Zikula Community

• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Freshman
  • Registered: Mar 16, 2002
  • Last visit: Jul 26, 2008
  • Posts: 61

  Posted: Jan 10, 2008 - 03:30 AM

  Hello
  
  Just an update to my previous described SMF forum connection for postnuke.
  
  You can see an nearly finished example here: http://88.198.46.59/
  
  This time we have mirrored our main page forum data from pnphpbb2
  to it with >50k thread and 7.5k users.
  
  You can login to the website using user "test" with password "testme".
  Its just a test mirror, you can't destroy anything.
  
  Its complete remote controled by postnuke by a shared session & login
  procedure. All profile and acocunt things are controled from postnuke too,
  checkout the profile button on the main page.
  
  Because SMF is not send through the postnuke theme and module engine, SMF
  still thinks it exists on its own. All plugins are working, all SMF things
  works like on a standalone implementation. PN and SMF share the same DB but
  with different prefix.
  
  The session trick seems to work flawless, we don't had any problem reports
  in our test phase.
  
  A really cool goodie: On the upper right side in the header area are 3 small
  icons. They are connected to the theme changer of postnuke. I created the current
  theme in 3 versions (in fact only the margin command in the body is different):
  800x600 and 1000x fixed and a fluid one.
  
  As you can see, it even works from SMF, the session/user settings are reached over.
  Just the trick to referr back to the page where you clicked on theme change is a
  small hack in the user API of postnuke.
  
  To mention it: when you are in the forum, the whole theme is a SMF theme.

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• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Freshman
  • Registered: Mar 16, 2002
  • Last visit: Jul 26, 2008
  • Posts: 61

  Posted: Jan 10, 2008 - 03:49 AM

  Ah, just to avoid confusion: The header area of the template is not finished.
  The "logout" button in the forum will force a page error on purpose - thats the
  right behaviour. Every "real" logout should go over the postnuke site and logout
  there the user. The button is there only for testing and will redirect/changed
  later.

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• Arthens
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
  • Registered: Mar 29, 2005
  • Last visit: Mar 13, 2010
  • Posts: 228

  Posted: Jan 10, 2008 - 06:32 AM

  Really interesting!
  
  What did you do for the profile?
  Is a PN's Profile module's hook that update the smf-table on every profile update?
  
  Are you going to release it? When?
  
  --
  Zikula Italia
  SimpleGallery

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• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Freshman
  • Registered: Mar 16, 2002
  • Last visit: Jul 26, 2008
  • Posts: 61

  Posted: Jan 10, 2008 - 07:24 AM

  I explained the technical parts some time ago here as i was in developing:
  http://community.postnuke.com/module-Forum-viewtopic-topic-53332-highlight-smf.htm
  
  The update works with a simple hook (aka a function call) i patched in to the system/Profile
  API. Because the apis are pretty clean, there is only one point you have to do it.
  
  As you can see the implementation needs a bit work but is really only a handful code and changes,
  simple to apply to like 5 files in SMF itself and 2-3 hooks in postnuke.
  
  The harder point is the change of the entry file for postnuke and the redirect to the installation
  point of SMF.
  
  What you get is a very, very safe installation which is near the max in terms of performance
  what you can get in sync 2 apps. Its superior to a bridge in any way. And, as it shows, it
  works clean and smooth (thats was indeed the reason i wrote it because the known bridges are
  just to insecure or slow).
  
  Not to mention that low level plugins like the SMF SEO patch and the whole Ajax stuff works,
  which is often distorted when you lunch it through a bridge or in a iframe.
  
  
  
  edited by: michtoen, Jan 10, 2008 - 07:24 PM

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• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Helper
  • Registered: Mar 16, 2002
  • Last visit: May 18, 2010
  • Posts: 985

  Posted: Jan 10, 2008 - 12:27 PM

  Indeed, I always followed it up...
  Pretty nice.
  Do I dare to ask?
  - why not phpBB?
  - why not pnForum?
  - why Simple Machines Forum?
  Please, for other people who want to get into this, I'm asking michtoen, there has been enough discussions about the pro's and con's concering fora before, use the search button in this matter.
  
  I have two SMF's running, and I always liked too, but I just liked to know.
  
  Thank you for the effort to bridge it!!!
  
  - Igor
  
  
  
  edited by: videokid, Jan 11, 2008 - 01:28 AM

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• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Freshman
  • Registered: Mar 16, 2002
  • Last visit: Jul 26, 2008
  • Posts: 61

  Posted: Jan 11, 2008 - 04:35 AM

  Well, in my opinion the forum modules are pretty good for smaller websites and/or tech forums like this forum.
  
  We have a gaming site with their special community.
  I showed our forum mods SMF and some other forums and nearly everyone voted for SMF. To have a "full size, standalone" forum (which shares the DB of course) makes more sense for sites like Daimonin.
  
  Even Landseer will growl now again: pnForum and pnphpBB2 ARE limited because they are "only" modules. Their strength is also their weakness. SMF or other full projects have simply a bigger man power behind them by nature.
  
  Its the same difference between for example Coppermine and M. Gallery and our gallery modules. Or you say: "why is postnuke better as tinyportal (the SMF CMS plugin)?". Well, the answer is the same - because its just a plugin.
  
  Thats not question of "better or worse". For smaller websites with like 100 or 1000 user and with posts in same numbers, SMF or another standalone forum is just oversized. There pnForum is superior.
  
  The community is another point of course. For the "debian tech support" for example i would install Drupal with their build in simple forum they have there. Perfect, fast & easy.
  You will not hear from a debian user searching support for the latest grep version a comment about "looks bad" or something.
  
  We as a game community have of course a total different type of user.
  
  I use phpBB2 on work for event forums. Simple to use and good but SMF is one step over them - my personal opinion. ITs hard to tell in detail why and where but nearly all our forum mods aggreed.
  
  Again: I think that from 10 forums which get installed with postnuke only 1 or 2 even should think about this kind of session bridge. In most cases pnForum or the pnphpBB2 should fit their needs better.
  
  When i have one bad point: In 2005 to 2007 the pnphpBB2 project was partly on hold and/or pretty slow in dev & support. That gaves us a very bad feeling. Even mroe when you have an growing website using that kind of software. There was bug reports on the original phpBB2 project which was fixed in pnphpBB2 pretty late. Not sure that was really a security issue but its a possible source.
  
  And again: I don't say they did a bad job. Thats also a problem by nature. The module team for a single module will never have the man power of SMF. They don't get paid, they are perhaps in holidays... Thats something which you must accept when you use open source on that level.
  
  Because we have an paypal shop on our website, security is a big point and focus on modules/projects which have a big team and ensure progress and security is important.
  
  I trust there postnuke as project alot (thats one reason we stayed in "harder times" to postnuke) but for a criticial site part like the forum we need the same.
  
  This kind of bridge which ensures the integrity of the standalone application will give us that. That was in fact a main reason i did the work.
  
  A last point is of course the massive and pretty good collection of plugins. For example are there SEO plugins which are hand forged for the forum. Or a plugin showing in posts world of warcraft items as popups - which can be changed for our needs. Of course can you say "we can do that for postnuke and forum xyz too". But first it needs time, it needs support too and why develop something which is already there ready to use?
  
  The last argument: Perhaps we want/need to change the forum or the CMS. The still clean parted DBs make changes easy.

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• Arthens
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
  • Registered: Mar 29, 2005
  • Last visit: Mar 13, 2010
  • Posts: 228

  Posted: Mar 18, 2008 - 11:06 PM

  Hi michtoen,
  
  how did you mirrored your users from PNphpBB2 to smf?
  Did you upgrade postnuke .764 -> .8 and PNphpBB2 -> SMF separately and then installed the bridge?
  Please let me know, because I'm going to do the same.
  I'd like to use your awesome integration for my site
  
  --
  Zikula Italia
  SimpleGallery

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