Drupal 5 and Drupal vb

Aye, I haven't really looked into it to see exactly how much needs to be tweaked. Fortunately, it's still just RC for Drupal 5.0... but I know that won't be the case for long. I'll see what I can do over the weekend. During the week I'm pretty tied up with Ubercart and other projects. : P

haha Yeah, I'm pretty inconsistent with my umlauts... On the site itself I try to use it where possible, but with links and titles and such Drupal escapes the Ü out to Ü. = P

I'll post here when it's updated for 5.0.

Roi Danton,

Did the Forum Activity (Recent threads/posts), Forum Info (Unread posts/private message links, users online), and Forum Admin (Forum stats tracking, Admin Panel link) work correctly?

Okay cool. The information is very helpful. I'm currently working with Ryan to get the new module done asap. The new module will be much better as it will have a plugin for vB as well. We are sticking to the same lines as before, no code changes or database changes. It will be a very smooth transition between the two and it should work nicely!

Yea! You have one more supporter!
Keep up the good work mate

Aye, the vB plugin will be a sorely needed addition to this module package. I have yet to test it, but he reports that it's nearing completion. I was trying to wait to apply another of valcker's patches before upgrading to 5.0, and I just haven't had the time. = ( Will get on it as soon as possible, and I'm going to email to get a copy of the plugin today.

Hey Mate!
First, don't =(, you're doing a great job - and quite a bit of people will benefit!
If you need testers for the Drupal 5 plugin (and its vB Counterpart), I'm more than willing to help (and provide access to installations)

Cheers!

A vb plugin :) Like if I already have a vBulletin forum I can plug into Drupal 5 and users can login into both with one username/password? This would be awesome. Again AWESOME. Have had vb for 4 years and been looking for a better CMS and finally am moving to Drupal 5 and not plugging into vB, just for static stuff and article publishing, but if I can connect the 2, oh boy what a site that would be. Good luck with the project, very excited to see how it comes along.

A vb plugin :) Like if I already have a vBulletin forum I can plug into Drupal 5 and users can login into both with one username/password? This would be awesome. Again AWESOME. Have had vb for 4 years and been looking for a better CMS and finally am moving to Drupal 5 and not plugging into vB, just for static stuff and article publishing, but if I can connect the 2, oh boy what a site that would be. Good luck with the project, very excited to see how it comes along.

Yes, that is exactly how it works.

The first alpha version is nearing completion. I have developed the plugin for Drupal 5.0 and vB 3.6.x+ but it may work for other versions as well. I know for Drupal 4.7 the Drupal module part of it will have to be coded a little different, but it will be a fairly painless task.

The unique thing about my plugin is that all user management will now be handled through vB. For example, if you want to delete a user, do it through vB and it will delete the user from Drupal as well. I've also managed to sync the logins up. This part took some time and work, but it was well worth it. When you log in it will automagically log you in for both Drupal and vB.

Still following the initial Drupal vB key points, no Drupal or vBulletin functionality will be sacrificed. I developed this program with compatibility in mind, meaning that future Drupal and vB releases will need little or no changes to be compatible. As I said I developed it for Drupal 5.0 and vB 3.6.x+, but I will release a backwards compatible version not long after.

As of now the following functionality is already complete, tested, and ready for release:

• Register user at both Drupal and Forums
• Deleting a user
• Update email via Usercp
• Update password via Usercp
• Update timezone via Usercp
• Change username via Admincp
• Logout at Drupal when you logout at forums
• Login to forums automagically logs user into Drupal
• Update timezone via Admincp
• Reset password "Forgot Password"
• On install, create table "users_backup" in Drupal database, truncate the "users" tabe, dump current vB users and settings to Drupal

I've still got some ideas on the back burner, but for now I'm focusing on finalizing this for release. The luxuries will come after :P

Sounds terrific TheOverclocked!

Question: Having the comments system be through vB, is that incorporated or planned?
the whole 'Add Comment' would be a thread, per node/article/news (not sure of the Drupal terminology, basically anything that u can comment on would have a thread) - one could configure the creation and maintainability of these threads (where they're created, by whom)

Mmm, Cheers

Dude this is awesome. Been holding off on Drupal for 6 months because of existing vb database. Now sounds like my 8,000 users will be sync'd to Drupal on install of your plugin. This rocks. Once I it's up, send me your address - I owe you many many a Guiness ;)

Last update for 4.7 has been committed. The core module will be updated to 5.0 by the end of the week, and we'll see what we can do to integrate it all with the plugin shortly thereafter. Thanks for your patience, everyone. : )

Well the time is soon! I've got the login form working so you now can login from either Drupal or the forums. I've added a new logout link in the menu as well which will log you out of both Drupal and the forums.

Oh and btw, the who's new block will work as is :P

http://stealth17.com/hosting/files/1/gkrellShoot_01-26-07_025816.png
http://stealth17.com/hosting/files/1/gkrellShoot_01-26-07_025913.png

-Jordan

I have yet to test out the vBulletin plug-in, but I finally had the time tonight to update the module to 5.x! It's available for download. I will open a separate issue that will hold future conversation about the vBulletin side plug-in.

I'm incredibly excited about this... thank you very very much. I've been planning an upcoming switch of my community to Drupal for several months now (Neverside.com, which currently runs on our own custom-coded system and has about 20,000 members) , and have been on the fence between vbDrupal and Drupal vB, or waiting for DruBB or another Drupal solution if it is ever released. Using a Drupal fork (vbDrupal) makes me rather uncomfortable (including some disturbing reports on performance), so I've always held out hope for Drupal vB and a fully modular approach :D

Anyhow, I wanted to thank you, and to tell you that you have my support in any way I can help. As another poster mentioned, if finances are needed to elevate this project to full success, count me in - I will gladly support this. In the future, I'll also be glad to lend the support of my development team once they have time to learn the system, and also encourage members in my programming/development forums to become proficient in the system so that they can lend a hand (which I think some will be happy to do, as any improvements will also benefit our community as well). At your discretion, it might be a good idea to inform the developers of vbDrupal about your new vBulletin plug-in, as you might be able to come up with some new ideas together to refine both projects.

I have a few quick questions if anyone might be able to clarify for me... these are not a big deal to me (the only must-have feature for me is the bi-directional sync between Drupal and vB accounts)... but if anyone has a moment to help clarify these other things for me that'd be terrific :)

• Is there any way to display a list of vBulletin thread titles (such as the top 10 most recent or most active) on a Drupal page (e.g. home page) or in a Drupal block? If so, is it possible to query vBulletin's actual database for the needed data to pull into Drupal without invoking the whole vB script to do it each time? (thinking about performance).
• Is there any way to display a Drupal block on vBulletin pages? (e.g. a random image from a Drupal photo gallery, news announcements, etc). Also just curious about this - I most likely would not do this.
• Is it possible to load a PHP Template-based Drupal theme around vBulletin? (this isn't critical really, as the only really dynamic aspect of my PHP Template theme is likely to be the menu, which I might end up hard-coding anyhow, so I can include the same header/footer around both Drupal and vBulletin via normal PHP includes). If there's a better way though I'll be glad to hear :)

Once again, thanks a million to everyone involved for your hard work on this. It is greatly appreciated by myself and many others, and I think it will make a big difference in convincing large high-traffic vBulletin-based communities in search of a CMS to seriously consider Drupal.

Hey, Keyz, thanks for stopping by. I certainly appreciate your support and enthusiasm. : )

The goal for Drupal vB was to be a lightweight integration, requiring no core changes to either Drupal or vBulletin and no unnecessary application loading. So, as it is right now, the module displays recent forum topics by pulling the post information directly from vBulletin's database. I think that answers your first question. There is actually an example in the function drupalvb_block of me loading the post information and displaying the title/poster. One problem someone else pointed out is that this method disregards viewing restrictions. So it's even pulling the data for hidden or restricted threads. It would be no problem to look at the vB code and find the right query to pull only the visible threads for the user (or guest) and display those in the block instead... I just haven't had time to do it.

Your last two questions are more vBulletin based, and I must confess I wrote the Drupal module for a vBulletin forum integration we never ended up using... so I never got around to modding the vBulletin side. I'm sure you read another developer is "plugging" away at that, and I'll be curious to see what he comes up with. It seems like it might diverge a little from the current Drupal vB module, so I'll check it out and let you know. It is totally possible to theme your vBulletin page, though, and the handbooks at drupal.org make it seem fairly easy to bootstrap Drupal and display content. So feasibly, you could develop a vBulletin theme that would display the header and sidebar information from Drupal, but I honestly don't know what that would look like. They did it with vbdrupal, so we'd have to turn to them for advice.

Sorry guys, I haven't got the plugin released because I ran into a bit of a wall.

If the admin userid is not '1' in vB then the system breaks. Drupal has a rather ignorant admin authorization system, it just assumes the admin userid is going to be 1. Most generally that is true, but not for everyone (myself being one lol).

From what it looks like now the only way to fix it is with some hefty database changes on the vB side, or with some huge hacking of Drupal files.

I've got some ideas peculating on the issue and I've been working hard all night trying to come up with a good fix. I will keep you all updated in this thread, so stay tuned.

Again I apologize for the delay, hopefully it will be resolved soon!

-Jordan

@Roi... that's what I'm curious about. hehe I was hoping someone might right a vB plug-in that could provide the reverse functionality of Drupal vB, and we could integrate the two. I'm still not sure, as I haven't seen any code. : P

@Overclocked... you should use user_access to determine if a user has admin priveleges, not just rely on uid. If you look in drupalvb.module, you'll notice the function drupalvb_perm already defines an access permission for "administer drupalvb." If you're bootstrapping Drupal, then user_access('administer drupalvb') will return TRUE or FALSE depending on that person's role... (user_access() will always return TRUE for account 1)

On a side note... I'm not willing or prepared to just wipe this module and go for a new one, as this does exactly what it was intended to do. I would love to have a matching vB plugin, I just never had the time to lookup how to do that. If you can send me a copy, I promise I would do nothing more than look at how you're using Drupal (which I know very well, as opposed to vB) and provide pointers/direction for you via email or chat. ^_^

Admin Problem: Maybe an "easy" way would be to determine which user has the first id and then exchange this user account with the admin account in vb user table.

That's what I'm working on now actually. Sure does sound "easy" but trust me, it's not easy at all :(

The problem is that the userid is in a lot of different tables and they would all have to be updated to reflect the changes. Sometimes a table (PM for example) will have fromuserid and fromusername. For what reason they have both I could not tell you.

Well all the above I have conquered and I have written the code to change it in any table automatically, even if it's a table a hack created and is not native to the vB database. Sounds great, right?

Not so fast. To do it the correct way you cannot simply UPDATE the userid column in the user table because it is an auto_increment field in MySql.

I am currently working on a fix for that as well. Once that is finished, changing the userid should be very easy (click of a button) and it will be done correctly so you don't fubar your database :P

Overclocked... you should use user_access to determine if a user has admin priveleges, not just rely on uid. If you look in drupalvb.module, you'll notice the function drupalvb_perm already defines an access permission for "administer drupalvb." If you're bootstrapping Drupal, then user_access('administer drupalvb') will return TRUE or FALSE depending on that person's role... (user_access() will always return TRUE for account 1)

That's what I planned on doing basically. I will just create a new role for admin since they say you should do that anyways. From what I understand, the userid=1 account is like "root" as in it overrides ALL privileges. In good practice you should not use it as an everyday account. Well this is what I'm told anyways....

And yeah the userid=1 dilemma needs to be dealt with still, hence my script for changing it in the vB database :)

I don't want throw in extra work for what already looks as though it will be a great mod, but I was wondering if this would will also work to populate civicrm when it's connected to Drupal5? Will civicrm, drupal and vbulletin all be able to share the same info?

I don't want throw in extra work for what already looks as though it will be a great mod, but I was wondering if this would will also work to populate civicrm when it's connected to Drupal5? Will civicrm, drupal and vbulletin all be able to share the same info?

Yessir, I don't see why not :)

I can't say either way for rszrama's module but the plugin I'm developing should work flawlessly :P

Status update for you guys too, I have finished the script for the whole UserID problem and now I'm just finishing the rest of the plugin. It's basically done now, I will be adding some features such as the comment system will be linked to vBulletin.

-Jordan

Great to hear, TheOverclocked! :)

Just to clarify, since I'm not certain from some of the recent posts... has everything still managed to remain fully modular (e.g. no hacking of Drupal and vBulletin core files)? That's pretty important to me (and likely to many who prefer "the Drupal way" as they say hehe) to keep the core files and databases unmodified to facilitate easier upgrades and compatibility with all the other Drupal contrib modules (for instance, with the Drupal fork vbDrupal, a variety of Drupal modules - and possibly vBulletin modules - are no longer compatible due to the changes... and though usually new releases for security/etc are completed reasonably quickly, it's not guaranteed... and major releases can be delayed quite a bit more - e.g. no Drupal 5 version as of yet). It also adds a tricky aspect to troubleshooting issues with Drupal or vBulletin themselves, and likely makes it difficult for Drupal and/or vBulletin support forums to offer their help when problems arise.

On the chance that core file/database changes "were" necessary, I'm hoping it might be possible in that event to have a "lite" edition of the plug-in that mainly has only the primary responsibility of uniting the two system's user databases in both directions. If core changes weren't needed then....er... completely ignore everything I've written so far haha ;)

On another note, thanks rszrama for your responses to my questions... it did indeed help :) Have you had an opportunity yet to preview TheOverclocked's vBulletin plug-in? Once you have, I'll be curious to hear your personal feedback about it (and can't wait to try it myself too, of course), and find out if the two plug-ins will be forming the long-term symbiotic relationship I'm hoping for :)

Again, I wanted to mention that I'll be happy to put in a financial contribution if that would help things get to the level of Drupal+vB nirvana we're all after :P If so, please just ask (rszama and TheOverclocked) and I'll be happy to contribute some funds (and perhaps if there are tools or procedures to facilitate it, more of us can work together to raise funds to a predetermined amount).

Thanks for your terrific work you guys - I'm very grateful for what you're doing here :)

@TheOverclocked: "I will be adding some features such as the comment system will be linked to vBulletin."

I realize the I am way late to the game here, but i hope that there will be a way to continue using Drupal's original comment system with your plugin. Plenty of people who wish to comment on a node want to do so at the same location versus being redirected to a Vb forum thread.

Awesome work guys. Anyway to play around with this new module? One without any of the new features you look to be working on? I just need something to connect the 2 user registration systems. Tried drupalvb but it's opposite direction as I have thousands already in VB that I need to hook into Drupal. Otherwise I might just use drupalvb for new regs and import old over to Drupal and have users reset password, though that would be a drag I think. Thanks again, look forward to testing it out.

Just to clarify, since I'm not certain from some of the recent posts... has everything still managed to remain fully modular (e.g. no hacking of Drupal and vBulletin core files)? That's pretty important to me (and likely to many who prefer "the Drupal way" as they say hehe) to keep the core files and databases unmodified to facilitate easier upgrades and compatibility with all the other Drupal contrib modules (for instance, with the Drupal fork vbDrupal, a variety of Drupal modules - and possibly vBulletin modules - are no longer compatible due to the changes... and though usually new releases for security/etc are completed reasonably quickly, it's not guaranteed... and major releases can be delayed quite a bit more - e.g. no Drupal 5 version as of yet). It also adds a tricky aspect to troubleshooting issues with Drupal or vBulletin themselves, and likely makes it difficult for Drupal and/or vBulletin support forums to offer their help when problems arise.

Sure has :) There is only ONE table created when you install the plugin through vBulletin; it's a table called "users_backup" in the Drupal database. It is merely a backup of the "users" table in the Drupal database incase you had users already signed up in Drupal, you won't loose them. If you ever want to uninstall the plugin (I can't foresee that ^.^) it will delete the users that the plugin added from vBulletin and restore the old backup users.

File wise there are no necessary changes. The only thing I would recommend is a simple change in the user.module file to disable the "edit" link in the My Account panel. Since all user settings are handled by vBulletin, if a user edited their profile in the My Account panel it would not update at vBulletin. Don't get me wrong, it all works still and it's not completely necessary, but to eliminate the possibility of the password not syncing, I recommend to make the change. I will have it all documented and I'll even give you the file to use so you don't have to make any changes yourself. It's a very minor edit anyways, only one short line and no functionality is sacrificed for other modules. As for the profile in vBulletin, they can edit it all day long and the changes will take place at both vBulletin and Drupal :)

No compatibility is sacrificed at all with Drupal or vBulletin. There *may* be a rare case but I cannot see any way which would cause such a situation. The only reason I say this is because I obviously can't test every module/plugin so I can't guarantee everything, but I designed the plugin with complete compatibility in mind.

I realize the I am way late to the game here, but i hope that there will be a way to continue using Drupal's original comment system with your plugin. Plenty of people who wish to comment on a node want to do so at the same location versus being redirected to a Vb forum thread.

Oh for sure. vBulletin plugins are grouped together to make a "product." My plugin will actually be called a product in vBulletin when you install it, and if you browse out of the product manager and into the plugin manager you will see about 8 plugins listed for the product. When I finish the luxury features such as the comment system, if you would like to use it you simply install the single plugin rather then the whole product which installs many plugins at once. I like to do it this way so that those who only want the basics don't have to add the extras unless they want.

I haven't began development on the comment system yet, but I plan to keep the comments within Drupal, but they will be mirrored in a vBulletin forum since it's the only way to do it without modifications. You will have the choice to make the forum visible or not visible, so as an end-user there would be no way of knowing the comments are actually going into a vBulletin forum :)

Awesome work guys. Anyway to play around with this new module? One without any of the new features you look to be working on? I just need something to connect the 2 user registration systems. Tried drupalvb but it's opposite direction as I have thousands already in VB that I need to hook into Drupal. Otherwise I might just use drupalvb for new regs and import old over to Drupal and have users reset password, though that would be a drag I think. Thanks again, look forward to testing it out.

I'm not sure if you are referring to rszrama's module or my vBulletin plugin. If you are talking about the plugin, it has not been publicly released yet. I finished up the coding aspect of it last night and there were about three of us testing the snot out of it. I've installed it on freshly installed vBulletin forums and three production forums with active members. The production forums had anywhere from 200-2000 users already registered and my plugin installed without a hitch.

No need to have users reset their password with my plugin, it will all be synced up automatically on install :)

So now the question you all want the answer to:

When is the plugin going to be released??

I've begun documenting the plugin extensively and I will have enough done for other to know how to install the plugin by the end of the week. Just hang in there for a few more days, it's well worth it!!

Thanks a million TheOverclocked... everything sounds like it's going to turn out amazing. The optional file edit you mentioned seems like no problem and should be easy for a coding wanna-be such as myself to maintain in future upgrades. I'm also very excited about the flexible installation options you mentioned that will help us streamline the features to just what we need - brilliant :) Thank you also for the documentation you're writing, as that will make it a lot easier for my development team and me to lend a hand for future patches and upgrades if you need it.
I'll be happy to test the plug-in and search for any bugs on my system as soon as you're ready to release it. Your plug-in and rszrama's Drupal module are looking like they'll be the ideal Drupal-centric vBulletin integration we've all been hoping for :)

Thank you both, and everyone else involved for making this possible.

Just a quick comment that I'd love for discussion on this vBulletin product to continue, but please take future posts and questions to the appropriate issue. This issue is fixed and now closed.

Go to: http://drupal.org/node/114431