Integration with vBulletin - Complete Wordpress/Vbulletin Bridge - Share Users And Postings

DOES NOT WORK FOR Vbulletin 4.x

This version probably no longer works for Wordpress 3.x. I have started developing this product over and have released the NEW version here:

http://www.lampwrights.com/showthread.php?t=41

This mod bridges your Vbulletin users over to Wordpress. You can also use Vbulletin as your comment engine instead of the spammy one built into Wordpress. You can display the comments inline in your post. You need not use the comment feature, if your only interested in sharing users.

You can map your Vbulletin Usergroups to Wordpress Usergroups and those users will then be recognized as registered Wordpress users.

For example, user "Joe" registers at your forum and logs in. Joe then clicks on your Wordpress page. Joe is instantly added to the Wordpress user base with the permissions you set for his usergroup. In otherwords, if a user comes over belonging to the "Registered User" group, you can select that he is placed in the Wordpress "Subscriber" usergroup.

If you change a users group from vbulletin, it will automatically change in Wordpress.

Requirements:

• DOES NOT and WILL NEVER support Wordpress MU.
• Wordpress and Vbulletin scripts must reside on the same physical server.
• Wordpress and Vbulletin must use the same domain name.
• Stable Wordpress Version greater than or equal to 2.5.
• If your WP login name is the same as your VB username, this user will NOT be ported! If this was the case, you could lose your WP admin rights if there was an error, or if you deactivated the plugin.
• DOES work for Vbulletin 3.7.

Limitations:

• Please don't ask if it works for any BETA versions of Vbulletin. I do not know and will not convert this to the latest version of VB (whatever it is at the time you are reading this) until the version is released as non-beta.
• If you delete a user, you must do so in both Wordpress and Vbulletin.
• If you are using XMLRPC to post with applications such as Windows Live Writer, you must change the password of the author in the WORDPRESS admin cp, after the user is ported over from VB. If you are not integrating users, then you do not have to.
• Chances are, this will not work when VB and Wordpress are located in different sub domains. I.E. forum.yoursite.com - blog.yoursite.com. Cookie issue.
• I did the best I could in determining your forums file path with the script. There may be certain script setups that cannot find the file path properly, in which case you may get errors that the script cannot find or open /config.php. If this is the case, please HARDCODE your ABSOLUTE path to the forum in vbridge.php.
  
  To do this find:
  
  

   ## If you are having path problems, uncomment this next variable and define the path
  ## NO TRAILING SLASH!
  # $vwd = '/some/path/to/your/forum';

  And uncomment the last line, and change the path to your forums path:
  
  

   ## If you are having path problems, uncomment this next variable and define the path
  ## NO TRAILING SLASH!
  $vwd = '/some/path/to/your/forum';

Common Mistakes When Installing:

• Using two different host names causes problems. If your forum URL contains www.yourdomain.com, then your wordpress blog URL MUST contain the www. part of www.yourdomain.com also. This goes for any other host name. Browsers are finnecky when it comes to cookies (as they should be).
• Editors generally EDIT, not write. In Wordpress, editors don't show up in the post author drop down. This has nothing to do with this plugin, that is Wordpress code.
• Make sure you DO NOT create a subdirectory for this plugin in the wp-content/plugins directory. Just upload it directly there.
• If the admin username in Vbulletin is the same as the one in Wordpress (i.e. Admin), that user will NOT be able to login to the WP dashboard.
• If you do not map users before you turn auto-integrate on, the plugin has no idea whether your allowed into the dashboard.
• If you all of a sudden can't login to the dashboard, see the above two common mistakes.
• FOLLOW the directions and make a test post first. Being in a rush and not testing will most likely turn out bad for you.
• When you create a test user in VB to test mapping users, the test user MUST have an email address. If a VB users email address is blank, they will not map.

UPDATES:

01/03/2007 - Fixed the unlock_tables() issue on some setups.

01/03/2007 - Fixed a bug in the script that if you used a MySQL database prefix, integration would not work. Please see this post for more information! Special thanks to axisoverdrive for giving me access to his server and letting me troubleshoot the issue!

01/05/2007 - Fixed issue where if a user saved (not published) and published later, the post would not be added to the forum.

01/05/2007 - When a post is edited, it will also be edited in the forum.

01/08/2007 - Modified slightly so when posts are edited, so are the titles (if edited).

02/07/2007 - Major modifications to new version (now 2.05). The list follows:

• Reworked the code so it uses the $vbulletin object throughout the code especially during the bridging process.
• Users are bridged whether they checked the "Remember Me" box or not.
• Removed a couple of SQL calls that became redundant.
• Addressed a bug where if a user logged out of the dashboard, it only logged them out of VB.
• Added Inline Comments capability. Comments posted to the forum (using VB for comments) will now appear at the bottom of a WP Post when viewing the post.
• Author user names can now be linked to their VB profile page if desired.
• Added option to turn off posting to forum. All this really does is remove the "Select Forum To Post To" option when writing a post. (There you go AxisOverdrive )
• The $vbulletin object should now be available in all templates and most plugins.
• Fixed a bug where deactivating any plugin would semi deactivate this plugin.
• With the reduction in SQL calls, and the removal of now unnecessary variables, speed and memory use should be improved.
• PLEASE READ THE UPGRADE INSTRUCTIONS IF UPGRADING!

07/17/2007

• Fixed problem where upload iframe was a bit mangled.
• Fixed problem where users had to refresh the dashboard once after logging in.
• Fixed problem that arose from Wordpress 2.2.1 upgrade that would not allow activation.
• Fixed logout issue where users would still be logged into Wordpress.
• When a Wordpress post is deleted, so is the thread it created.
• Added option to allow thread posted from Wordpress article to be truncated, with a linkback to the article.
• Fixed issue when user re-activates plugin, and vb_threadid column already exists. Now checks for column first.
• Removed a stray VB_Init() call.
• Forums that do not allow threads will not be selectable in the drop down menu when writing a post.
• Forums are listed out in a parent/child nested pattern.
• (Note: 367 downloads of version 2.05)

11/29/07 - 3.00

• Added TABLE_PREFIX throughout the script instead of the get_option('vbb_VBPRX') call. get_option('vbb_VBPRX') is now deprecated.
• Addressed path issues by establishing $vwd first. If for some reason there are path issues on an install, the path only needs to be manually changed once, at the beginning of the script.
• Removed call to admin_db.php which seems to no longer be necessary.
• Changed all queries to the VB database to be handled by the $vbulletin object. This should facilitate multiple database configurations.
• Added limited XMLRPC support.
• Had to include a basic copy of the functions_wysiwyg.php file (functions_wysiwyg2.php) with a minor change in the sanitize_url function (now sanitize_vburl) as it conflicts with a new WP function of the same name. Otherwise, this is identical to the VB release. This was necessary to keep formatting somewhat uniform between the two.
• Removed unnecessary globals.
• Changed the global.php call so it always loads. $vbulletin should be available throughout the code (via global in functions).
• Edited some code around wysiwyg functions of VB, and conversions to vbcode.
• Added "Turn Plugin On" option.
• Fixed an issue with the forum list on the "Write Post" page. Default forum was not being auto selected in some cases.
• Modified from BETA so that the new functions_wysiwyg2.php file is loaded using the WP ABSPATH constant. Requires the plugin to stay in the plugins directory.
• Fix an error message when a post was deleted in VB, then edited in WP.

12/10/07 - 3.01

• Fixed two <? tags that should have been <?php (pointed out by Amenadiel)

03/31/08 - 3.02

• Fixed media-upload clash for new version of Wordpress (2.5).
• Added fix that will now delete threads in VB when the post is deleted in WP and not using Ajax delete.
• Added code to insert a default email address if VB users email address is blank upon bridging.

04/20/08

• Fixed a bug in user roles for the new version 2.5.1 of Wordpress.

05/08/2008

• Fixed issue where CSS was munging scrolling text box when selecting a forum during a post
• Fixed an issue where content encoding was getting screwey between WP and VP creating a lot of unintended characters (only on PHP installs where utf8_decode() exists (most)).

05/08/2008

• Fixed issue where post count of a user did not change

Sites Using This Plug-In:

• http://www.jeffsrecipes.com
• http://www.worldwidecreations.com
• http://www.xboxcircle.com
• http://www.detailuniversity.com
• http://www.daggersden.net/
• http://www.talkbronx.com/
• http://www.czeta.it

(PM me if you want to add your site here)

Special Thanks:

axisoverdrive - Debugging Help, Kyraal - Paypal Donation, Kalina - Paypal Donation, Wildcard27 - Paypal Donation, Shri - Paypal Donation, pspcrazy - Paypal Donation, Tomahoochi - Paypal Donation.

If you use this plug-in, and find it useful, please support us by nominating us for Mod Of The Month (MOTM) in the top right corner of this thread, or feel free to donate.

[Jafo232]

Originally Posted by joshmv

ugh, I'm not sure what I did now.

Everytime I try to go to my WP admin section, it redirects me to the forum.

It probably didn't happen before because you were still logged in with the original WP cookie. It sounds like you either did not map users properly, or your VB Username and WP Username are the same (which won't work as per the readme).

[Neuman]

When I post a double space between sentences in wordpress, it puts "?*" there. Is this a common problem? I may just have to stop writing double spaces, but that's not an easy habit to break. Anyway, aside from that, I'm really glad to have this plugin.

[Neuman]

Ok, I changed vBulletin to UTF-8. From what I know about it, it's backwards compatible with other encoding systems. Now it puts a ?* in place of a double space, but things like quotes and apostrophes at least render right.

[kommuni]

@Jafo232: I know you're not releasing a version for vB Betas but as vB is out of beta now and a release is likely ot be in a few days/weeks: can you say anything about how quick a 3.7 version will be ready or if there even WILL be any version available for 3.7?

I'd just like to have a clue if there's a chance to get wp and vb coupled for my next project. If not i have to deal with other solutions.

Thanks!

[snoopy5]

Hi

I have still a problem with getting this working. I am only interested in the shared userdatabase, not in the shared postings capabilities of this mod. Here is my situation:

A. URLs

I have vb 3.67 installed on subdomain 1: www.forum.mydomainname.com

I have WP 2.5 installed on subdomain 1: www.articles.mydomainname.com


B. Directories/server

Both are on the same server, but in different directories:

Forum is in: "...absolutepath/forum/

WP is in: "...absolutepath/wordpress/


C. Configuration

Since first tests did not work at all, I hardcoded the absolute path in the php file as advised. Thanks to this, I was able to map the usergroups and saved them.

But when I go now to my wp site, I get this error:

cannot load /myabsolutepath/wordpress/global.php. You should check your path!

No matter what I am doing. What did I do wrong?

It seems to me, that this mod is looking in the wrong directory for this globals.php file. With subdomains as I use them, what shall I enter in the absolute path field/ relative path field and how can I enter WP for doing this?

Thanks in advance

[durdon]

Jafo232,

Installed your mod, works perfect, great mod. Right now I can log into my vb and then goto my wordpress page. I can post in wordpress and have it show up in vb. All my members are able to access my wordpress page too. Everything Works as you described.

Now I have been able to make wordpress my start page, and then link to my vb forum from there, if I allow nonmembers to view my board, but this is a private board so I don't want to do that.

When I set my nonmembers to not be able to view then I get a blank page instead of my login page when I goto my wordpress page or when i set my wordpress page as my start page. Where as if a nonmember goes to a vb page they get redirected to the nonregistered page where they have to login or leave.

Is there any way to set it so whenever someone who is not a member will be be taken to my not registered page if they goto a wordpress page are not logged in to VB?

Hopefully there is a way,
durdon

[trigatch4]

Why not make the standard "member" in vbulletin not able to view any of the forums and then have a different "upgraded" membership that allows them to do what you'd like?

Basically just using 2 user groups and setting permissions. I'm not sure what criteria you're using to allow people to view your forum but just a thought.

[joshmv]

Can anybody tell me the code to use if I want the Title of the blog entry to automatically link to the forum thread similar to the comments link.

[irina.]

Hi, I want to try this mod, but I have a question, is it possible that when a user writes in wordpress, that post doesn't show in vbulletin? Or if it can be modified to a specific thread, not a subforum?

Thanks in advance.

[trigatch4]

THEME CHOOSING IDEA:

In vbulletin users can select a theme with which they view the forum. Could you relate specific forum themes to specific WP Themes so when they navigate between the two it is one coherent "branding" of the theme they chose?