Integration with vBulletin - vbWiki Standard - vBulletin+MediaWiki integration

Update:

9/28/2007: vbWiki Std v1.3 RC5 is now available for download. This version adds compatibility with MW 1.11.0+

5/17/2007: vbWiki Std v1.3 RC4 is now available for download. This version is compatible with MW 1.10.0+ and vBulletin 3.6.6+

1/21/2007: vbWiki Std v1.0.2 RC3 is now available for download. This version fixes the 'session error' that used to happen on some installations of MediaWiki 1.9.x.

Description:

vbWiki Standard is the lite version of vbWiki Pro. vbWiki Standard allows the integration of vBulletin and MediaWiki user authentication.

(vbWiki Pro is a commercial product that, in addition to the functionality found in vbWiki Standard, provides full skin integration, enhanced user management, Admin CP, editing of wiki skin in vBulletin's Style Manager, among other features.)

Why should you add a wiki to your forums?

Forums are great for community building with their high level of interactivity. Successful forums have hundreds or thousand of concurrent users creating and replying to threads.

However due to this very reason the more your forums grow the more "collective knowledge" is scattered throughout the thousands (or hundreds or millions) of threads in your forums. Making it difficult for users to find and use.

A wiki is not that good at community building, but it is a great medium to centralize this 'collective knowledge'. Enabling you to create an 'ecosystem of information' (quoting pipin ) maintained and contributed by your users.

The idea behind vbWiki (both Standard and Pro) is to enable the seamless integration between these two packages (vBulletin and MediaWiki) side-by-side in your community. You (and your users and community) get the best of both worlds.

Or so the theory goes...

Features:

• Single sign-on for vBulletin and MediaWiki (users log in only once)
• Supports mapping of vBulletin usergroups to MediaWiki user roles
• Users viewing wiki pages are shown in vBulletin's "What's going on?" section (both guests and registered users)
• Supports auto-authentication, users who choose to be "remembered" are logged in upon visiting the site to both vBulletin and MediaWiki.

Installation:

These installation instructions do not apply to vbWiki Pro. Refer to vbWiki Pro installation instructions for more information.

MediaWiki and vBulletin must be installed and properly working before installing vbWiki. MediaWiki can be downloaded here.

• Create a new directory in your forums directory named vbWiki.
• Upload the content of the installation package to this new directory.
• Rename the file vbWiki_Init.php-dist to vbWiki_Init.php
• Open the file LocalSettings.php found in your MediaWiki directory in a text editor and at the very end find the following line and remove it if present:

PHP Code:

?> 


• Add the following code at the end of the file (entering the correct directory path):

PHP Code:

require_once "/absolute/path/to/your/forums/vbWiki/vbWiki_Init.php"; 


Troubleshooting:

• Last installation step: Click Mark as Installed..

If you run into any trouble installing vbWiki (blank page, logins not working, etc.), follow these instructions to temporarily turn on vbWiki's Diagnostic Tools.

Open vbWiki_Init.php (or vbWikiPro_Init.php) and find this line:

PHP Code:

$run_vbWikiPro_diag_tools = false; 


And change it for this:

PHP Code:

$run_vbWikiPro_diag_tools = true; 


Navigate to the wiki home page, and see the results.

Changes:

• 0 vBulletin files to Edit
• 1 MediaWiki file to Edit
• 10 vbWiki Files to Upload

Requirements:

• vBulletin v3.5.4 (version 3.6.x recommended)
• MediaWiki 1.6.8+ (recommended 1.7.x+).
• PHP4+

Uninstalling...

• To uninstall vbWiki Standard simply remove (or comment) the line added to LocalSettings.php.
• Optionally remove the directory vbWiki from your forums directory.

[antiekeradio]

ok. installed wikimedia (ahum.) and now everything works!!! thanks a lot.

I might want to talk to the board about buying Pro.

[BrAinZ]

Originally Posted by ElfMage

You can hide the 'Discussion' Tab using CSS (this is not an elegant solution, but it is simple and works.. ). If you want to go this route let me know...

That sounds good.. a pointer in the right direction would be much appreciated!

[antiekeradio]

Originally Posted by BrAinZ

That sounds good.. a pointer in the right direction would be much appreciated!

dito! my MODs are wildly enthousiastic
the built-in discussion feature is quite useless compared to vB itself.

hmmmm you would almost start hoping for an integration which automatically links the discussion tab to a vB discussion thread, and if it doesn't exist for that wiki page, create a new one in the assigned (wiki discussion) forum.


anyways, this sort of stuff is SO much more useful to our board than these social networking or gallery mods.. its super!!

[Necrosaro420]

how can I change the default color of the text in the vbwiki (wiki)

[ElfMage]

Originally Posted by Necrosaro420 Necrosaro420

how can I change the default color of the text in the vbwiki (wiki)

Hi, I replied to your post at nuhit.com, but now I am not sure about which wiki skin your site is using. My suggestion was only for vbWikiSkin.

If you are trying to change the colors for monobook, then the section of main.css you need to change is for '#content'.

[ElfMage]

Originally Posted by BrAinZ

That sounds good.. a pointer in the right direction would be much appreciated!

Certainly.

In the Style Manager, edit the headinclude template; and at the end, add the following:

<style>
#p-cactions li#ca-talk  { display: none; }
</style>

Try this, and let me know if it doesn't work.

[BrAinZ]

Hmm... That didn't seem to do anything.. Wonder why not?

[ElfMage]

PM me a link to your wiki, and I'll take a look.

[antiekeradio]

OK just another question.

on the "who's online page", the users browsing the Wiki are shown.

however, the locations are messed up a little. The location is displayed as:

Originally Posted by online.php

Unknown Location
/wiki/index.php/Main Page

being an admin I can see the exact location(path) where the users are.
i guess the regular users only see the 'unknown location' bit.

Is there some setting in vB that I can use to change this 'error-like' location??

[ElfMage]

Hi, this is a 'bug' of vbWiki Standard.

Who's online integration is implemented in the Pro version. The standard (lite) version doesn't have the functionality required to fully extract the wiki article titles and build the URLs to the corresponding pages on the wiki side.

To keep vbWiki Standard from showing visitors to your wiki on the Who's Online page, open arcane_vbulletin_core.php, and find this line of code:

PHP Code:

define('AT_VB_INTEGRATION', 1); 


And insert right after:

PHP Code:

define( 'LOCATION_BYPASS', 1 );