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 Kaelon,

Thanks for the positive feedback. We upgraded our systems this morning, and some of the URLs changed. If you encounter any link pointing to a 404, please send me a PM. Thanks.

Regarding the server load. Since this is a vbWiki Pro question, I posted it in our support forums, I hope you don't mind. Let's continue the discussion there. Thread: http://www.nuhit.com/forums/vbwiki-p...-post7283.html

I also replied to the thread.

Regards.

[Soonerdude]

First of all, thanks, this is an awesome mod.

I'm trying to figure out how to keep anyone but myself from editing the main page on the wiki. I don't care what they do with the rest of the wiki, but I want to set the main page up myself, and I don't want anyone messing with it. Is this possible?

Another question, will banned vbulletin users be banned from editing the wiki as well?

[ElfMage]

Originally Posted by Soonerdude

First of all, thanks, this is an awesome mod.

You are welcome. Glad to see people finding this useful.

Originally Posted by Soonerdude

I'm trying to figure out how to keep anyone but myself from editing the main page on the wiki. I don't care what they do with the rest of the wiki, but I want to set the main page up myself, and I don't want anyone messing with it. Is this possible?

Yes, you could protect the main page, and set the permissions so that only you can protect/unprotect pages.

This way anybody with edit rights can modify any other page, but only you can edit the main page.

Originally Posted by Soonerdude

Another question, will banned vbulletin users be banned from editing the wiki as well?

Not at this time.

This will be implemented in the next release, it has been reported over in our site, and we are working on implementing support for banned groups.

Thanks.

[Soonerdude]

Another question..

I love the feature where the user cp links to the vbulletin usercp, but is there also a way to have the mediawiki preferences link still at the top? The users need to be able to select their timezones, set up search preferences, etc. I know you can just go to Special:Preferences, but it would be easier if they just had a link at the top.

Thanks!

[etechno]

Great mod here, will look at installing later on.

[ElfMage]

Originally Posted by Soonerdude

Another question..

I love the feature where the user cp links to the vbulletin usercp, but is there also a way to have the mediawiki preferences link still at the top? The users need to be able to select their timezones, set up search preferences, etc. I know you can just go to Special:Preferences, but it would be easier if they just had a link at the top.

Thanks!

Thanks. Are you referring to vbWiki Pro? If so there is an option in vBulletin's Admin CP to enable this.

[Quantnet]

Originally Posted by ElfMage

Cool. Glad you got it working.



Try the following. I am assuming that tabpage is the class for the active tab. What it does is to highlight the Forums tab only if you are not in the wiki nor in the vbAdvanced Home.

PHP Code:

<a href="#" onclick="window.open('/forum/javachat.php?$session[sessionurl]do=lite','javachat','statusbar=no,menubar=no,toolbar=no,scrollbars=no,resizable=yes,directories=no,width=750,height=550,left=50,top=100,screenX=50,screenY=100'); return false;" class="tab">Chat</a>

<a href="http://www.quantnet.org/wiki/" class="<if condition="THIS_SCRIPT == 'vbwiki'">tabpage<else />tab</if>">Wiki</a>

<a href="http://www.quantnet.org/forum/" class="<if condition="(THIS_SCRIPT != 'vbwiki') && (THIS_SCRIPT != 'adv_index')">tabpage<else />tab</if>">Forum</a>

<a href="http://www.quantnet.org/" class="<if condition="THIS_SCRIPT == 'adv_index'">tabpage<else />tab</if>">Home</a> 


A follow up question on this. I like to add a Tab for Blogs between Wiki and Forum. Can you please help me so that the Blog tab will be highlighted when only on /forum/blog.php page.

Thanks very much

[ElfMage]

I am assuming that you have vBlog powering your Blog.

Try this and let me know..

PHP Code:

<a href="#" onclick="window.open('/forum/javachat.php?$session[sessionurl]do=lite','javachat','statusbar=no,menubar=no,toolbar=no,scrollbars=no,resizable=yes,directories=no,width=750,height=550,left=50,top=100,screenX=50,screenY=100'); return false;" class="tab">Chat</a>

<a href="http://www.quantnet.org/wiki/" class="<if condition="THIS_SCRIPT == 'vbwiki'">tabpage<else />tab</if>">Wiki</a>

<a href="http://www.quantnet.org/forum/blog.php" class="<if condition="THIS_SCRIPT == 'blog'">tabpage<else />tab</if>">Blog</a>

<a href="http://www.quantnet.org/forum/" class="<if condition="(THIS_SCRIPT != 'vbwiki') && (THIS_SCRIPT != 'blog') && (THIS_SCRIPT != 'adv_index')">tabpage<else />tab</if>">Forum</a>

<a href="http://www.quantnet.org/" class="<if condition="THIS_SCRIPT == 'adv_index'">tabpage<else />tab</if>">Home</a> 


[Quantnet]

Kaching !

Thanks

[ElfMage]

Glad it worked.