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.

[Michael Morris]

Beta 0.0.2 introduces a major change in how Joomla handles modules. Traditionally Joomla wraps module content in one of 4 wrappers - div, 3 div, table or raw. The code of frontend.php and frontend.html.php has been rewritten so that now Joomla calls the vbulletin template engine to perform the wrapping process. The exact wrap used depends on which module position was used. The tradeoff (for the moment) is the moduleclass suffix is ignored. However this allows for much more powerful templating of the module blocks than CSS can hope to offer. It also moves the control of the module appearance fully into the vbulletin template engine which I'll wager will be more familiar to users than Joomla's engine anyway.

Tomorrow night I will do the same thing to Joomla's com_content component. Most Joomla content goes through this component so that should complete the skinning process - just keep in mind that 3rd party modules may use wildly different schema for populating their content block.

Also progress is being made on the module to view recent threads out of the vbulletin database. For those familiar with vbAdvanced you'll find most of the same options in the Joomla version of the latest topics module - but one major difference is the Joomla version will have a caching system so that instead of loading the recent threads on each view of the thread list at set intervals. This is for large boards like ENWorld where such queries can slow down the system noticeably.

[Quantnet]

Keep very close watch on this.
I had joomla for a year or so before i got too tired of it. Integration is the worst. Template is another problem.

Now, look forward to seeing this to fruition.

[Robru]

Thanks for this super job

[project-Buckfas]

Very interested in this. I haven't been able to find a decent bridge so far. This looks promising!

[memomemo]

Hello my setup this vJoomla beta 0 0 2 but dont work home page.

http://www.forumsitesi.info/index.php

Adminpage working only homepage dont work.
Please help

Thank you

[kartik786]

Does ths work with 3.6.4 ?

[Reeve of shinra]

Anyone have a good example of using joomla (integrated or not) as a "____ of the month" type thing?

[RedGTiVR6]

Originally Posted by Michael Morris

bbpixel hacks both Joomla and vbulletin. It merges then mirrors the user database and allows logins from both sides. This hacking means that every single time either product updates you have to reinstall the hack.

bbpixel doesn't bridge the template engines - therefore if you want a site to have a unified look and feel you have no choice but to skin the thing TWICE. vJoomla uses vbulletin's template engine and throws away Joomla's master template engine (modules can however still call and use patTemplate to build their content).

bbpixel is more mature than vJoomla having been around for a couple years. I'm working to get most of the same functionality in place as quickly as possible. The main obstacle - getting the bridge itself to work, has been accomplished.

These are the main differences. For the record I purchased bbpixel and was vastly disappointed in their customer service and how they implemented the bridge, so I wrote my own.

Thank you very much for your explination!

It's a good thing the bbpixel bridge only cost $20.

From my research, it seemed as if it was the only viable option out there.

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread religiously!

[RedGTiVR6]

Originally Posted by mclark2112

Wow, can't wait until this is fully released...

WHat about a module for having new articles create threads in vB?

this would be the pot at the end of the rainbow!

[kartik786]

can someone tell me if it works on 3.6.4 , so that i can have the pleasure of using this mod on my board