Miscellaneous Hacks - vbNetwork - share forums with other boards

vbNetwork

Summary

This add-on gives you the ability to share forums with other message boards without having to give any database information. The plugin runs through webservices and uses XML.

Release Notes

This product is considered to still be in Beta. Currently the installation is easy but if you want to set up and run your own network it will help if you're familiar with XML. Joining an already existing network is fairly simple.

This plugin is developed using vBulletin 3.6.8 and has been used with 3.5.4 and 3.8.x and runs fine on either. I don't know of any boards that run it on 3.7.X, I suspect it would work fine too.

Though there is still a lot of work to be done, I've been encouraged to release this plugin in hopes that someone will take up writing versions for phpBB and other popular message board software.

If you are interested you can join my existing network, but please note that it is mostly a trolling-based community of boards. Feel free to start your own network with other boards.

Product Specifications

1. several plugins
2. one cron job
3. file uploads
4. new DB tables
5. several phrases

Installation
Approx 2-5 mins

1. 1. Upload all files in the UPLOAD directory, preserving the directory structure.
   
   2. Create the following directories with the following permissions
   
   ./network/packets/incoming - chmod 777
   ./network/packets/outgoing - chmod 777
   
   3. Go to your AdminCP and install the product's XML file (product-network.xml)

Upgrading/Updating

1. upload all files in the upload directory, overwriting any existing files
2. re-import the XML file, setting "Overwrite" to "Yes"

Configuration/Support

See the included documentation for details.

Change History

• 0.9.0 (2009-02-20) - initial Beta release

Sample

This is one shared forum on three different boards (the content of this forum may be NSFW.)
http://www.anothermessageboard.com/f...splay.php?f=29
http://www.theranter.com/forum/vBull...splay.php?f=51
http://www.trollkingdom.net/forum/fo...play.php?f=117

PLEASE CLICK INSTALL!

[RvG2]

pls make also for 3.8

[zethon]

Originally Posted by RvG2

pls make also for 3.8

Already works with 3.8.

[Toupsx]

Love this mod, will be very useful between my and another's forum.
Future suggestion to be done if at all possible?:
If both sites are using a point system like VBCredits, ability to share credits or transfer credits from site to site?

[thompson]

wow, sounds good.

it really share users ?
what about users who registered in both or all forums ? (same name or different name)

[zethon]

Originally Posted by thompson

wow, sounds good.

it really share users ?
what about users who registered in both or all forums ? (same name or different name)

Users are not shared.

Take a look at the links I posted and it should be clear to you what this plugin does.

[KW802]

Looks interesting.

Is there any intelligence to detect if a user from another board already exists on the first board? So if Site A is participating with Site B, and user JohnDoe (with an email of JohnDoe@SomeSite.com) already exists on both Site A & Site B, will his/her posts show up his real account on Site B after posting on Site A or will it still appear as a guest account named JohnDoe@SiteA?

[zethon]

Originally Posted by KW802

Looks interesting.

Is there any intelligence to detect if a user from another board already exists on the first board? So if Site A is participating with Site B, and user JohnDoe (with an email of JohnDoe@SomeSite.com) already exists on both Site A & Site B, will his/her posts show up his real account on Site B after posting on Site A or will it still appear as a guest account named JohnDoe@SiteA?

Negative, there is no logic to detect if a user is registered. All posts from remote boards appear as posts from your board's Guest account.

[ZeroHour]

Originally Posted by zethon

Not sure what you mean.

Google does not like duplicate content on sites so I would probably add a feature to assign the primary site that is indexed and the rest get tagged with rel="nofollow" on the forum index list at the minimum or block the path using robots.txt

[zethon]

Originally Posted by ZeroHour

Google does not like duplicate content on sites so I would probably add a feature to assign the primary site that is indexed and the rest get tagged with rel="nofollow" on the forum index list at the minimum or block the path using robots.txt

I'm not gonna add any features just to make Google happy. If there's duplicate content, then so be it. Google will survive.

[space?]

Hey, great work - but think on adding the right words to your privacy statement ...

And for all of these who care about SEO this isn't so attractive - a solution would be to exclude the indexing of copied content via robots.txt to avoid duplicate content.