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.

[ElfMage]

Hi Strafe, The easiest way is to create a new Usergroup in vBulletin, add these members to this new group. And then when configuring vbWiki, map this new usergroup to MediaWiki's sysop group. (You'll need the id for the newly created usergroup, which you can find in the Usergroup Manager in vB).

[Strafe]

Thanks, that cleared everything up.

[Strafe]

I added these lines to my Init file but it results to a blank wiki page.

PHP Code:

$g_vbWiki_Usergroup_Mapping            = array (       
            6 /*Administrators*/    => "sysop,bureaucrat"
            5 /*Super Moderators*/    => "sysop,bureaucrat"
    ); 


I made it so that mods and admins can be sysops. Why is it giving me a blank page?

[ElfMage]

Hi Strafe,

After each entry in the array a comma is needed:

PHP Code:

$g_vbWiki_Usergroup_Mapping            = array (        
            6 /*Administrators*/    => "sysop,bureaucrat",
            5 /*Super Moderators*/    => "sysop,bureaucrat" 
    ); 


The blank page was caused by a PHP error. If you check the PHP error logs you may see the corresponding entry there...

[Quantnet]

I'm using the Live Search Ajax mod and on the wiki page, the ajax window is blocked by the wiki header where you have My talk My Wiki Preferences My watchlist My contributions Log out

Here is the mod https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=154694
Here is the wiki at www.quantnet.org/wiki

I guess the way the custom template is code, it blocks the ajax ? I have it working fine on forum home and front page.

Thanks

[ElfMage]

Could you PM me a test username/password? (or is this visible to guests, I didn't see it).

My guess is that this is related to the z-index CSS property, it should be simple to correct.

[Quantnet]

this is visible to guests...i PM you a test account none the less

I hope it's something with the css

[ElfMage]

Sent you a PM.

[Quantnet]

Your fix worked like a charm. You da man.
Thanks

[Kaelon]

I recently purchased vbWikiPro (great product - thanks so much!), and ordinarily would ask this question on the NuHit forums, but they seem to have serious rewrite errors (that most forum thread links are posting to 404 errors), so I'm posting this here.

I noticed that after installing vbWikiPro, there was a huge spike to server load. I'm running on a Dedicated Server (P4 3.0 Ghz, 2 Gigs of RAM, RAID-0 150 GB 10,000 RPM HD) and my forum (around 50-60 registered users online at any given time, around 400-500 normal users accessible during peak times) ordinarilly never has a load above 0.20. Installed vbWikiPro, and started getting regular load ranges of 0.80-2.00! Is there any reason for this?