Major Additions - Share users database among many forums

This is a feature requested many times, and we are still waiting, so I released a patch to be able to run many forums with the same user database.

This is an EXPERIMENTAL PATCH I'm running on my forums.

--- ../../../private/upload/includes/class_core.php     2008-07-10 11:17:32.000000000 +0200
+++ class_core.php      2008-07-11 17:44:20.000000000 +0200
@@ -405,6 +405,33 @@
                $this->connection_recent =& $link;
                $this->querycount++;

+               $shared_tables = Array("user","useractivation","userban","usertitle","userchangelog","usertextfield","userfield","usergroup","userlist","usernote","profilevisitor","reputation","reputationlevel","spamlog","strikes","pm","pmreceipt","pmtext","avatar","profilefield");
+
+               $main_prefix = "FP_";
+               foreach ($shared_tables as $shared_table)
+               {
+                       $orig = TABLE_PREFIX.$shared_table;
+                       $dst  = $main_prefix.$shared_table;
+
+                       $this->sql = str_replace($orig." ",$dst." "  ,$this->sql);
+                       $this->sql = str_replace($orig.".",$dst."."  ,$this->sql);
+                       $this->sql = str_replace($orig."\r",$dst."\r",$this->sql);
+                       $this->sql = str_replace($orig."\n",$dst."\n",$this->sql);
+                       $this->sql = str_replace($orig."\t",$dst."\t",$this->sql);
+
+               }
+

                if ($queryresult = $this->functions[$buffered ? 'query' : 'query_unbuffered']($this->sql, $link))
                {

You can add "session" to $shared_tables if you want to share your sessions among forums under the same domain (Thanks Lionel)

This is only useful for new forums joining anothers one user database.

Requirements:

• An old forum where all users are.
• Sharing the same database, using diferent prefixes for tables (TABLE_PREFIX)

For example: Imagine we have FORUM_A , FORUM_B, and FORUM_C each one with their respective licenses.

FORUM A has table prefix FA_ in database, FORUM_B has FB_ and FORUM_C has FC_

FORUM A is the main, and older forum, where we have all our users.

then we would install FORUM_B and FORUM_C normally, using the same database that FORUM_A uses, but setting up their own table prefixes.


once FB_ and FC_ are installed then we go patching class_core.php from FORUM_B and FORUM_C setting up $main_prefix = "FA_"; so they use FORUM_A for shared tables.

Possible problems:

• memcached issues?, not sure
• avatar/signature pics/etc issues when storage is set to disk.
• more to come...

Author: Optimizacion Web

[Lionel]

Session is useful only if it's for different forums from the same site. It will avoid double login and keep who's online synchronized.

In the example above, I remembered that I had to do those 2 changes also (version 3.60) since they appeared to be independent from class_core

In adminfunctions.php print_delete_confirmation you also need to specify the below (insert it somewhere) or it will switch to default and you will not be able to delete any usergroups. (I don't use prefixes so I have " . ")



case 'usergroup':
$item = $vbulletin->db->query_first("
SELECT usergroupid, title
FROM " . "usergroup
WHERE usergroupid = '" . $vbulletin->db->escape_string($itemid) . "'
");
break;

also in functions.php copy function fetch_query_sql into function fetch_query_sql2 . alter that copy by replacing the 2 instances of " . TABLE_PREFIX . to reflect your master prefix.

Then in usergroup.php call that fetch_query_sql2 instead of fetch_query_sql (many instances)

[Q-v-n-s-Q]

nice, thank you

[Adrian Schneider]

Originally Posted by mangel.ajo

Hmmm, if database can gives us that functionality it could be interesting because we wouldn't need to patch at all.

Can you point us to some document about mysql5 views?

How do you setup a view?

Greetings,
Miguel ?ngel.

I gave a more concrete example in this thread.

[mangel.ajo]

Originally Posted by Lionel

Session is useful only if it's for different forums from the same site. It will avoid double login and keep who's online synchronized.

Yes, for the same site it's ok. In my config I have different domain names. So I should keep session table independently

[QUOTE]

Originally Posted by Lionel

In the example above, I remembered that I had to do those 2 changes also (version 3.60) since they appeared to be independent from class_core

I have tried to create/delete a usergroup from admincp in the secondary forum, and it worked fine, so I suppose that this change is not needed anymore (at least for 3.7.2PL1) :-)

Thanks Lionel!

[mangel.ajo]

I doubt if those tables are safe to be shared: "reputation","spamlog"

They point to postid, and probably they would only mess. What do you think about that? Should I take them out?

[Lionel]

I never used "reputation" and "spamlog" in the other integration 3.07 => 3.60 from 2 years ago.

[Hornstar]

This will just be duplicate content in search engines. If you think this is going to give you extra exposure your right, however at what cost? getting dropped from the search engines.

There is need for this tho, and only in some situations, eg. maybe you got a support board that is for registered users only and you have a few websites, then that would be useful.

Thanks for sharing, I do look forward to seeing this progress, however I currently don't have that need for it like some sites do. Just for the other sites who think great I can now have several domains but with the same forums showing, this is a really bad idea.

[mangel.ajo]

Originally Posted by hornstar1337

This will just be duplicate content in search engines. If you think this is going to give you extra exposure your right, however at what cost?

User-Agent: * 
Disallow: /forum/memberlist.php
Disallow: /forum/member.php

What I want is not to get my members indexed, the real intention of this patch is to make my users life easier to move between forums.

Greetings honstar1337!

[Hornstar]

Originally Posted by mangel.ajo

User-Agent: * 
Disallow: /forum/memberlist.php
Disallow: /forum/member.php

What I want is not to get my members indexed, the real intention of this patch is to make my users life easier to move between forums.

Greetings honstar1337!

I must have been really tired when I made that post lol. I can now see a much larger purpose for this mod. (I was thinking something much different yesterday lol).

I might actually end up using this afterall. Thanks.

[Super Jinni]

this is really interesting and something that I was thinking about since a while..

I'm gonna keep an eye on this, and maybe I'm gonna use it soon for some reason

thanks for sharing man

best regards