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.

[StuntFactoryX]

very interesting. there is some very cool stuff out there for joomla. few questions. i have read on here that there is huge security holes in joomla. the coder made it sound like it was common knowledge. was that a opinion or do you disagree or agree?

next thing is do you anticipate alot of problems or changes to make this work as vbulletin upgrades?

[RedGTiVR6]

Can you compare this to the bbPixel bridge that I literally just purchased YESTERDAY!

Why does that always happen...lol

[gothicuser]

Thankyou for a very useful hack
Digressing, it is just so pleasant and refreshing to see a full detailed description (as in the second post), Mr. Morris, a million thanks.

[Michael Morris]

Originally Posted by StuntFactoryX

very interesting. there is some very cool stuff out there for joomla. few questions. i have read on here that there is huge security holes in joomla. the coder made it sound like it was common knowledge. was that a opinion or do you disagree or agree?

Whatever security holes Joomla has, they are irrelevant to this mod since it does user authentication using vbulletin.

next thing is do you anticipate alot of problems or changes to make this work as vbulletin upgrades?

I anticipate no problems. The vbulletin code isn't hacked in any way so unless Jelsoft changes the structure of the vbulletin registry in a major fashion this mod will continue to work. I would imagine that any change in vbulletin sufficient to break this mod would also break every mod on this site - in other words the type of change you might see in version 4.0, but not in version 3.6 forward.

Speaking of which, although I haven't tested it with 3.5 I *think* it will work there - this installs templates only and runs an alter table query - it doesn't have any plugins so it should work in 3.5

[Michael Morris]

Originally Posted by RedGTiVR6

Can you compare this to the bbPixel bridge that I literally just purchased YESTERDAY!

Why does that always happen...lol

bbpixel hacks both Joomla and vbulletin. It merges then mirrors the user database and allows logins from both sides. This hacking means that every single time either product updates you have to reinstall the hack.

bbpixel doesn't bridge the template engines - therefore if you want a site to have a unified look and feel you have no choice but to skin the thing TWICE. vJoomla uses vbulletin's template engine and throws away Joomla's master template engine (modules can however still call and use patTemplate to build their content).

bbpixel is more mature than vJoomla having been around for a couple years. I'm working to get most of the same functionality in place as quickly as possible. The main obstacle - getting the bridge itself to work, has been accomplished.

These are the main differences. For the record I purchased bbpixel and was vastly disappointed in their customer service and how they implemented the bridge, so I wrote my own.

[Michael Morris]

Originally Posted by dizzy100

When i tried it on my testbed the vbulletin skins is used for joomla which looked great Navbar links will need to be encoded with full paths though or they won't work.

By the final version I hope to use a modRewrite schema to work around this.

[C_P]

Check your PM Michael Morris. I may be able to assist.

[RedefiningFate]

I'm a novice to this. But find it great that you are creating this for us. As I was turned on to Joomla! the other day and I like the way it functions.

I don't understand what you mean by this, and feel free to make fun of me for it...

Either create a symbolic link for images, clientscript and cpstyles in the site root, or copy the contents of those folders to the site root.

What exactly does it take to create either one of those?

J.T.

[Jack Black]

I run my forum on a sub-domain.....forum.mywebsite.com....and i really do not want to move it.

Anyway this mod will work on my setup?

[Michael Morris]

Originally Posted by C_P

Check your PM Michael Morris. I may be able to assist.

Originally Posted by RedefiningFate

I'm a novice to this. But find it great that you are creating this for us. As I was turned on to Joomla! the other day and I like the way it functions.

I don't understand what you mean by this, and feel free to make fun of me for it...



What exactly does it take to create either one of those?

J.T.

A symbolic link is exactly like a windows shortcut icon on the desktop that points to a file or folder elsewhere. The command is

ln -s /absolute/path/to/directory ./link

For my dev site the command to link the cpstyles was

ln -s /www/circvsmaximvs.com/dev/htdocs/cpstyles ./cpstyles

Originally Posted by Jack Black

I run my forum on a sub-domain.....forum.mywebsite.com....and i really do not want to move it.

Anyway this mod will work on my setup?

The final release version will - part of the installer will be the setup of the paths between Joomla and vbulletin. Expect to see that within 3 weeks or so.