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.

[kontrabass]

Originally Posted by newbe_haselina

Sorry for asking kind of offtopic ... in the requirements it's said, that you can run wikimedia under PHP version 4 ... but this doesn't work for me? the wiki installation routine tells me, that PHP5 is required and it's aborting.

Can somebody please give me a hint, where I can look for a suitable mediawiki version or what else I could do instead?

Need this stuff urgently

I'd suggest upgrading to php 5.2.x. From what I've read it'll give you a performance boost over php 4 anyway...

Otherwise you can run mediawiki 1.6.8 with php 4

[clr_75]

Question, which it's probably a dumb question but the only dumb question I know is the one not asked ... if we add this hack to our current forums it's not going to make our boards look like a wiki page is it (the article tab and all that at the top) ? Or will our forum stay the same and we will just be adding a link to the wiki stuff?

If someone could give me a link to their site to see an actual working environment, rather than the demo, that would be great! Thanks!

[ElfMage]

Originally Posted by newbe_haselina

Sorry for asking kind of offtopic ... in the requirements it's said, that you can run wikimedia under PHP version 4 ... but this doesn't work for me? the wiki installation routine tells me, that PHP5 is required and it's aborting.

Can somebody please give me a hint, where I can look for a suitable mediawiki version or what else I could do instead?

Need this stuff urgently

As kontrabass mentions, if you want to run the latest version of MediaWiki, you need to upgrade your PHP installation to version 5+.

However, if your host only has PHP 4 available (or you do not want to upgrade to PHP5) then you can install MediaWiki 1.6.9 which does not require PHP5.

Originally Posted by clr_75

Question, which it's probably a dumb question but the only dumb question I know is the one not asked ... if we add this hack to our current forums it's not going to make our boards look like a wiki page is it (the article tab and all that at the top) ? Or will our forum stay the same and we will just be adding a link to the wiki stuff?

vbWiki Standard doesn't change the way your forum or wiki looks. It works behind the scenes to implement the single-login functionality.

The Pro version let's you use your forums style/design on your wiki. But, again, it would not change your forums' look or design.

Originally Posted by clr_75

If someone could give me a link to their site to see an actual working environment, rather than the demo, that would be great! Thanks!

In this thread there are links to two sites using vbWiki Standard: http://www.nuhit.com/forums/vbwiki/1...bwiki-pro.html

[Necrosaro420]

Originally Posted by ElfMage

vbWiki Standard will allow you to map vBulletin's usergroups to wiki usergroups.

But then you need to control the wiki usergroups permissions manually, per MediaWiki's usergroup (roles) functionality. (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:...g_group_rights)

You totally lost me with that info there =)

[Necrosaro420]

Looking at that link, everything should be ready to go during the default install. Yet users, nor myself are able to create a new page?

[ElfMage]

Are you getting an error? Or does it say that you don't have rights to edit?

The default MediaWiki installation lets everybody (registered and unregistered) edit and create pages.

[Goatpod]

Hi Elfmage,

Thanks for the mod. Got it working fine in that the cross log in works but when it comes to mapping VB usergroups to Wiki usergroups I'm not seeing anything under my VB usergroup when editing it to allow me to do this!

I'm using VB 3.6.4
MediaWiki 1.6.9

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer

[Brandon Sheley]

hmm.. this hasn't worked for me

I have a site

wiki.site.com and my forum is forum.site.com

I did as the "instrucrtions" say, and now my wiki.site.com is blank.

[Necrosaro420]

Myself nor my users have any type of "add new page" button anywhere?

[newbe_haselina]

Many thanks for your help . As my host only runs PHP4, will try this out with a lower wiki-version.

Glad you helped me