How to Use Your Dynamic Joomla Header in vBulletin
 

The goal of this article is to help you use your Joomla header within vBulletin.

I have done this successfully with vBulletin (for my work).

what I did was...

1. create a new section in joomla called Forum.
2. create a new category called forum in the "Forum section" I made above.
3. Next I made sure that no content was shown on this forum page. You may need to go to "Module Manager" and go through some of these modules and set them NOT to show on the Forum page you made above.

This next part is the steps I did for vBulletin:

1. Added a php include for the page that I just made. Go to ACP -> Plugin Manager and double-check that the Plugin System is enabled
2. Click on Add New Plugin, then:
   1. Product: vBulletin
   2. Hook Location: global_start
   3. Title: whatever you want, I used "Header Include"
   4. Execution Order: 5
   5. Plugin PHP Code:
      
      Code:

      ---

                      ob_start();
                  include('http://www.mysite.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=5&Itemid=60');
                  $includedphp = ob_get_contents();
                ob_end_clean();

      ---

   6. Plugin is Active: Yes
   7. Save
3. Go to Style Manager -> Edit Templates -> header and add:
   
   Code:

   ---

             #pathway, #whitebox, #footerspacer, #footer {
          display: none !important;
          }

   ---

   and replace anything between </head> & <!-- content table --> with $includedphp

Now my page displays with my dynamic header above my forum content!

can you attach the final?

Attach the final?

You mean the final file? If so, then it would be different in some situations and would need upgrades from time to time. I won't be keeping up with upgrading it here. It is a hack.

If you mean to post a link then I will give one later, once the site I have put together using this does it's public launch.

Hi!

Anyone tried this? I did everything as mentioned, took the coorect section and category id? s but when activating the plugin i get a T-STRING error on my vbulletin site!

Any help for this?

How can you make sure that no modules are displayed, when there is (according to your instructions) no page?
You say to create a a new section in joomla called Forum.
then create a new category called forum in the "Forum section".
So how can modules be published on something that cannot have modules published on it?
there is nothing but a section and section category?

You can still view the category page change relevent fields in bold. index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=5&Itemid=60.


Nearly there: having an issue with the header not playing nicely with the actual forum url:

See my forum test site: http://www.ozsource.org/oz2/forums/index.php - all the forum links now point to http://www.ozsource.org/oz2/ not http://www.ozsource.org/oz2/forums/

Must be something to do with enabling sef urls within Joomla.

Nice idea !

following the same way, I suppose it would be possible to integrate in this header any forum specific advertising banner code through a special joomla banner module...

Or other solution it might be possible, if needed, to have in this included joomla page only the joomla mainmenu...

Sounds cool... :-)

Disabling Search Engine Friendly URLs fixed the issue - I'll have to look into the issue to enable this in the future.

Y do I keep getting this error when I have followed the instructions correctly ?

Dannykilla, you need to have:

in you php.ini

Thanks AzzX,

but my host wont allow the "allow_url_include = True"

I quote my support ticket below:

"Hi Danny,

Thanks for your ticket.

We already have allow_url_fopen set to ON. However, we cannot set allow_url_include to ON as this would allow an attacker to inject code into a script and potentially cause huge problems.

We can make changes like this for you with a Managed Virtual Server (MVS) or full Managed Server but not with a shared account.

Please let us know if we can be of any further help.

----
Chris Adams
Rochen Limited"

Any suggestions, is there a way around this?

Thanks
Danny

You can try putting the code in a file named php.ini at your website and forum root. My webhost has phpsuexec enabled which allows the use of a custom php.ini to overide the main config.

AzzX thanks for the reply, one thing if this does actually work (touch wood) what Cmod should I set both files?

Danny

Not sure what you mean in regards to both files. Just create a text file called php.ini with
in it and drop it into your website root and forum home.

Ok AzzX,

I asked about that too and I got this on a reply to my ticket:

Technically it will work but this would be circumventing something we don’t allow you to do on the shared servers and thus it would result in account suspension.

You can do a local include without issue and this is the route I suggest you look at.

----

So how do I do a local include and will what I want be possible with it?

Thanks again
Dan

Had a script kiddie hack attempt using the above method so I highly recommend not doing a dynamic header is this way.

Looking through my logs, vb.org was queried with the search term Joomla highlighted in order to find my site and run an automated exploit.

From another website on the same issue: