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.

[VivaLaPinkowitz]

Lovely...

I'm pretty sure its the cookies that are the problem. What exactly is wrong with the cookie domain setting? And are there any options whatsoever that I can use to change them to get them to work? Am I the first person experiencing this problem?

[Michael Morris]

The browser considers forum.site.org to be a different site from www.site.org and won't let them read each other's cookies (I think. You might be able to resolve this by changing the cookie path in the vbulletin admincp but BE CAREFUL - screw up the setting and you won't be able to log into vb period without uploading tools.php and resetting the cookie path).

[VivaLaPinkowitz]

I've changed it to .pinkowitz.org and it works fine! Now to continue with the rest of the installation. XD

[Michael Morris]

RC2 is out. If you have installed RC1 there is no need to upgrade - all file changes where in the installer.

[VivaLaPinkowitz]

So I was able to fully install vJoomla, but was persuaded to uninstall due to the majority of nonworking links. I installed it through the forum location http://forums.pinkowitz.org.

Would the majority of the links work if I made the forum a subdirectory inside vJoomla (i.e. http://pinkowitz.org/forums)?

Also, I noticed my custom theme did not load images into the vJoomla. Should I import the theme's images into vJoomla's image directory to get it recognized by vJoomla?

[Michael Morris]

Originally Posted by VivaLaPinkowitz

So I was able to fully install vJoomla, but was persuaded to uninstall due to the majority of nonworking links. I installed it through the forum location http://forums.pinkowitz.org.

Would the majority of the links work if I made the forum a subdirectory inside vJoomla (i.e. http://pinkowitz.org/forums)?

Also, I noticed my custom theme did not load images into the vJoomla. Should I import the theme's images into vJoomla's image directory to get it recognized by vJoomla?

Editing the templates and changing relative paths in URL's and images to absolute paths is beyond the scope of getting the core functionality to work. It is something I'll look into, but it has a lower priority than completing the testing of the code against the modules and also deploying and setting up the sites I built this thing for in the first place.

What I can and will do is ask Brian Tinsman for permission to include the section of vbAdvanced's installer code that rewrites URL's and image paths. It should work for this project as well with minor tweaking, but he owns that code and I cannot use it without his permission.

[VivaLaPinkowitz]

Themes aside, it seemed that none of the modules were working due to the broken URL's. Do you think the fact that the forums were hosted on a subdomain could be the issue? Would it be easier to just install it as a subdirectory?

[Michael Morris]

All testing was done with a subdirectory arrangement, but having them in separate directories shouldn't break modules. Anyway, which modules where broken. I'm not sure it's possible to break ALL of them, some are too dirt simple.

[VivaLaPinkowitz]

I just recall anything in the top panel would not work. I recall that few on the side panel didn't as well. But I think the cause of that was probably the subdomain installation. I'll give it another shot when I'm at my computer again. XD

[Michael Morris]

The "top panel" -- if you mean the navbar that's because that's a template that belongs to vbulletin. The default side menu items are just that - defaults - and they are meant for a clean Joomla installation without vbulletin. My goal in this is to get the single most difficult and technical hurdle out of the way - the actual bridging of code. Anything beyond that is time consuming, but relatively simple to work out if you know a little html.