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.

[ElfMage]

Originally Posted by Cooleyvol

I'm getting a page that looks like this:
http://www.gridiron-glory.net/wiki/

after editing my Local Settings.php file.

You can plainly see my absolute path my vbWiki-Init.php file

My vbWiki directory is under the forums directory.
My MediaWiki directory ("wiki") is outside my forums directory.

Can anyone help me out here?

Hi, the first line of your LocalSettings.php should be this:

PHP Code:

<?php

And you last lines of the file should be these:

PHP Code:

require_once "/home/wwwgri/public_html/forums/vbWiki/vbWiki_Init.php"
?> 


Make these changes and it should work...

[Tearstone]

Why is it that in order to make a new article I have to include "index.php?title=" in the URL (i.e.
"http://url.com/wiki/index.php?title=article"? Why does it not assume that if I just did "http://url.com/wiki/article"

[ElfMage]

Originally Posted by slappy

ElfMage, were you able to trace this bug any further? Any ideas for a solution?

Hi Slappy, sorry for the delay..

I just tried editing your main page, and I was successful (edited it, and got no error).

Are you still getting this error? Does it happen only when you are logged in?

Thanks.

[ElfMage]

Originally Posted by Tearstone

Why is it that in order to make a new article I have to include "index.php?title=" in the URL (i.e.
"http://url.com/wiki/index.php?title=article"? Why does it not assume that if I just did "http://url.com/wiki/article"

Hi, that's MediaWiki's default behavior. With some changes you can make MediaWiki use Search Engine Friendly URLs. There are a couple of articles at mediawiki.org, and there is also one at nuhit.com: http://www.nuhit.com/wiki/MediaWiki_SEF_URLs

[Tearstone]

Originally Posted by ElfMage

Hi, that's MediaWiki's default behavior. With some changes you can make MediaWiki use Search Engine Friendly URLs. There are a couple of articles at mediawiki.org, and there is also one at nuhit.com: http://www.nuhit.com/wiki/MediaWiki_SEF_URLs

Really? I'm working on various techniques to make it easier for users to develop their own articles, I tried the create.php and inputbox.php but they kept giving me way too many problems. Most likely it is due to my n00bness with the Wiki application, but thank you very much for the link.

[Tearstone]

BTW ElfMage, that worked great! Thank you sir

[ElfMage]

Cool. Glad you got it working!

[slappy]

Originally Posted by ElfMage

I just tried editing your main page, and I was successful (edited it, and got no error).

Are you still getting this error? Does it happen only when you are logged in?

Thanks for your test, but yes, the error is still there.

After I read your post, I made some further tests, and here are some interesting results, and a test that will let you reproduce the problem:

1.
The problem only seems to occur when I'm logged into vBulletin (and thus, into MediaWiki with your extension), yes. I cannot reproduce it in any way when not being logged in. This does of course even more support that this problem is due to some bug in the vbWiki extension though.

2.
It seems like some wiki pages can be edited even when I'm logged in, e.g. the main page and also some small test page I made.

3.
Some pages cannot be edited though, as described in my original bug report in this thread. One of these pages is the one with the name "Test Tool 2", please test this yourself (while being logged in, you can easily create an account at /forum).

4.
The problem always (when logged in) seems to occur when creating new pages though, please test this yourself too.

If it would make any difference, I'm using the "Remember me" checkbox in vBulletin when logging in.


Eagerly awaiting your results! Thanks!

[ElfMage]

Thanks for the thorough troubleshooting..

Please download and extract the attached file to your vbWiki directory, and let me know. This file will let me test sessions on your server as seen by vbWiki.

[slappy]

I'm sorry for the delay, I have now uploaded the file (in the same dir as all the other vBWiki files).

Please let me know if there is anything else I can do to make your debugging easier.

Looking forward to having this problem fixed!

Thanks!