Forums and Concrete5
Permalink
Is there any simple, free way to connect [i]any[/i] forum software to Concrete5?
I'm about to start a forum on my site, which is using Concrete5, and would like to find out what forum software all of you are using and how you got it setup to play nice with Concrete5.
I was thinking about using a SimpleMachines forum. But, I don't know how easy that would be to get it to work well with Concrete5.
I'm about to start a forum on my site, which is using Concrete5, and would like to find out what forum software all of you are using and how you got it setup to play nice with Concrete5.
I was thinking about using a SimpleMachines forum. But, I don't know how easy that would be to get it to work well with Concrete5.
Yeah...
$55 dollars for a forum that I can get for free using SMF or phpBB3. Lol, no.
Anyways...
$55 dollars for a forum that I can get for free using SMF or phpBB3. Lol, no.
Anyways...
You can probably just have the forum software sitting in a subdirectory of your c5 installation and then you just link to it. It's more work for you (you end up having to maintain two themes) and the client will have two logons; one for c5 and one for the forum. I do this with a wordpress blog integrated into my own c5 site, so I know it wouldn't be too difficult to do this with bbpress (which is very close to wordpress).
It is one of the few short comings to me at this time. There is no bridge that I know of and the forum in the Marketplace falls well short of free forums like SMF, PHPBB3, and even Vanilla. If it was half the cost or included many more features I would consider it.
I have started looking at developing a different forum for C5, but I am still in the planning phase building the schema and seeing which current core blocks to make use of. So it will be a while.
So short answer you either have to pay $55 for a ready made, but feature limited forum or do work to maintain two separate scripts. Depends on which is worth more to you.
I have started looking at developing a different forum for C5, but I am still in the planning phase building the schema and seeing which current core blocks to make use of. So it will be a while.
So short answer you either have to pay $55 for a ready made, but feature limited forum or do work to maintain two separate scripts. Depends on which is worth more to you.
would you know how to integrate phpbb3 with c5? Vanilla forums isn't as feature rich as phpbb3, and by far the phpbb3 package is outstanding. I would rather donate to c5 vs buying the limited forums if they made a simple way to integrate othe forums. All of the posts and ways to integrate phpbb3 to c5 logins is simply dead. So far the best I've been able to do is use dynamic iframe to make it at least acceptable, it looks/acts integrated however user logins are completely separate.
Please check this
there is vanilla bridge
http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/vanilla-forums/...
there is vanilla bridge
http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/vanilla-forums/...
If you're a developer, you can try integrating Vanilla Forums -- they have a single signon plugin called "ProxyConnect" which theoretically allows Vanilla Forums and Concrete5 to share logged in users.
I tried setting this up myself but ran into several problems (noticed a lot of people having problems with the latest version of the plugin so hopefully it will be fixed soon).
If you're not a developer, then there isn't much in the way of free off-the-shelf integrated forums for concrete5 (unfortunately). If you can wait few weeks hopefully I'll be able to get this Vanilla Forums thing working (but no promises -- depends on if they get all their bugs fixed over there).
-Jordan
I tried setting this up myself but ran into several problems (noticed a lot of people having problems with the latest version of the plugin so hopefully it will be fixed soon).
If you're not a developer, then there isn't much in the way of free off-the-shelf integrated forums for concrete5 (unfortunately). If you can wait few weeks hopefully I'll be able to get this Vanilla Forums thing working (but no promises -- depends on if they get all their bugs fixed over there).
-Jordan
I have made a quick single page which allows login integration with vanilla forums. So far, only the login works, I need to work on neatening it up as that it redirects on login correctly (currently just returns to homepage) and so that logging out of c5 also logs out of vanilla (currently logging out of vanilla logs out of both).
To test create a single page with the following code:
Edit to include your own secret (can be anything, just prevents the vanilla integration code appearing to users) and change 'yourforumurl' then upload to ./single-pages and put a copy in your theme folder (must not be themed and this is the easiest way to overwrite the theme).
Install the ProxyConnect plugin to vanilla and set up as explained in the settings. Authenticate url must behttp://urltoyoursingle-page/?secret=yoursecret...
I will write a proper plugin once I have neatened up the redirect and cookie issues but this will get you up and running for the time being.
To test create a single page with the following code:
<?php defined('C5_EXECUTE') or die("Access Denied."); ?> <?php if ($_GET["secret"] =='yoursecret' ) { global $u; if ($u -> isLoggedIn ()) { $u = new User(); $ui = UserInfo::getByID($u->getUserID()); echo "UniqueID=" . $ui->getUserID() . "\nName=" . $ui->getUserName() . "\nEmail=" . $ui->getUserEmail(); } } else { header( 'Location:http://yourforumurl/' ) ; }
Viewing 15 lines of 16 lines. View entire code block.
Edit to include your own secret (can be anything, just prevents the vanilla integration code appearing to users) and change 'yourforumurl' then upload to ./single-pages and put a copy in your theme folder (must not be themed and this is the easiest way to overwrite the theme).
Install the ProxyConnect plugin to vanilla and set up as explained in the settings. Authenticate url must behttp://urltoyoursingle-page/?secret=yoursecret...
I will write a proper plugin once I have neatened up the redirect and cookie issues but this will get you up and running for the time being.
I'd be really interested in a detailed how-to for this in our documentation -> how-tos section. That's be great.
Note that 12345J has made a free addon for Vanilla forums integration:
http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/vanilla-forums/...
http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/vanilla-forums/...
Hard coding "xyz forums" into concrete5 page is not that difficult. It's connecting the users that is the issue.
maybe you can make add on for PHPBB, as many are request this
Hi, Vapor,
Can you still read here ?
I'm decided to brige c5 (7.4.2) with SMF (2.1b2)- The 2 last versions...
With 2 very different scripting models... (One is clearly POO, and use several librairies...And what for a fabulous ability that Intext-Editing ! The other very strange... About 100 php files [Again about more than 400 for phpBB!!!!] And use nearly just functions, a lot of functions in a same file... But the efficience is uncredible... The team on Github is very active...).
Then, I need help, no for code (But possible with GitHub), for ideas about organisations on the future interface...
If someone is interested to contribute, then come and write in the forum of concrete5.fr...
To soon,
GrCOTE7
Can you still read here ?
I'm decided to brige c5 (7.4.2) with SMF (2.1b2)- The 2 last versions...
With 2 very different scripting models... (One is clearly POO, and use several librairies...And what for a fabulous ability that Intext-Editing ! The other very strange... About 100 php files [Again about more than 400 for phpBB!!!!] And use nearly just functions, a lot of functions in a same file... But the efficience is uncredible... The team on Github is very active...).
Then, I need help, no for code (But possible with GitHub), for ideas about organisations on the future interface...
If someone is interested to contribute, then come and write in the forum of concrete5.fr...
To soon,
GrCOTE7
http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/discussion/...
It is not free however. So, in essence, no, there isn't a free solution along the line of what you're asking for (at least that I know of).
I haven't tried to integrate any other kind of forum software with Concrete5. To my knowledge, there aren't many projects that try to integrate the two—such as C5 with phpBB3.
If your situation is such that it doesn't matter if the users don't share the same database, you can have a C5 site wrapped around a forum site (think of putting something like phpBB3 in an iframe on a Concrete5 page). You would have to have your users register separately on the Concrete5 site and the forum installation, but this is not a major hassle (at least in my opinion).