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.

[Quantnet]

Originally Posted by RVSmarter

What shall I do????

You can see for yourself here: www.mathhelpforum.com/wiki

You also have a double welcomeheader on your forum home

[Jim McAnally]

Guess my question doesnt warrant an answer.

[ElfMage]

Originally Posted by Jim McAnally

Guess my question doesnt warrant an answer.

Hi Jim,

My apologies for that. Somehow I missed your post, definitely not intentional.

Originally Posted by Jim McAnally

If I have media wiki on a seperate domain and box than Vbulletin is there a way to get this to work or should I move this to the same server?

If so it would still be to seperate domains.

(Notice that the rest of this post does not refer to installing vbWiki using different sub-domains).

It is always easier and much less complex to have both systems on the same server and domain, this is recommended, but not mandatory.

We have a couple of customers that are using a setup similar to what you describe. We even saw a setup where vB and MW were installed on servers located on different hosting networks.

There are three components that need to be taken care of:
1) Access to vBulletin's DB
2) Access to vBulletin's installation
3) Cookie Tunneling for synchronized session

#3 is a feature that is only available in vbWiki Pro. However if you are interested in vbWiki Std, there is a free mod here at vb.org that let's you do the same thing (CES Cookie Cutter).

#1 depends on your installation.

For instance in these setups it is recommended to duplicate vB installation folder over in your MW server. The alternative is to access the files over the network, which has lower performance.

#2 is simple, all that is needed is to let your MW server talk to vB's MySQL server. However depending on how #2 is implemente, it may be required to change vBulletin's server name from 'localhost' to the actual IP or host name where MySQL is hosted.

All in all, it is doable, but 10-20 times more complex than a regular installation. For more information refer to this article over at our site:Installing vbWiki Pro in a multiple domain setup

Anyways, read through this, and if you have any questions, let me know. Thanks.

[ElfMage]

Originally Posted by RVSmarter

Hi I am trying to install vbwiki standard at the moment and I went through the instructions and I get the following error on the wiki mainpage:

Warning: require_once(/includes/AuthPlugin.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/mathhelp/public_html/math-help/vbWiki/vbWiki_Auth.php on line 14

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required '/includes/AuthPlugin.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/mathhelp/public_html/math-help/vbWiki/vbWiki_Auth.php on line 14

Line 14 reads: require_once( "$IP/includes/AuthPlugin.php");


What shall I do????

You can see for yourself here: www.mathhelpforum.com/wiki

Hi,

This is usually caused by entering the incorrect path on the 'require_once' line added to MW's LocalSettings.php.

Verify that the path entered in LocalSettings is an absolute local directory path.

For instance, this is wrong:

require_once "http://www.mydomain.com/forums/vbWiki/......php"; // THIS IS WRONG

The right way is as follows:

require_once "/local/path/to/your/forum/installation/vbWiki/vbWiki_Init.php";


Entering the correct path for your server.


Could you verify if this is the issue in your installation?

Thanks.

[RVSmarter]

Originally Posted by ElfMage

Hi,

This is usually caused by entering the incorrect path on the 'require_once' line added to MW's LocalSettings.php.

Verify that the path entered in LocalSettings is an absolute local directory path.

For instance, this is wrong:

require_once "http://www.mydomain.com/forums/vbWiki/......php"; // THIS IS WRONG

The right way is as follows:

require_once "/local/path/to/your/forum/installation/vbWiki/vbWiki_Init.php";


Entering the correct path for your server.


Could you verify if this is the issue in your installation?

Thanks.

Yes I believe this is it. Thank you.

[subnet_rx]

I just read that MediaWiki 1.7 and above is not just compatible with, but requires PHP5. That's kind of weird to me. I'm having to use a much older version because my server is running 4.4.4

[subnet_rx]

I'm having problems with the install now. I'm getting this error:

Fatal error: main() [function.require]: Failed opening required './global.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/myhattie/public_html//forums/vbWiki/arcane_vbulletin_core.php on line 79

I believe I have LocalSettings.php set correctly. What else should I check?

[Quantnet]

look at this
/home/myhattie/public_html//forums/vbWiki/arcane_vbulletin_core.php on line 79

You have double // in front of forums/vbWiki

Remove one of them.

[ElfMage]

Originally Posted by subnet_rx

I just read that MediaWiki 1.7 and above is not just compatible with, but requires PHP5. That's kind of weird to me. I'm having to use a much older version because my server is running 4.4.4

That's a system requirement for MediaWiki. We have a lot of users in the same situation using MW 1.6.x with no trouble.

[ElfMage]

Originally Posted by subnet_rx

I'm having problems with the install now. I'm getting this error:

Fatal error: main() [function.require]: Failed opening required './global.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/myhattie/public_html//forums/vbWiki/arcane_vbulletin_core.php on line 79

I believe I have LocalSettings.php set correctly. What else should I check?

In addition to what Quantnet.org mentions, it always helps to turn on vbWiki's diagnostics mode. Try it, and usually it will identify what needs to be corrected.