vbulletin in wordpress page

[ddo36]

Hi guys.

I have a wordpress blog and I really want to put a forum, vbulletin in particular, in one my blog pages.
It's like when they click on a tab, it'll be a forum, IN THE SAME SITE.

I found a site which does exactly what i want,

http://www.sweatdrop.com/

Can anybody please help me on how to achieve this.
thanks so much.

[ddo36]

anyone?

[ddo36]

I think this has got to do with shortcode of vbulletin, which i can put inside the wordpress page.
But, is there really a shortcode for vbulletin?

Can anyone help me on this one?

[doob]

Unless I'm missing something, the Sweatdrop example is just a modified style.

i.e., they've created a custom style for their forum. Then they've created a custom navigation for their wordpress blog with a "forum" tab. You click on the forum tab in the wordpress blog and it switches to the /forums directory which houses the vb installation which is running with a modified custom style.

Those folks did a nice job on the customizations.

[ddo36]

so that means, they made a header of their forum, just like the header in the wordpress blog?

but how about the sidebars?
when i click on the forum tab, the sidebar stays. So that gives me the assumption that the vbulletin is indeed in a wordpress page.

any ideas guys?

[doob]

I doubt it.

Both the wordpress blog and the forum are probably both referencing in the same external navbar. Then they are probably doing the same thing with the sidebar (each referencing in the same sidebar code.).

I employ a similar structure on my sites. Take a look on the web for understanding of php includes or server-side-includes (slightly different, but same principle).

With VB you need to define a plugin (probaby other ways too) to define an "includes" statement.

1) You make your common navbar element and host it somewhere on your site.
2) You make a global_start plugin in vb so its accessible from any forum section and call it something like $mynavbar
3) vb uses some odd php equivelent code to emply includes so look up the vb includes method
4) insert appropriate includes code into your vb forums header template.
5) if you look in any of the vb template codes for like forumdisplay or album list, etc. You'll see an entry at the top of the code for $navbar. This is where vb is injecting your navbar, etc...

I'm not doing the heavy lifting here by describing a step-by-step tutorial. But hopefully this will point you in the right direction. Heavy lifting is up to you!
-Doob

[ddo36]

to be honest doob, i didn't understand most of what you explained. LOLS.

BUT, if you're pretty sure, and i mean pretty pretty sure, that what you explained is what really happened on that sweatdrop site, then i'll put full effort in understanding your explanation and implementing it in the process to achieve my goal.. got me?

so most probably? you're explanation below is how they customized their site?

(I tried mailing the admin, designers of that site, didn't get a reply )

[doob]

You don't have to use includes, nor do you have to use the vb plugin system to make your forums look the same as your wordpress blog. You can alternatively hard code the navbar for your wordpress, and then also harcode the navbar for your forums. However, doing it that way means that if you cange the navbar for your worpress, you'll need to also change it seperately in your forums. Its easier to just have one version of the navbar that you reference into (include into) each of your platforms.

You also don't need to use the plugin system in vb to do any of this. You can just edit the navbar template in VB directly..i.e. hardcode how you want your navbar to look in your forums into the navbar template.

By the same logic you can either maintain 2 different sets of sidebars for each platform, again, its just easier to have 1 version to maintain and then reference them into each platform.

Using the vb plugin system allows you to reference an external file that you can then setup and edit in dreamweaver (or whatever), and upload new changes to without going into the vb admin interface and uploading a new hardcoded version each time you have a minor change. But you don't have to do it that way. For my workflow, I have a navbar file in dreamweaver that I can edit and upload changes to the server and then that is included into the forums template. So I can make changes without ever having to log into the vb interface.

Adding a sidebar in vb 3.x i found to be a bit tricky. You need to edit every template in vb (pretty much) to add in some code to create your columns. Many of the vb templates have to be at least a certain width to accomodate the form elements. i.e. the registration template.

There's plugin out there on this site, like vbadvanced, that seem to support columns, but those plugins also seem to very version specific, so updating your installation version can break them, and becuase you didn't code them yourself, there's no easy way to get them working again. Plus there's no real support for them since they're not part of the default vb install.

I'd suggest first take a look online for 2 column DIV tutorials where they have a navbar 2 columns and a footer using DIVs. Then take a look at how to accomplish php includes. That will help you understand how wordpress is laying stuff out and how you can edit your wordpress to use your own custom navbar, sidebar and footer content, each in its own div.

Last you'll need to rewrite any of VB templates that represent areas of the forums that you want to have the multiple columns. There are a lot of templates! Think about it. Alubmns, settings, registration, messages, blog, posts, threads, homepage, calendar, groups, etc. etc. I don't know of an easy way to just make a sidebar magically appear in every section of the forums. In my case I'm adding the sidebar to different sections one by one...

Anyway. Hope this helps.

[ddo36]

OMG!

Your explanation is sooo, breath taking. LOLS.
But I think i was able to follow what you said. And I'll start now, studying.
Hmm, surely, it will take a lot of work accomplishing this. Fingers crossed.

But doob, thanks so so so so so so much for your effort in giving me a reply. very much appreciated. \m/