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]

Hi, my apologies for the confusion.

However, both vbWiki Std and vbWiki Pro are 'bridges' between vBulletin and MediaWiki. In the installation instructions above it is stated:

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

Thanks.

[Quantnet]

Thanks for the clarification.
Please correct me if I'm wrong but from reading the side-by-side comparison between Standard and Prof version, it seems the Standard is much better and easier to work with ?

instead of put them in /vbwiki/ folder, can i put them under /wiki/ folder ?

[ElfMage]

It depends. vbWiki Standard is easier to install, but on the other hand, vbWiki Pro has quite a number of features missing from vbWiki Standard. For instance with vbWiki Pro you get skin integration, usergroup management, Admin CP to control vbWiki and MediaWiki's operation, etc. A more thorough comparison can be found over at our site.

If you are installing vbWiki Standard, you can rename the /vbWiki folder to something else, although this is not advisable.

Please notice that this folder (e.g. /forums/vbWiki) is never seen by your visitors. Instead your visitors will go to the folder where you installed MediaWiki (e.g. /wiki).

The folder where vbWiki is installed does not affect your forum or wiki URLs.

[slappy]

Originally Posted by ElfMage

Yes, indeed. If your site has a php error log, any php errors will appear there.

It is possible that this issue is caused by vbWiki Std, or it may not. More information would be required.

Ok, I have found the source of the error by looking in the error log:

PHP Fatal error:  Allowed memory size of 20971520 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 75 bytes) in /xxx/xxx/xxx/languages/Language.php on line 1775

This is what made the crash semi-random. I changed the memory limit in the LocalSettings.php, and the problem went away.

What I still don't know is what is taking so much memory. The problem only occurred when having the vbWiki extension active, but this could of course either mean that this extension takes up a lot of memory itself, or that it was just the last drop, but the real culprit was some other extension.

Oh, and one more tip, which I found when looking through the error logs. The following (non-critical) error in your code appears a lot in the error-log, so you might want to fix it:

PHP Notice:  Undefined index:  vbwiki_preferencestitle in /xxx/xxx/forum/vbWiki/vbWiki_Hooks.php on line 45

[ElfMage]

Originally Posted by slappy

Ok, I have found the source of the error by looking in the error log:

PHP Fatal error:  Allowed memory size of 20971520 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 75 bytes) in /xxx/xxx/xxx/languages/Language.php on line 1775

This is what made the crash semi-random. I changed the memory limit in the LocalSettings.php, and the problem went away.

What I still don't know is what is taking so much memory. The problem only occurred when having the vbWiki extension active, but this could of course either mean that this extension takes up a lot of memory itself, or that it was just the last drop, but the real culprit was some other extension.

vbWiki will need to load the vBulletin bridge to access vBulletin's users and DB. This requires extra memory. Now, 20MB seems a bit excessive. I have seen vBulletin use around 6-8 MB, but I don't know how much MediaWiki usually uses. Also, as you mention it would depend on MW extensions or vBulletin mods installed.

Originally Posted by slappy

Oh, and one more tip, which I found when looking through the error logs. The following (non-critical) error in your code appears a lot in the error-log, so you might want to fix it:

PHP Notice:  Undefined index:  vbwiki_preferencestitle in /xxx/xxx/forum/vbWiki/vbWiki_Hooks.php on line 45

Thanks for the heads up.

You can edit that line vbWiki_Hooks.php and change it from:

PHP Code:

    if (array_key_exists('preferences', $personal_urls)) 


to

PHP Code:

    if (array_key_exists('preferences', $personal_urls) && isset($vbphrase['vbwiki_preferencestitle']) ) 


Thanks.

[Quantnet]

If i install Standard version now and decide to upgrade to the Pro version later, do I have to reinstall everything again ?

[Quantnet]

I assume the Standard version here is exactly the same as the nuWiki version released on your site ?

[ElfMage]

Originally Posted by Quantnet.org

If i install Standard version now and decide to upgrade to the Pro version later, do I have to reinstall everything again ?

To upgrade to vbWiki Pro you only need to follow the vbWiki Pro installation instructions, you do not need to reinstall MediaWiki.

Originally Posted by Quantnet.org

I assume the Standard version here is exactly the same as the nuWiki version released on your site ?

No, NuWiki is a different product.

NuWiki does not use MediaWiki. Instead NuWiki is implemented from zero on top of vBulletin (e.g. you can use vBulletin's WYSIWYG BBCode editor to create and modify articles, or you can take an existing thread (e.g. sticky) and convert it into a NuWiki article, etc).

A comparison between NuWiki and vbWiki Pro can be found in this page: http://www.nuhit.com/nuwiki/comparison.html

[Quantnet]

Ah, I see where i got confused.
Look like nuwiki is what i need.

[ElfMage]

We will be releasing free trial download for NuWiki in our site within the next week or two.