postnuke-vbulletin together at last!

[dreamhost]

I have also looked into many diff cms throughout the years. I ended up choosing postnuke as my cms of choice. The only problem I found was that phpbb really didn't have the power that vbulletin has. I then looked at the vbulletin cms, but that was so lacking in the type of modules that I needed that I droped that as well. So we decided to to build a script-connector for the two applications.

My main focus was to not touch the core of postnuke or vbulletin at all, that way updating is easy and would not mess up my system. The only changes are a few include statements to the vb files themselves that make the call to the script connectors.

It took a few months to get everything working the way I wanted it to, but finally we have vbulletin as a "true" module for postnuke. Next we will tackle turning photopost into a module. There is nothing wrong with the way that photopost grabs the header/footer info from vbulletin, but that's quite weak in my opinion, especially if you are trying to maintain the same look and feel throughout the entire website. I suspect that photopost will be totally finished within the week. Just need to fix their horrible authentication code.

Here is a list of requirements that I had before starting.
1. I wanted only one registration system for both pn/vb, we chose to use vb as it's much better, and more easilly modified.
2. I wanted only one login for both systems. Sites that run 2 separate engines that require diff logins or even diff user/pass are just plain tacky.
3. I wanted the system to recognize that if someone changed their profile information in vb that it would reflect the changes in pn. Things like if a person changes their password, it should auto change in both systems.
4. I wanted a seamless integration of vb into postnuke so that the header/left navigation/footer from postnuke would show properly on all vb pages. NO, iframes were not used, that's even tackier.... LOL
5. I wanted a true postnuke block to display the most recent threads on the pn homepage
6. I wanted built in group switching, so that if i promote a person to moderator in the forums, they also become a moderator in the postnuke side, or vice versa
7. I wanted spider friendly url's for at least the top level cats and threads.

Basically when you narrow it all down, I wanted to make vbulletin into a module for postnuke without really having to touch either system code wise, as we upgrade each time there is one.

If you would like to see it in action goto
www.annointed.net/Forums.htm
username maytest11 password newbie

Please respect that this is a live site.

[Boofo]

That looks good. Are you planning on releasing it?

[dreamhost]

Originally Posted by Boofo

That looks good. Are you planning on releasing it?

I have not really considered it yet as I have only just now finished the complete integration.
I was mostly just curious on wether this would even be something in demand or not. I have seen other "bridges" that share user information, but to the best of my knowledge my system is the only real "module".
It seems to me that most people here are so against postnuke, saying it's to heavy etc.. All I can really say about that is we have had as many as 1534 people online at one time and our server load was nowhere near it's peak.

[Boofo]

Have you checked it to see what kind of query load it has (how many queries)? I'd be interested in it, anyway.

[dreamhost]

Originally Posted by Boofo

Have you checked it to see what kind of query load it has (how many queries)? I'd be interested in it, anyway.

How to check?
Obviously it would be totally diff depending upon wether you are loading just the vb/pn page or if loading the full pn site itself, like the homepage.

[Tony G]

Great main page. Looks good. Well done.

[insanctus]

Very nice look and looks well intergrated.... I like

[dreamhost]

Originally Posted by insanctus

Very nice look and looks well intergrated.... I like

Thank you, I appreciate the compliments.

[filburt1]

The tabs are effectively copies of the ones from MSN...

[AlexanderT]

great work... must have taken you quite some time to integrate the two so well.