Joomla for vBulletin (IMPORTANT UPDATE) - Bridge to the World's Most Popular CMS
 

Warning!!! An potential exploit has been found in this modification. The server that hosts vjoomla.com has been attacked several times. It is known to already be severely comprimised so at this time it is unclear whether the vulnerability lies in vJoomla, Joomla itself or the server. Until this is resolved to my satisfaction I am removing this modification. My apologies.


The modification WILL be re-released once this issue is resolved!

vJoomla is an offshoot of Joomla 1.0 that is designed to run in tandem with vbulletin. Unlike the main release it will not run without vbulletin - if you desire a CMS without a forum then use Joomla! instead. vJoomla is identical in most all regards to Joomla!

What vJoomla Does

• Provide a single session, single login interface to Joomla and vbulletin.
• Allows Joomla pages to be skinned by vbulletin's template engine.
• Maps Joomla usergroups to vbulletin usergroups.

What vJoomla Does Not Do

• It does not rewrite your templates for you - so you will need to go in currently and change relative links to images and pages to absolute links. This is most important in the style sheets and in the navbar template. This is something you need to do yourself rather than programmatically since no two sites are likely to be using the same style sheet and the same setup for these links.

Install Instructions

1. Log into your admincp
2. Close your forum
3. If your forums are at the root of your site move them elsewhere - the best location is probably /forum
4. Upload the files from the zip packages to their respective locations. There should be no overwrites.
5. Navigate to the root of your site and run the Joomla installer.
6. Go back to the admincp and install the Joomla product file
7. Now either copy the ./cpstyles, ./clientscript and ./images directory of the forum into the Joomla directory OR create symbolic links to those directories. The contents of the ./images directory of Joomla and vbulletin will need to be merged.

This is release candidate 2.

Ok, for the technically inclined, and especially for those considering writing components or modules for this variant of Joomla, here in brief is how this works.

Joomla's global file calls vbulletin's global.php - either the forum or the admincp version as needed. If the forum version is used it caches it's 20 templates. The rest of the hacks are in the Joomla mainframe. Rather than allow the Joomla database object to connect itself the resource id of the Master connection is passed to it from the vbulletin database object. Both database classes are therefore available. So if you like you can do

$database->setQuery("-- some query");
$database->loadObjectList();

or you can use vbulletin's way.

$db->query_read(" -- some query ");

Each system has it's advantages and disadvantages. Typically I use the joomla object to handle joomla tables if, for no other reason, the table prefix in the queries is automatically parsed. But I digress.

Joomla doesn't do it's own login in this hack. Instead, at the line where Joomla WOULD verify the password it instead checks the vbulletin registry object ($vbulletin) to see if there is a user. If there is the hack lies to Joomla and cuts it loose with a session without independent verification. Therefore, in this hack all logins and user manipulations go through vbulletin (which has a far more robust user system anyway so in my opinion, no loss).

This will cause problems if you install a Joomla component that extends on the Joomla user object. These components probably will not work.

vJoomla, for the most part, doesn't need a complete user list. The first time a vbulletin user moves to a joomla page though part of their registration is copied into the joomla user table. This should help certain components function and is also necessary for the Joomla backend to work. I may write some stricter syncing code if necessary -- vJoomla itself doesn't need it to work but some components might.

The admin side is a little tricker. I had to disable joomla timing out - I swear this took longer than any other part but it works now. Again, Joomla is dependent on vbulletin to get the security right in this hack. Since admincp global throws a login interface automatically if you time out on it there's no reason for Joomla to maintain a seperate check. If you return from vbulletin global.php in the Joomla admin files you're golden.

Final notes are on templates. Once Joomla is ready to call it's template engine a hack steps in and iterates over the Joomla module positions, reading them all into an array. Each module position is then wrapped in a template file (though in this base distribution there are no elaborations on these templates). After this is done Joomla's output passes through vbulletin's template engine and vbulletin completes the page output.

In all it took 2 months on and off to figure this all out. But though it's incomplete, it's working very smoothly at the moment. Questions and comments welcome.

Been on the fence for so long. Would love to see a demo of how vjoomla use the vb template

I don't have a live test demo site up as of yet and won't for another couple weeks. Also things are still in flux at the moment.

Awesome job here it looks like a solid start and may have just get another vBulletin license for up coming project now :)

I tried the beta on test and it works very well indeed.

However installing some components showed issues with paths i guess ? Sorry i didn't write down the error messages. Removing the mod and the components all worked as expected.

Its a great start though.

If you need a licensed board that is inactive to test on let me know! I have one you can use lol! PM me!

I would love to have this on my live site!!

The plug in I have now requires me to turn off my VB registration and use the Joomla only. I dont want that as I use the referral system.. A LOT.

Also, Im not sure I read this right... Are you saying that this modification will allow Joomla to be skinned with your vb templates? :eek:

Very interesting!
tks for your work - and really the add-ons will be very useful.
All the best
Joao Barroca
aka beduino

When i tried it on my testbed the vbulletin skins is used for joomla which looked great :) Navbar links will need to be encoded with full paths though or they won't work.

Yes. It does.

very interesting. there is some very cool stuff out there for joomla. few questions. i have read on here that there is huge security holes in joomla. the coder made it sound like it was common knowledge. was that a opinion or do you disagree or agree?

next thing is do you anticipate alot of problems or changes to make this work as vbulletin upgrades?

Can you compare this to the bbPixel bridge that I literally just purchased YESTERDAY!

Why does that always happen...lol

Thankyou for a very useful hack :D
Digressing, it is just so pleasant and refreshing to see a full detailed description (as in the second post), Mr. Morris, a million thanks.

Whatever security holes Joomla has, they are irrelevant to this mod since it does user authentication using vbulletin.
I anticipate no problems. The vbulletin code isn't hacked in any way so unless Jelsoft changes the structure of the vbulletin registry in a major fashion this mod will continue to work. I would imagine that any change in vbulletin sufficient to break this mod would also break every mod on this site - in other words the type of change you might see in version 4.0, but not in version 3.6 forward.

Speaking of which, although I haven't tested it with 3.5 I *think* it will work there - this installs templates only and runs an alter table query - it doesn't have any plugins so it should work in 3.5

bbpixel hacks both Joomla and vbulletin. It merges then mirrors the user database and allows logins from both sides. This hacking means that every single time either product updates you have to reinstall the hack.

bbpixel doesn't bridge the template engines - therefore if you want a site to have a unified look and feel you have no choice but to skin the thing TWICE. vJoomla uses vbulletin's template engine and throws away Joomla's master template engine (modules can however still call and use patTemplate to build their content).

bbpixel is more mature than vJoomla having been around for a couple years. I'm working to get most of the same functionality in place as quickly as possible. The main obstacle - getting the bridge itself to work, has been accomplished.

These are the main differences. For the record I purchased bbpixel and was vastly disappointed in their customer service and how they implemented the bridge, so I wrote my own.

By the final version I hope to use a modRewrite schema to work around this.

Check your PM Michael Morris. I may be able to assist.

I'm a novice to this. But find it great that you are creating this for us. As I was turned on to Joomla! the other day and I like the way it functions.

I don't understand what you mean by this, and feel free to make fun of me for it...

What exactly does it take to create either one of those?

J.T.

I run my forum on a sub-domain.....forum.mywebsite.com....and i really do not want to move it.

Anyway this mod will work on my setup?

A symbolic link is exactly like a windows shortcut icon on the desktop that points to a file or folder elsewhere. The command is

For my dev site the command to link the cpstyles was



The final release version will - part of the installer will be the setup of the paths between Joomla and vbulletin. Expect to see that within 3 weeks or so.

Would you be able to provide me with the link ? I like to see how the front page layout look using the vb templates. Thanks

Sorry it was on a local host. It skinned Joomla perfectly with my vbulletin skin but there are a few problems i feel still with the bridge.

My default Joomla had a login module on the front page that wouldn't take with my vbulletin username and password. However using the vbulletin one logs me into both systems (minor but worth remembering how the bridge is working).

Also i found some components just error out. MosDirectory for instance installed fine but mysql error'd when trying to add an entry (although removing the bridge it then performed as expected).

Seems a great start and will certainly bring a great deal to the vbulletin community. Not a huge fan of Joomla myself as i find the interface confusing but its certainly an extremely powerful system that could add huge benefits to vbulletin boards.

Kudos to the developer with his beta bridge and the clear instructions he laid down to install. I'll be keeping a close eye on this one.

exciting. looking forward to this developing. would nominate mod of the century and click a donate button if this develops into somthing simple that us everyday board owners could use and maintain.

i would also like a sneek peak once sombody gets 1 running. :)

I have to tell you, I love Joomla and have learned to love vBulletin over the past year. You ROCK for making this mod as it's one of the most needed and useful in my opinion. If you really put some time into this, you could easily make some money off of it and/or build some awesome communities around it.

looking forward to this... been working on joomla-ing up my site & having access to vb stuff would be a big plus....

Looks very promising, Michael. Congratulations.

I use Joomla, with iJoomla Magazine mod, as my main web site face and use vBulletin for all the grunt and security work so I am quite interested in seeing a demo site running using your bridge.

Combining the two as you have is quite a gift to the vBulletin community. Thanks.:up:

Will definitely download your bridge when it is ready for production environments.

Just noticed the following and am posting notice in the original post.

Warning: Joomla complains about register globals emulation being on (this is the default setting). It is cited as a security risk. You MUST leave this setting on for this hack to work - however the "security risk" is non-existent as vbulletin will clean out the globals array during it's initialization.

This also means that any component or module for Joomla that requires Register Globals emulation to be turned on WILL NOT WORK! (most do not though - developers have been moving away from register globals for awhile now).

Tonight's task list is to tighten the template integration with Joomla and make some progress on mod_vJoomlaRecentThreads.

Wow, can't wait until this is fully released...

WHat about a module for having new articles create threads in vB?

Me too I will give it a try

Everytime I have to work in joomla template, I wish it was the joomla template system. Please let us know if you need funds or a test platform or anything, I really want to see this thru to fruition.

Beta 0.0.2 introduces a major change in how Joomla handles modules. Traditionally Joomla wraps module content in one of 4 wrappers - div, 3 div, table or raw. The code of frontend.php and frontend.html.php has been rewritten so that now Joomla calls the vbulletin template engine to perform the wrapping process. The exact wrap used depends on which module position was used. The tradeoff (for the moment) is the moduleclass suffix is ignored. However this allows for much more powerful templating of the module blocks than CSS can hope to offer. It also moves the control of the module appearance fully into the vbulletin template engine which I'll wager will be more familiar to users than Joomla's engine anyway.

Tomorrow night I will do the same thing to Joomla's com_content component. Most Joomla content goes through this component so that should complete the skinning process - just keep in mind that 3rd party modules may use wildly different schema for populating their content block.

Also progress is being made on the module to view recent threads out of the vbulletin database. For those familiar with vbAdvanced you'll find most of the same options in the Joomla version of the latest topics module - but one major difference is the Joomla version will have a caching system so that instead of loading the recent threads on each view of the thread list at set intervals. This is for large boards like ENWorld where such queries can slow down the system noticeably.

Keep very close watch on this.
I had joomla for a year or so before i got too tired of it. Integration is the worst. Template is another problem.

Now, look forward to seeing this to fruition.

Thanks for this super job :)

Very interested in this. I haven't been able to find a decent bridge so far. This looks promising!

Hello my setup this vJoomla beta 0 0 2 but dont work home page.

http://www.forumsitesi.info/index.php

Adminpage working only homepage dont work.
Please help

Thank you

Does ths work with 3.6.4 ?

Anyone have a good example of using joomla (integrated or not) as a "____ of the month" type thing?

Thank you very much for your explination!

It's a good thing the bbpixel bridge only cost $20.

From my research, it seemed as if it was the only viable option out there.

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread religiously!

this would be the pot at the end of the rainbow!

can someone tell me if it works on 3.6.4 , so that i can have the pleasure of using this mod on my board