MediaWiki vBulletin Integration [Archive]

ElfMage

08-24-2006, 04:52 PM

How are user profiles handled?

vBulletin's user/login is the primary/master system.

Registrations are handled by vBulletin. (User can login in either system, login is checked/validated against vBulletin.

Currently, the user will have vBulletin preferences (User CP), and MediaWiki's User Preferences.

In the future I may merge both into vBulletin's.

When Common fields like e-mail address, name, etc, are changed in vBulletin, they are copied over to MediaWiki (so wiki's e-mail system is not affected).

I also created some internal redirects (transparent to the user of the extension), so that if a user logs in through MediaWiki's regular form, the user gets logged in into vBulletin also.

User registration is also redirected to vBulletin's.

At the same time, if a visitor goes to the wiki pages, his session is communicated to vBulletin, so he/she appears as 'guests' on vBulletin's portal.

Teh above functionality is accomplished by simply using this extension.

Is the site basicly wraped in a vBulletin template?

Not quite. Here is brief explanation as to the structure and design of my site.

I customized vBulletin by adding the top bar with the search box, and the main links (which still need some work). I did this by creating a new header template, and including it into vBulletin's default header.

Then on the wiki site, I took the default skin, and modified it extensively (almost wrote my own from scratch). Initially it was relatively advanced, implemented solely using CSS, worked beautifully on Firefox/NS/etc, but as Paul mentioned Internet Explorer was less than polite in presenting what I originally intended, so I changed the skin back to regular old tables until I have time to revisit it.

I added a menu bar similar to that found in vBulletin (I wrote my own menu system in javascript).

And finally, I added the same login form found on vBulletin's menubar, with the corresponding redirect into vBulletin's login process, visible when there is no user logged in.

In the same place, when there is a user logged in, I implemented some mediawiki tags (explained on the extension's documentation page) that get me the PM information, last visit, etc.

0ptima

08-27-2006, 09:59 PM

This looks cool!

Smitty

08-31-2006, 04:34 PM

I'm very interested.

ElfMage

08-31-2006, 05:21 PM

Feel free to download the test build and give it a try. Thanks.

El_Muerte

09-01-2006, 07:25 PM

Hmm.. interesting. I integrated MediaWiki 1.5 with vBulletin a long time ago: http://wiki.unrealadmin.org

But I needed to hack quite some things in the MediaWiki code to remove the User: and UserTalk: namespaces and a couple of other things because our forum wasn't restricted much in the usernames.
Is MediaWiki 1.7 more flexible? Or did you still have to hack some of the core files?

Brandon Sheley

09-01-2006, 07:54 PM

very interesting :) keep up the good work

ElfMage

09-02-2006, 02:21 AM

Hmm.. interesting. I integrated MediaWiki 1.5 with vBulletin a long time ago: http://wiki.unrealadmin.org

Interesting, before I started writing this extension I searched the web for integrations, but the ones I found had some limitations (e.g. the user had to login twice, once in vB, and once in Wiki)

But I needed to hack quite some things in the MediaWiki code to remove the User: and UserTalk: namespaces and a couple of other things because our forum wasn't restricted much in the usernames.
Is MediaWiki 1.7 more flexible? Or did you still have to hack some of the core files?

MediaWiki 1.7 is more flexible in that it has more hooks. Unfortunately the limitation user names has not gone away.

So far I have had no need to modify MediaWiki's code.

In my extension I solved this limitation by implementing a transparent user name 'translation' system where if there is a vB user named [Clan]Mist, in mediaWiki he/she is authenticated as ClanMist-5 (assuming that 5 is this user's userid).

This, however, is transparent to the user, as whenever the user's name is displayed by MediaWiki, it is shown as [Clan]Mist. In fact the user can either log in through vBulletin, or login through MediaWiki's login page, and in both cases the user would enter his/her vB login [Clan]Mist.

The name ClanMist-5 is only used in URLs and in internal mediawiki processing.

At least this is the theory.. <g>

Smitty

09-02-2006, 12:21 PM

This is a bit off topic, but... I go in via telnet to upgrade the wiki I have istalled - version 1.5.5 - to version 1.7.1 - When I try to upgrade I get:

server# php /<path>/wiki/maintenance/update.php
php: Command not found.
server#

Any ideas why it can't find the php command?

ElfMage

09-02-2006, 01:46 PM

Sent you a PM. Not sure if it will help.. <g>

PamelaE

09-03-2006, 03:48 PM

This is very interesting. I have been looking for a wiki that could integrate with my VBulletin memberbase so they don't have to log in twice.

ToastBusters

09-05-2006, 09:34 PM

I would be very interested in this mod when complete. Do you have an ETA perchance?

The only thing that I would like to have is a restricted pages feature, where I can make certain pages viewable only by certain groups. That and the login feature, this thing would be perfect for me :)

ElfMage

09-05-2006, 10:04 PM

The completion of this extension will be determined by how many bugs or issues are found during testing (it is being tested right now).
At this point no new features are being added.

Regarding the restricted page feature. This extensions now implements user group synchronization, whereby you control the groups a user belongs to from within vB's AdminCP, and then when the user logs into the wiki side, the groups are carried over.

I haven't researched fully MediaWiki's security/restrictions capabilities.

wsdeluxe

09-09-2006, 10:12 AM

Nice :) I was just looking for a MediaWiki/vB bridge :)

Hows the BETA going?

ElfMage

09-09-2006, 10:32 AM

So far so good. :)

The core functionality seems to be stable. The latest issues that's being worked on are related to multi-language support (non-english boards), and other misc.

redlabour

09-11-2006, 08:32 PM

Thats all you can see now for 2 Days :

ElfMage

09-11-2006, 08:46 PM

I have the site down for some major restructuring. I posted a 'maintenance' message on the home page, forum, etc, but I didn't catch that entry point you mention.

Basically, I am moving all plugin/developer/design content to a new site that will be a better home for it. I think both sites should open again later on tonight or tomorrow morning.

redlabour

09-11-2006, 08:49 PM

I posted a 'maintenance' message on the home page, forum, etc, but I didn't catch that entry point you mention.

That is the entry Point you posted here in the first Posting. ;)

Anyway - thx for Information. ;)

ElfMage

09-13-2006, 02:31 PM

:) Thanks.

The site is back online. In addition, all development content has been moved to www.arcanetek.com.

Both sites still require some work (skinning, navigation, content, etc). But the are functional.

yessir

09-14-2006, 03:02 AM

ElfMage has done a really great job with this Mediawiki bridge.

The more testers we have, the better. It's no big deal to set up a development wiki because the bridge does not touch your vB files or require the installation of any vB plugins.

Painless to demo.

sub_ubi

09-30-2006, 10:51 PM

The only thing that I would like to have is a restricted pages feature, where I can make certain pages viewable only by certain groups.

Same here! That would be great.

0ptima

10-09-2006, 11:31 PM

Can we have an update on how things are going?

ElfMage

10-10-2006, 01:22 PM

Things are progressing. The project was moved to www.arcanetek.com (the site is also under construction, but it has all the information / downloads there).

In the next build the following changes will be found:

The extension will be renamed to vbWiki (its original name was luxury_vBulletin, because it was initially coded for www.luxurywiki.com, since then it has been released to the public, and the previous name is not as applicable :).
Added new settings to control whether to allow MW to create forums automatically.
Rather than redirecting the talk pages from MW to a new forum per page, it will use one forum for all talk pages, and one thread per page.
A brand new MW skin, named vbMonoBook is now being shipped with vbWiki. This is a MW skin that makes MW assume the look from vBulletin (including navbar, login form/welcome+stats, footer links, and color theme).

In addition, in the past couple of builds several compatibility issues with php4 and MW 1.6.8 have been addressed.

The pace is a bit slower than ideal since this is not a full time project. But, we are getting there... ;)

phlogiston

10-10-2006, 01:37 PM

Rather than redirecting the talk pages from MW to a new forum per page, it will use one forum for all talk pages, and one thread per page.this is the part that I was waiting on :D
if the bridge can take as much of it's style from vBulletin templates (header-navbar-footer) then with the other integration being so seemlessly good I may just propose to the hack straight out and ask it to marry me.

much kudos to ElfMage (Y)

alluidh

10-21-2006, 10:04 PM

Things are progressing. The project was moved to www.arcanetek.com (http://www.arcanetek.com) (the site is also under construction, but it has all the information / downloads there).

In the next build the following changes will be found:

The extension will be renamed to vbWiki (its original name was luxury_vBulletin, because it was initially coded for www.luxurywiki.com (http://www.luxurywiki.com), since then it has been released to the public, and the previous name is not as applicable :).
Added new settings to control whether to allow MW to create forums automatically.
Rather than redirecting the talk pages from MW to a new forum per page, it will use one forum for all talk pages, and one thread per page.
A brand new MW skin, named vbMonoBook is now being shipped with vbWiki. This is a MW skin that makes MW assume the look from vBulletin (including navbar, login form/welcome+stats, footer links, and color theme).
In addition, in the past couple of builds several compatibility issues with php4 and MW 1.6.8 have been addressed.

The pace is a bit slower than ideal since this is not a full time project. But, we are getting there... ;)

The site is down now ... hope it will be back very soon :up:

ElfMage

10-22-2006, 01:15 AM

:) Thanks. ArcaneTek.com is up now. LuxuryWiki.com is currently being updated to the latest version....

sub_ubi

10-23-2006, 10:57 PM

LuxuryWiki.com is currently being updated to the latest version....

Can't wait to see it!

Are you sticking with Mediawiki 1.6.8? I hope so because I don't have the guts to upgrade to php5 yet.

ElfMage

10-27-2006, 05:11 PM

My sites are running 1.7.1, but per the request of several users the extension was made 1.6.8 compatible...

jndeakin

10-29-2006, 10:27 PM

Hi,
sorry if this isn't very clear. I've only recently started looking at MediaWiki, so I might mess up the terminology.

I tried luxury_vBulletin today, and haven't been able to get it to work consistently, though it seemed good to start with. I think it's down to usergroup mapping.
If I try to login as my main admin user, it needs to verify in the forum database of course. So I created a user of the same name in my forum, and a wikiadmin group and made it a member. I then mapped the groupnumber to "Bureaucrat". When I login it says I successfully logged in, but doesn't actually go to the main page.
When I disabled it and went in as my main user again I found it could see fewer special: pages. I assume it normally has both bureaucrat and sysop rights, but the mapping had removed the sysop group. How can I make a usergroup map to multiple MW groups? I've tried using "sysop,Bureaucrat" as the mapping, and I've tried using multiple lines for the same group, but got nowhere.

I could be going down a blind alley here, but hope you can help.

Jim Deakin

ElfMage

10-29-2006, 11:25 PM

Hello Jim,

The current version of the luxury_vBulletin extension has a known bug when logging in and MW's page caching that makes it behave inconsistently. This among other similar bugs have been addressed and will be fixed in the next build.

Now, what you describe regarding mapping a VB's usergroup to multiple MW user roles makes a lot of sense. It will be included in the next release.

The syntax will be what you tried: "sysop,Bureaucrat".

Thanks for pointing this out.

jndeakin

10-30-2006, 09:05 AM

Thanks for the quick reply, and thanks for your work on this too. I'll look forward to your next release. Any idea when it'll be ready to try?

Jim

Clayton

10-30-2006, 04:21 PM

Elfmage

how are things going, are we any closer to getting our mitts on the next update yet, please?

and ditto .. thanks for allt he hard work

ElfMage

10-30-2006, 04:24 PM

Thanks Clayton. We have most of the features working, doing some testing and packaging. Should have a build in a week or so.

Clayton

10-30-2006, 04:26 PM

Good news

do you reckon it would be OK to attempt the integration now

this will be for 1.6.8 and I am pretty keen to let this one rip

Cheers

vprp

11-10-2006, 02:24 PM

Just curious. If the forum and wiki are on different sub-domains, will there be any problems?

Clayton

11-10-2006, 03:04 PM

that should be fine

ElfMage

11-11-2006, 10:44 AM

vprp, we have this setup running at our site: www.arcanetek.com (wiki is at wiki.arcanetek.com and vb at forum.arcanetek.com). All these subdomains are hosted by the same server, The only difference is in the cookie domain settings.

Clayton, if you can wait, I would suggest you wait for the next build. It's been due for two weeks now, so it is bound to be released any second... :rolleyes:

Clayton

11-11-2006, 12:00 PM

great stuff Elf

so it was ready yesterday

:laugh:

sebbe

11-13-2006, 10:36 PM

* sebbe subscribes to this thread :)

Smitty

12-10-2006, 04:19 PM

Elfmage - What's the status on this? I *finally* got php on my server upgraded to version 5.x and mediawiki upgraded to version 1.8.2

I've been reading about the name issue in other threads and from this one it sounds like you solved that issue. My board is too big and too old to try to get everyone to change their user name to a letters, numbers and underscore only user name.

ElfMage

12-13-2006, 07:46 PM

Smitty. We are still working on this project.

We solved the 'name issue' by implementing a dynamic name mapping on the fly between MediaWiki and vBulletin. MediaWiki sees user names the way it expects, but this is transparent (for the most part) to the end user. The user is aware and uses only his/her vbulletin login both from within vBulletin and from within MediaWiki (logging into one, logs the user user into the other system, and vice versa).

Today we released the RC1 to be tested. and we expect to have a final release shortly.

P.S. We moved our site to www.nuhit.com.

0ptima

12-13-2006, 10:12 PM

Thanks for the update! I will be getting the pro version.

How many people are working on this project? Why did it move from luxurywiki.com?

ElfMage

12-31-2006, 03:35 AM

0ptima

12-31-2006, 03:48 AM

Thanks for the update. I will purchase the pro version once I upgrade to vb 3.6

ThomasR

12-31-2006, 10:03 AM

Smitty

12-31-2006, 10:57 AM

Just to say that I bought vbwiki Pro and it's integration is pretty well done with mediawiki and vb. I also had some problems with language transcoding (mediawiki is UTF-8 and my forum ISO-8859-1) and ElfMage did a fix in a couple of days.
I'll post soon the link of my wiki soon, because it's not officially open.

1. How do we determine if our forum is UTF-8 or ISO-8859-1?
2. 'did' a fix in a couple of days or 'will' have a fix in a couple of days?

ThomasR

12-31-2006, 11:34 AM

language settings. English and french are in this encoding. It's not a problem for english in fact, but languages with accent (like french > ? ? ? ?, etc.) it's a problem. Then, now, everything is fine.

He " did" ;) Sorry for my english :)

In attachement, two screen capture (forum in french language). The only problem I have is the integration of the Translate plugin for vb, which forward to the forum and not wiki (I just saw it)

I still have to finish to edit my templates, to fix some default wiki colors that doesn't suit my forum template.

Smitty

12-31-2006, 03:49 PM

OK - Thanks. I may buy this. But - I also would want the language settings correct for UTF-8 because although my forum is in english, I think people do use 'non-standard' characters in their names from time to time so I'd rather be prepared than trying to fix things later.

No problems with your english - Heck, all I can read, write and speak (for all intents and purposes) is english. I just wanted to make sure of what what was being said.

Nice looking Wiki, by the way! Thanks for the screen shots!

0ptima

01-01-2007, 09:51 PM

He " did" ;) Sorry for my english :)

Your Englisg is excellent. SVP poste un lien pour ton wiki. Merci ;)

ElfMage

01-05-2007, 02:15 AM

Thomas, thanks for the positive feedback.

Smitty, you can tell if your forum is using UTF-8 or an ISO character encoding by looking at your 'Language Pack' settings in your forums' Admin CP.

However, starting with vbWiki Pro v1.0.1 this is no longer an issue. You don't need to make any changes to your forums' setup.

MarkJW

01-05-2007, 02:32 AM

Whoa, I'm definitely buying vbWiki Pro once my Paypal money move goes through. I have to have this for my fansite. So awesome, thanks! I wish there was a phpAuction mod like this, lol... One can dream. ;)

Smitty

01-05-2007, 10:03 AM

Smitty, you can tell if your forum is using UTF-8 or an ISO character encoding by looking at your 'Language Pack' settings in your forums' Admin CP. OK - It's currently set to ISO character encoding. Thanks for the info.

dutchbb

01-11-2007, 10:14 PM

Yes I might be interested in this too, wanted to use mediawiki anyway, but integrating vbulletin is even better :)

Smitty

01-11-2007, 10:24 PM

I got the pro version - So far so good!

kontrabass

01-18-2007, 01:56 PM

For some reason the 'instant e-mail notification' did not work on this thread. Weird.

Anyways, we launched vbWiki Pro last week. This is a commercial product. A more lightweight version (vbWiki) is available as a free download from our site: www.nuhit.com

Our company got renamed/restructured, and this is why our website url changed.

Internally we have two teams, mine is working on products related to forums, wikis, CMS, etc. And vbWiki Pro is one of these products... :rolleyes:

Question: When this hack is no longer supported (god forbid), is the wiki database going to be useable standalone? I mean, does your hack alter the media wiki db in a way that will make my entire wiki obsolete when vbWiki is no longer supported with some future version of VBulletin?

Thanks :)

ElfMage

01-18-2007, 02:04 PM

:)

Not at all. vbWiki doesn't modify the wiki database in any way.

All users created in vBulletin are created in MediaWiki (the first time the user visits the wiki).

vbWiki also updates the user's e-mail address, whether the user's e-mail is authenticated, language settings, etc.

The only changes you would see if you disable vbWiki are:
- users with special characters in their name will now have to use their 'MediaWiki usernames' (in the example above ElfMage-45
- passwords are not synchronized.

vbWiki doesn't update the passwords in the Wiki DB because it doesn't need them, since all authentication goes through vBulletin's user DB.

However we could add this to vbWiki to be ready for the extremely far fetched possibility that you would want to uninstall vbWiki ... :eek:

dutchbb

01-18-2007, 04:27 PM

When is vbwiki pro for mw 1.9 expected please?

ElfMage

01-18-2007, 04:34 PM

We are about to release version 1.0.2 RC3 which includes full compatibility with MW 1.9.0.

The only outstanding issue is the 'Session lost' error reported above. Since we cannot duplicate this in-house we are working with some of our users to troubleshoot this.

Once we duplicate and fix this issue, we'll be launching v1.0.2 RC3. An updated changelog can be found here: http://www.nuhit.com/products/vbwiki-pro-changelog.html

Notice that the fixes and support for MediaWiki 1.9.0 apply to both vbWiki Pro and vbWiki Standard.

We have vbWiki Pro 1.0.2 RC3 working with MW 1.9.0 in our site: http://www.nuhit.com/wiki/Special:Version