Press. Remember that some Simple:Press plugins, such as ‘Policy Documents’ or the ‘Uploader’ for example, may also define their own and new locations.

  • forum-plugins: All Simple:Press plugins must be placed in this location.
  • forum-themes: All Simple:Press themes must be placed in this location.
  • forum-avatars: If you are allowing your users to upload avatars they will be saved in this folder.
  • forum-avatar-pool: The avatar pool feature will store uploaded avatars in this folder.
  • forum-smileys: The pre-supplied and any uploaded custom smileys will be stored in this folder.
  • forum-badges: Any uploaded badges used by the forum ranking feature will be located in this folder.
  • forum-custom-icons: Custom icons uploaded for forums/groups will be saved to this location.
  • forum-language: Language translation files (.mo files) must be copied to the relevant sub-folders in this location. The three sub-folders are for ‘simple-press‘, the core Simple:Press and admin and ‘sp-themes‘ and ‘sp-plugins‘.
  • forum-cache: Cache files created by the Simple-Press forums plugin
  • forum-feature-images: Featured images for each forum are stored here
  • forum-iconsets:  Icons in iconsets are stored in this folder.