Major Additions - Joomla for vBulletin (IMPORTANT UPDATE) - Bridge to the World's Most Popular CMS

Warning!!! An potential exploit has been found in this modification. The server that hosts vjoomla.com has been attacked several times. It is known to already be severely comprimised so at this time it is unclear whether the vulnerability lies in vJoomla, Joomla itself or the server. Until this is resolved to my satisfaction I am removing this modification. My apologies.


The modification WILL be re-released once this issue is resolved!

vJoomla is an offshoot of Joomla 1.0 that is designed to run in tandem with vbulletin. Unlike the main release it will not run without vbulletin - if you desire a CMS without a forum then use Joomla! instead. vJoomla is identical in most all regards to Joomla!

What vJoomla Does

• Provide a single session, single login interface to Joomla and vbulletin.
• Allows Joomla pages to be skinned by vbulletin's template engine.
• Maps Joomla usergroups to vbulletin usergroups.

What vJoomla Does Not Do

• It does not rewrite your templates for you - so you will need to go in currently and change relative links to images and pages to absolute links. This is most important in the style sheets and in the navbar template. This is something you need to do yourself rather than programmatically since no two sites are likely to be using the same style sheet and the same setup for these links.

Install Instructions

1. Log into your admincp
2. Close your forum
3. If your forums are at the root of your site move them elsewhere - the best location is probably /forum
4. Upload the files from the zip packages to their respective locations. There should be no overwrites.
5. Navigate to the root of your site and run the Joomla installer.
6. Go back to the admincp and install the Joomla product file
7. Now either copy the ./cpstyles, ./clientscript and ./images directory of the forum into the Joomla directory OR create symbolic links to those directories. The contents of the ./images directory of Joomla and vbulletin will need to be merged.

This is release candidate 2.

[Sam1985]

Hey,

I love this.
Thanks. Joomla is the best!!

I just would like to know how to make the forum like part of the whole layout.

For example the SMF board that is here is seamlessly part of the whole site.
http://forum.joomla.org/

How can i take whole header or footer and wrapp it around the forum?

what do I need?

[Drix]

This is some fantastic work you are doing here.. Can't wait for this to go stable!
What is a possible time frame to look at? I know it's too soon to say, but roughly?

[InfoNirvana]

Originally Posted by Sam1985

Hey,

I love this.
Thanks. Joomla is the best!!

I just would like to know how to make the forum like part of the whole layout.

For example the SMF board that is here is seamlessly part of the whole site.
http://forum.joomla.org/

How can i take whole header or footer and wrapp it around the forum?

what do I need?

vJoomla is automatically seamless as it will have the same templates as vBulletin.

If you like Joomla! but don't want vB .. use Joomla! and Fireboard.

SMF are good forums, the only reason http://forum.joomla.org/ looks integrated is because someone matched the templates well (between joomla and SMF). Not an easy task.

[TheHeartSmasher]

This is working great for me, my only question is how would I get the navbar locations set to go to the forums as currently they are pointing to:

http://localhost/vjoomlatest/usercp.php

instead of

http://localhost/vjoomlatest/forums/usercp.php

in the vJoomla CMS section at:

http://localhost/vjoomlatest

Along with the images for the Joomla CMS

as I have put the direct path in and some of the images are still not showing.

[InfoNirvana]

Originally Posted by TheHeartSmasher

This is working great for me

Q: what Joomla! core and non-core components and modules have you verified that work ?

[Michael Morris]

Ironically this will probably go stable a month or two before Joomla 1.5 does. I'll begin work on the Joomla 1.5 version right after this is complete.

[Michael Morris]

Originally Posted by Sam1985

Hey,

I love this.
Thanks. Joomla is the best!!

I just would like to know how to make the forum like part of the whole layout.

For example the SMF board that is here is seamlessly part of the whole site.
http://forum.joomla.org/

How can i take whole header or footer and wrapp it around the forum?

what do I need?

vJoomla uses vBulletin's template engine so a wrapping of module positions around the forum body requires you to modify the header and footer template in the vbulletin admincp. (Styles and templates -> Edit Templates)

This isn't too difficult - you do the header stuff and the left column and module positions in the header. You can call any joomla module by including $modules[POSITION] in the template, where POSITION is the position you want at that point in the flow. End the header template with an open div or td tag, then close that tag in the footer template. Put the right column materials in this template.

While you're in there you can see the templates that define how Joomla lays out it's content and modules. (They all start with jos_ ) You can change these from the default tables to div's if you wish, just be careful - modifying those templates is NOT for the faint of heart. However it does give you a degree of control over the output of vJoomla not possible with standard Joomla (at least until version 1.5 goes final).

Another word of caution - by default vJoomla provides no styling definitions for Joomla's default css elements. This will probably be the last thing I add before going gold but it might affect some of the modules.

[Michael Morris]

If you are on Linux go to the Joomla root and run these commands as the user with write permissions to the directory.

ln -s /path/to/your/forums/clientscript clientscript
ln -s /path/to/your/forums/cpstyles cpstyles

Copy all the Joomla images to the vbulletin /images folder then delete the Joomla images folder and run

ln -s /path/to/your/forums/images images

Finally rename the htacces.txt file that came with Joomla to .htaccess
Among other things, this will allow the Apache client to follow the "symlinks" created above.

[nix]

Is it possible to use Joomla template system instead?

[Michael Morris]

Originally Posted by nix

Is it possible to use Joomla template system instead?

No. This has been requested enough to warrant looking into - but it would require a different version of the files (I think. It might be possible to do by simply not uploading a few of the modified files).