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.

[quiklink]

Originally Posted by ElfMage

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.

Yup using MW 1.6.1 and vbWiki (pro). Works great! Started with this lite version and liked it so much I upgraded. I highly recommend it.

[ElfMage]

Thanks.

[SirTalksalot]

Hi,

Thank you for this great MOD, I've already get it working on one site. But when I tried it here : http://www.warwickshireonline.com/wiki/

I just get a blank page. I've turned on the Diagnostics tool, but it's not telling me anything I can understand. Is there anything I can try to fix this?

Thank you in advance, I really appreciate your help.

[ElfMage]

Hi,

What version of PHP is your site running?

I see in the diagnostic tools output that MW is running on 5.2, however, there is another place where it mentioned PHP 4.4.7

Is it possible that your site has both 5.2 and 4.4.7 and both packages are running different versions of PHP?

Thanks.

[SirTalksalot]

Originally Posted by ElfMage

Hi,

What version of PHP is your site running?

I see in the diagnostic tools output that MW is running on 5.2, however, there is another place where it mentioned PHP 4.4.7

Is it possible that your site has both 5.2 and 4.4.7 and both packages are running different versions of PHP?

Thanks.

That would make a lot of sense. PHP 5 is only activated in the folder and all it's subfolers, if I ask it to in the htaccess. The thing is, I already have vbwiki successfully running here http://mediabase.productionforum.co.uk

The only difference is that the wiki is in a sub-domain while VBulletin is in the main domain. Do you think it's worth activation PHP 5 for VBulletin too? Will I need to change any setting in VB if I do that?

Thank you for your help Elfmage, it's very much appreciated.

[ElfMage]

Originally Posted by SirTalksalot

That would make a lot of sense. PHP 5 is only activated in the folder and all it's subfolers, if I ask it to in the htaccess. The thing is, I already have vbwiki successfully running here http://mediabase.productionforum.co.uk

The only difference is that the wiki is in a sub-domain while VBulletin is in the main domain. Do you think it's worth activation PHP 5 for VBulletin too? Will I need to change any setting in VB if I do that?

I think I have seen a couple of cases before where they had this setup (one system running PHP4 and the other one PHP5) and it got fixed when both were set to the same version.

Now, I haven't tested this scenario, but at first glance it makes sense as to why it would through PHP in for a loop...

My suggestion is to try this in a test environment before making any changes on your live site.

Originally Posted by SirTalksalot

Thank you for your help Elfmage, it's very much appreciated.

Glad to be of service.

[Dontom]

Thanks for the great mod - installation was easy (even thouzgh we run it from a different server than our vb) - mapping of rules also was ok, perhaps you just paste the information how to map usergroups from vb to MW into the first post...

Thanks again
Tom

[Taios]

...So you're supposed to replace the closing tag in LocalSettings.php with requireonce.
Well, the ?> doesn't seem to exist in my LocalSettings :P I just get an error

Warning: require_once(<FULL PATH>) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in <FULL PATH> on line 123

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required '<FULL PATH>' (include_path='<PATH>') in <FULL PATH> on line 123

:/

[quiklink]

Originally Posted by Taios

...So you're supposed to replace the closing tag in LocalSettings.php with requireonce.
Well, the ?> doesn't seem to exist in my LocalSettings :P I just get an error

Warning: require_once(<FULL PATH>) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in <FULL PATH> on line 123

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required '<FULL PATH>' (include_path='<PATH>') in <FULL PATH> on line 123

:/

No you place it just above the closing tag. If you replace the closing tag, yeah you are going to get an error.

[ElfMage]

Originally Posted by Dontom

Thanks for the great mod - installation was easy (even thouzgh we run it from a different server than our vb) - mapping of rules also was ok, perhaps you just paste the information how to map usergroups from vb to MW into the first post...

Thanks again
Tom

Hi Tom, thanks for the feedback. I'll do that. There is a sample in the vbWiki_Settings.php, but I'll paste it here, for clarity's sake..

Thanks.