phpBB integration

By transwarptim on 19 Dec 2004 at 05:46 UTC

First of all, I'd like to say how impressed I am with Drupal. It has a lot of great features and runs well on my server. Keep up the good work!

I've done a search in the forums and know this has come up before, but I wanted to know if anyone is working on writing/merging phpBB as a module for Drupal?

phpBB also seems to set the standard for forums (Free ones anyway) and an awefull lot of people use it. I have yet to frind a free one that rivals it in features and performance. vBulleten and Invision Power Board are the only two I have found that come close or beat it and they both cost money.

I understand that people are reluctant to write it into the CMS itself. I've had a discussion about it in another forum. However, I'd still like to see something done for those of us who use it and want to use Drupal.

I don't mean to criticize, but the forum module that comes with Drupal is wholely inadiquate for large complex forums and lacks many features (even if you install notification, post count, and other contrib modules).

I am currently developing a site in Drupal but need to keep my forums as they are. For the time being I have deactivated user registration in Drupal and shut off some of the features like commenting and set others to allow input from unauthenticated users (not a good idea I know).

Ideallly phpBB should run as a module sharing a user table in the database, adding things as needed but having the forum ignore anything it does not need. (does this make sense? I don't come from a programming background.). I'm talking about bridging the two together, not writing phpBB into it to replace it's exisitng features (other than the forum module, and a couple things that exist only as contrib modules, that is).

Thanks in advance.

Thank you,

Tim

Comments

a very welcome module

Lam0r commented 20 December 2004 at 08:22

I thought I'd post my reply to show my support and interest. It would be virtualy impossible for me to get this job done, i'd really appreciate if the dev-teams considered working on this module. Thanks

me wanna PHPBB ? why not?

centipod commented 18 April 2006 at 19:22

I have been running 4.6.0 and I turned off the forum.

And I put up a phpbb2 site instead. The reason is the users wanted a private group for their executive committee where they could discuss "inside the business" issues, but most other of their forums are public.

Maybe 4.7 will be better, but somehow I have doubts because modules lag base releases. And the forum is soooooooooo bad I find it difficult to read through drupal support forums. Not meaning to be critical. But the features of phpbb2, in spite of the admin being quirky, far far far far outweigh drupal forums. But many organizations I belong to have migrated to vbulletin and other such tools, and they apparently PAY MONEY for them because (one assumes) phpbb lagged behind in something. Its the beauty of the free market I'm not waitin' for the forum to turn into phpbb...not when phpbb2 is out there waiting to be used.

So, when someone says "integrate" I say GRRRRRRREAT!!!!!!

I don't know anybody working

killes@www.drop.org commented 20 December 2004 at 08:27

I don't know anybody working on such a module. Frankly, I don't expect any Drupal developer to show interest in working on this. We prefer to improve our own forum module.
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I also prefer the Drupal

iraszl commented 20 December 2004 at 14:47

I also prefer the Drupal forum to further improve, but I'd love to see someone developing a phpbb2Drupal converter. What does it take to make this happen? I have hundred bucks in advance for this feature. And, I'm sure there are many others who would kill for such a plug-in. If I had the knowledge I would do it myself, but unfortunately I don't even have the slightest idea. :( However I can offer to create a theme in return for a the phpbb2Drupal converter.
---
http://creativebits.org

phpbb2drupal

pamphile commented 4 November 2005 at 00:36

This is a very beta script I use to transfer PHPBB users to Drupal.

Your Drupal user database should be bare. I suggest using it on a blank installations

This only transfers users...

http://drupalhacks.com/phpbb2drupal.txt

Marcel
free counter

There is nothing wrong with

transwarptim commented 20 December 2004 at 22:09

There is nothing wrong with improving your module, but like I said a lot of people use their own forun solution (phpBB, IPB, vBulletin, etc.) and users don't like change. Also in addition to the features it lacks the Drupal forum lacks one very inmportant thing: ease of use from the back end. I've read the directions on how to set up forum modules several times but was only able to get ONE forum set up and when I did the exact same thing for another id didn't show up.

doing this does not mean abandoning Drupal's forum module. You are simply giving people a choice an when your forum becomes more mature then people will be drawn to it and away from their other solution.

Thanks

Tim

Back end

killes@www.drop.org commented 21 December 2004 at 14:00

There have been patches to improve the setup process. Sadly nobody kept working on them (hint, hint).

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from what i'm seeing so far,

intel352 commented 22 December 2004 at 17:42

from what i'm seeing so far, drupal is very powerful, but it's administration seems a bit obfuscated, lol, and not just for the forums.

i agree with the other posters though, options should be provided. in the xoops community, many users (including myself) are a bit fed up with the official forum modules (Newbb1 & 2), so i have a project open, porting phpbb to xoops. i personally don't think phpbb is anywhere near as good as invisionboard, but invision board cannot be distributed without consent of the company, and i doubt they'll let that happen, especially as modified code.

once i get used to the administration system, i'll try to start digging into the code, to see if i can contribute in some way ;-)

well, none of the regular

sepeck commented 22 December 2004 at 18:17

well, none of the regular developers are interested in this. If anyone does do it, then I'm sure a contrib module will be welcome. If you go through the forum postings, you will see a lot of requests for it as well, but until someone steps up and codes it, it won't get done.

Integrating other projects is always interesting :)
http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/virusencyclo/default5.asp?VName=WORM_SAN...

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

crud, that's an interesting

intel352 commented 22 December 2004 at 19:02

crud, that's an interesting worm. they don't mention if this affects windows, linux, mac servers, or all of the above... it would be nice to know.

This silly worm does provide

killes@www.drop.org commented 22 December 2004 at 20:21

This silly worm does provide an excellent explanation why I won't ever start to integrate other people's scripts into Drupal. We just can't controll it.

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Okay I figured it out and

transwarptim commented 23 December 2004 at 06:05

Okay I figured it out and have forums working on my test install. I still think it's more complicated than it has to be, but ah well. I'm going to use it for a site which does not yet have an active phpBB forum on it but I still think it's lacking.

Question fof the developers: why aren't notifications and some of the other common contrib modules bundled with the tar installl archive? A lot of people consider this essential and it will take extra time installing them every time I put up a site (I plan thee drupal sites at the moment, possibly more.

Tim

minimalism

sepeck commented 23 December 2004 at 08:05

I don't use forums myself. The site I helped a friend setup that does use forums does not use/need/desire email notifications. So if all that extra junk came installed, he would be griping about bloat.

Drupal is really a framework. That stripped down setup helps keep Drupal lean. It also keeps the code base clean, which helps with bug hunts. It also helps keep contrib modules focused on doing one or two things well instead of trying to do five things so-so.

I have my modules that I commonly download and use, I just know when I setup a site to download dba, upload and phpTemplate. Everything else is dependant on the needs and goals of the site.

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

This worm affected like 40K

iraszl commented 23 December 2004 at 06:40

This worm affected like 40K phpbb sites. Many lost everything! :O
---
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yeah, i ported phpbb 2.0.9

intel352 commented 26 December 2004 at 21:52

yeah, i ported phpbb 2.0.9 to my xoops installation awhile back, and my forums got hit by that worm. luckily, it wasn't able to do damage by defacing anything, because the way i engineered the port, too much was changed from the original phpbb version.

muwahaha

it DID take down my server, but only because the /tmp folder filled up from the worm trying to make mysql queries, which made mmcache work overtime (which is what filled the /tmp folder). that was easily fixed.

In that case software you

Johnyp commented 4 September 2005 at 17:56

In that case software you write will be used by a small number of people who do know how to do this on their own.

Plus, you already have other's soft as modules...you didn't write it.

No one is asking for you to

transwarptim commented 23 December 2004 at 00:30

No one is asking for you to gut the existing software, we would just like a bridge between the two where they share the same user table in the database and possibly a common profine and theme but that is not as important.

Ideally you would have to change a minimum of code so that we could do our own patches of the forum module ourselves (minus a file or two that had the bridge code in it).

I don't care if I have two admin interfaces (one for Drupal and one for phpBB) as long as the users (and hopefully the profiles but not necessarily) are the same.

I'm perfectly fine with having the forum physically separate from the main Drupal site

www.mysite.com/forum
forum.mysite.com/

insted of:

www.mysite.com/?q=fporum

Actually it would be better that way for updates sake.

Thanks,

Tim

As I said in my

sepeck commented 23 December 2004 at 03:44

As I said in my post.

This is an oft requested feature. None of the regular developers have historically been interested in doing this. If anyone comes up with such a module, I am sure that it will be a welcome addition to the contrib modules.

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

I'd love to be able to

fillstorer commented 8 January 2005 at 00:07

I'd love to be able to integrate my phpbb forums.. i think that would push me over the edge to use this cms.

just my two cents.. if there is a petition.. i'll sign it.

Petition?

Steven commented 8 January 2005 at 00:20

What exactly would a petition achieve? Drupal is open-source software written by volunteers. None of the main developers are interested in integrating phpBB because phpBB is not designed to be integrated. The code is low-quality, insecure and unstructured. Its template system is not designed for easy modification.

Drupal can already do everything phpBB does, as long as you install the right modules. Forum.module offers the discussion forum only, there are modules available for e-mail notices, bbcode, private messages, smileys, etc. These modules will integrate completely with the rest of Drupal, in ways that the monolithic phpBB could never do.

phpbb provides easier setup

intel352 commented 8 January 2005 at 05:50

phpbb provides easier setup & arrangement of categories, forums, administrative abilities over individual threads & posts (split, merge, etc), group permission per forum, group permissions to post, edit, reply, attach.

drupal is much more of a pain to configure the same settings (for the areas that it even covers)

so phpbb is actually more developed, and drupal forums canNOT do everything phpbb can. it comes close, but the ease of use isn't there, nor is the administrative capabilities.

Contributions welcome.

sepeck commented 8 January 2005 at 06:14

No regular Drupal developer has expressed a willingness to work on this integration. None are interested in this. They see that improving Drupal's own forums would be better in the long run (not subject to those pesky phpBB vulnerabilities).

Now, if someone wants features that are not currently available, contributions are welcome. Even (probably) a module that would integrate the authentication part, but again it needs someone willing to work on it. It is unlikely to happen unless someone new comes along actually willing to work on it.

Perhaps it would be better to improve Drupal forums with the requested features.

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

Drupal can already do

iraszl commented 8 January 2005 at 12:27

Drupal can already do everything phpBB does, as long as you install the right modules.

I tend to realize this is true as I learn more and more about Drupal. However, I really want to see how to create an area in the forum which can only be accessed by a certain group of users. Like a VIP forum section? Tx!
---
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I think you'll have to look

xand commented 8 January 2005 at 13:48

I think you'll have to look at node privacy byrole...

http://drupal.org/project/node_privacy_byrole

I have thanks! Does it allow

iraszl commented 8 January 2005 at 17:20

I have thanks! Does it allow the assign permissions to a certain taxonomy or just nodes? As far as I could figure out it's only the nodes, so I can create a hidden thread in a forum, but I can't hide a whole forum. Is that correct?
---
http://creativebits.org

The code is low-quality,

solipsist commented 2 November 2005 at 12:40

The code is low-quality, insecure and unstructured. Its template system is not designed for easy modification.

Gee, that deserves to be stamped "pure bs". Every major and popular piece of software has its share of vulnerabilities and people who don't update always run a risk. phpBB has a way better security history than both vB and IPB to mention some.

I think it's wrong and also rather stupid to ignore phpBB and pretend you can make Drupal forums better. phpBB is great at what it does, Drupal can never compete with it nor can phpBB compete with Drupal. All people ask for is a way to use them together and that's smart, taking the best of both.

As for making them work together, it's no biggie, it just takes some coding talent. If just someone wanted to do it hard enough...

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I agree with you

ovidiuweb commented 11 February 2006 at 18:04

I prefer PHPBB too.

BinaryThunder.Com - Scripts collection and resources

I prefer the way in which it

daniel.hunt commented 11 February 2006 at 18:32

I prefer the way in which it works (in comparison the Drupal's forum), I just don't prefer _it_

Which is why I developer my own forum for drupal.

All "PHPBB+Drupal" needs is someone dedicated enough to developing the integration code needed. The hassle, however, is finding that person.

Well you got the module by

solipsist commented 11 February 2006 at 20:30

Well you got the module by Arne Kepp, it works great. Only problem I've got is the auto login on both Drupal and phpBB but I think I'll the session synching it until he gets it working properly. People will have to relogin for phpBB but that's it.

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That's not such a problem

ovidiuweb commented 15 February 2006 at 20:13

Is not so hard to relogin on phpbb. When I'll have more time I'll try to find a better way for this.

BinaryThunder.Com - Scripts collection and resources

Private forum

bfo commented 6 December 2006 at 13:53

can you tell me how i can have my forum set up so that the initial posts to it are private to members or role only.

We want to use the forum to publicise stuff to membership and don't want it showing up when anonymous users do a serch of the site, or even just stumble upon it.

How can I do this?

Thanks

Cath Bashford

I am currently using drupal 4.7.3 with Pgsql

If you are interested in

cog.rusty commented 6 December 2006 at 14:22

If you are interested in thoughts about the "state of the art" with Drupal's forum, take a look at this.

http://groups.drupal.org/node/1780

If you want some ideas about how you can control access to your forum in Drupal 4.7, take a look at this example which I wrote a while back.

http://drupal.org/node/53958#comment-102002

Error

bfo commented 6 December 2006 at 15:09

Hi I get the following error when I try using the Taxonomy_access module

can you help

warning: pg_query() [function.pg-query]: Query failed: ERROR: for SELECT DISTINCT, ORDER BY expressions must appear in select list in /mounts/max30/home/cath/www/ukra/includes/database.pgsql.inc on line 84.
user warning: query: SELECT DISTINCT(n.nid), n.title, l.comment_count FROM node n INNER JOIN node_comment_statistics l ON n.nid = l.nid WHERE n.status = 1 AND n.type = 'forum' ORDER BY l.last_comment_timestamp DESC LIMIT 5 OFFSET 0 in /mounts/max30/home/cath/www/ukra/includes/database.pgsql.inc on line 103.

The module still appears to work but I'd like rid of these error messages.

I am testing this on my demo site at http://bfo.org.uk/ukra instead of the real live site.

Cath

It looks like a bug with

cog.rusty commented 6 December 2006 at 15:53

It looks like a bug with pgsql (most of us use mysql). It says that pgsql requires that the ORDER BY expression l.last_comment_timestamp must be included in the SELECT fields list.

I think this query comes from the core forum.module, not from TAC. At least that's what I see in forum.module, line 265, in the latest 4.7. Not sure why the error was triggered now, I am not very comfortable with PHP. You could try to change:

$sql = db_rewrite_sql("SELECT n.nid, n.title, l.comment_count FROM {node} n INNER JOIN {node_comment_statistics} l ON n.nid = l.nid WHERE n.status = 1 AND n.type = 'forum' ORDER BY l.last_comment_timestamp DESC");

$sql = db_rewrite_sql("SELECT n.nid, n.title, l.comment_count, l.last_comment_timestamp FROM {node} n INNER JOIN {node_comment_statistics} l ON n.nid = l.nid WHERE n.status = 1 AND n.type = 'forum' ORDER BY l.last_comment_timestamp DESC");

in forum.module to see if it works. Or even better post a bug issue in http://drupal.org/project/issues/drupal

----

Edited to add: Or update to a newer version, just in case that has been corrected in db_rewrite_sql or somewhere else.

Virtues of current forums?

jasko commented 22 December 2004 at 18:02

I'm running a site (http://fortprogress.org) that uses the existing forums, and I'm having trouble distinguishing forum posts from blog posts from stories.

What are the differences between forum posts and blog posts? What are the virtues of the current forum system? Why would I continue to support forums when blogs + comments seems to do the same trick?

that's an issue i've noticed

intel352 commented 22 December 2004 at 18:08

that's an issue i've noticed as well. there's no separation in the types of content (concerning visuals & the process followed to create the content), which is a bit annoying.

There aren't many

killes@www.drop.org commented 22 December 2004 at 19:55

There aren't many differenes. The main ones are: Forum requires a taxonomy vocabulary and has a different and more advanced presentation. If you want to make them appear different, you can do that in your theme.
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Forum different in theme ?

Lam0r commented 23 December 2004 at 01:31

I am satisfied with drupal except on the Forum side. I am still in the progress of deciding what to use phpBB or the forum integrated in drupal. I would preffer to use the one in drupal since the user integration is already setup for me but the forum just doesnt satisfy me and even if I had to modify the theme it would be an impossible task for me. I wish I could contribute witht he development but I can only provide user feedback for now. Thanks

If you think editting the

xand commented 8 January 2005 at 06:51

If you think editting the theme is impossible, then erh. you'd better not try setting up user integration.

So exactly what kind of integration do you have in mind?

irwin commented 2 February 2005 at 05:14

Don't bother asking the Drupal developers to work on a phpBB integration module - they won't do it. It's simply too difficult to do because of the work involved, and the fact that all of the work will likely end up being wasted when either phpBB or Drupal moves up a version. I won't discuss the reasons why I want to use a phpBB forum because no one cares to hear them.

However, I personally have an interest in looking at ways to make them "play better together". I wouldn't integrate them to the point where users would be able to administer a Drupal profile and then their phpBB settings are updated, but rather, to allow a few blocks or nodes to be loaded from phpBB forum posts or something.

In fact, with some fancy node-playing and an extra phpBB module, you might just be able to do this with minimal effort. Give me a week or so and I'll see what I can come up with.

-- Irwin

Something similiar to the gallery module?

n00tz@daltongamers.net commented 3 November 2005 at 13:20

I think the best way to 'integrate' PHPbb would be to create the module in the same way they did the Gallery2 module. The Gallery2 module is really just a pointer to a seperate directory... and loads the gallery into the main frame on the portal.

It would seem to me that you could just reform the gallery module to point at the PHPbb directory instead of the Gallery2 directory.. but i don't know how the modules are developed for drupal.

I merged from a phpNuke site, and this is the biggest complaint I've recieved from my users. They just LOVEd the PHPbb forums more than i thought was functionally sane, but to be honest, PHPbb seems to set the bar for out-of-the-box functionality.

Gallery provides a separate

arkepp commented 4 November 2005 at 06:08

Gallery provides a separate API for embedding it into an existing framework, meaning that you can get the content without having cookies set or getting body-tags in return.

phpBB does not.

Well here I go, about to

green monkey commented 2 February 2005 at 07:24

Well here I go, about to take a rock to the head again, but I just can’t help myself. By now most of you know I have an odd sense of humor. I have read this thread and a couple of other threads like it. They make me laugh, not because the subject lacks importance, but the way the problem is being defined and approached.

I would venture to say at least 99% of the people here on this forum are considered problem solvers, in one field or another and they are probably darn good at it too. Yet we all sound like our customers. The phone rings, you answer and your customer tells you; "it’s broken". You ask what’s broken? They tell you, “you know – it’s just acting weird and not doing what I want it to do”. Well, if anyone has been able to fix “that” problem I applaud you. So what happens next? You ask them question after question, trying to stay clam, until 20 minutes later you are fairly sure the paper tray is empty.

I have both phpbb and IPB both loaded on other sites and you’re right there are differences. But I personally believe comparing Drupal’s Forum to these two forums is like comparing apples to oranges. phpBB is just a forum nothing else and all the work by people has naturally been concentrated and focused on just the one subject … the forum. I think you know where I’m going from here. Drupal is a CMS with many modules all integrated together. I personally have over 20 modules installed and I don’t think I’m done yet, nor have I opened for business yet. The dedication of the volunteers to maintain all these modules, while still focusing on overall growth and advancements, boggles my mind.

I’m not a programmer, but I tend to agree with the stance of; why bring over something that really doesn’t want to fit in the first place. Drupal Forum’s has a major advantage over phpBB and IPB and that main advantage is that the Drupal Forum was designed from the ground up to work with Drupal …as an integrated module. That’s a big thing! Ok, so the Forum is still a child and needs to grow a bit more. But wouldn’t it be easier, smarter and a better use of human resources to remove the carburetor, add fuel injectors and polish the ports than to wedgie a new engine in under the hood?

My suggestion is that instead of defining the problem as: the Forum is lacking features – make a list of the features that you believe would enhance the Forum and increase end user acceptance and post it in the wish list section. Then concentrate your efforts “and support” to attack that list item by item. I don’t think it is really fair to ask Team Drupal to stop everything they are doing and focus all their energy on just one module. The picture is bigger than just one module and there are only so many noble volunteers to go around.

Ok, ok, ok I’m going to end this before I empty my paper tray or end up on page 2 :-). But everyone in this Forum already knows that in order to solve a problem, you have to define the problem first …. and I don’t see that happening with this subject. And I have yet to see a grey area ever resolved.

Familiarity is the Key

irwin commented 2 February 2005 at 07:57

I think the people who have phpBB and don't want to move to Drupal are those people who like the phpBB/invision/ikonboard/vBulletin style of board.

Those classes of web board tend to have a similar structure and layout. Flat hierarchy, user info and picture on the left side, post on the right, user control panel links on the bottom of each post.

So why do people resist using Drupal's forum module? Because it doesn't look and feel like the phpBB/Invision/Ikonboard/vBulletin boards. Remember that you're trying to treat end users here, and if they see something unfamiliar and strange, they're going to complain. I've seen the following comment on quite a few Drupal forums:

"So what's this forum thing? It's new to me. Why didn't you use phpBB?"
"Cool forum, but you should have used phpBB."
"Nice stuff, but it's strange. Can you change to something that looks like phpBB?"
"I like phpBB's layout better. Maybe you can change to that?"

Then you have to sit there and say, "Nope, sorry, I can't change it. What can I do to convince you that this forum is just fine?". Then your users say, "Screw you" and leave... or, more probable, they'll just never come back.

I totally understand why Drupal's developers don't care to integrate phpBB. It's a pain because they're totally different. However, the Drupal forum style and the phpBB forum style are quite different, and some people like the phpBB style better.

If someone manages to make a Drupal module set called the "Make Drupal forums look like phpBB forums", awesome.

I recently chose to run a phpBB-based forum instead of a Drupal-based forum and now I want to use Drupal on my front page without having to switch everyone else over. This is why the problem of integration (or, at the least, a little light content crossover) interests me.

Edit (hey, we have an edit button for comments now): I am, by no means, trying to call out for Drupal developers to attempt to do phpBB integration for me. I'm willing to take a look at doing some lightweight integration. Please stop asking the core Drupal developers to integrate *forum system here* and Drupal because they won't do it. If I find something easy, I'll tell you. If I don't and give up, then I'll try to remember to tell you. I also feel bad for dragging this to the top page again now, too and inviting the grumble-war that this topic always seems to spawn.

Good night.

-- Irwin

PHPBB

rtroth commented 15 February 2005 at 22:13

While you all may be problem solvers in one way or another, you're missing out on a key problem...It's the experience, stupid!!!!

People like easy to navigate and administer and post in BB's. Drupal's BB is not that...yet. It has significant room to grow. But the experience is everything! The people who visit out sites are not all programmers, web devs, sys admins, net engineers or what not. The people who frequent our Drupal sites are the common folks, most of which have a problem with attaching a document in their email!

The things that PHPBB, vBulletin and the lot have captured that Drupal hasn't(in the forums realm) is the experience. They offer what appears to be a rich experience that takes little time to learn and get comfortable with. Drupals forums are clunky in their design and administation. It is the one glaring weakness in the CMS system.

Don't get me wrong, I L-O-V-E Drupal, but it has its limitations.

I know the developers want to stay away from a port of these BB softwares...that is fine. But why? Is it the vulnerabilities??? Valid reason, but to me it sounds like a cop-out. Yes it isn't designed for Drupal and it will take a lot of work, but to me, after reading through a lot of comments on this site about possible integration, it sounds like protectionism of their product.

In my professional life I am an IT Director as well as a goalie coach. I handle all aspects of the IT infrastructure of my the firm I work for. I am good. I know a lot, but there are certain areas that I do not excel at. To those areas I outsource the task or job to consultants. My point is the BB is an area that is not done well nor concentrated on by the Drupal community. Why not simply integrate with someone who has done it well and continues to do it well. Create that partnership and make it last. We the members of the community would appreciate it very much if you did.

Our point is very simple: We

killes@www.drop.org commented 16 February 2005 at 10:29

Our point is very simple: We don't need it, we won't code it. I think this is very valid considering that we do all this stuff in our spare time. Now, if you want phpBB to integrate with Drupal you are free to hire a consultant.
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Sounds a lot like a RTFM

rtroth commented 17 February 2005 at 01:54

Sounds a lot like a RTFM response to me.

I know you guys do this in your spare time and we drupal users appreciate your efforts and you've created a fantastic product, but you're missing the point.

Users want it, therefore you need it, or at a minimum you need something as good or better.

As good or better doesn't exist at this time and it seems that there is no desire to make it better.

Engineers and programmers rarely see the plain and simple truths...to you, the forums may work great and be adequate. To the outside user, they aren't. They are bulky to set up and configure and manage. More importantly they are bulky to navigate for the end user and lack some of the bells of whistles which makes participating in a forum fun and enjoyable.

Put on an end user's hat and take a look and you might be able to see the fact that yes, you might want to reconsider that stance. If another CMS system does it( I don't know any at this time that does...) you'll lose some market share and donations in the process.

Sounds a lot like a RTFM

killes@www.drop.org commented 17 February 2005 at 10:48

Sounds a lot like a RTFM response to me.

There is no manual on "I want integration with $foo software" yet, but I am tempted to create one.

Users want it, therefore you need it, or at a minimum you need something as good or better.

This is hilarious. You do not understand the reason why people develop free software. The reason almost always is: Scratch you own itch. The emphasis is on own. I couldn't care less about the needs of other people when it comes to Drupal's features. If people want to have features they can implement them themselves or get somebody to do it for them. They can of course also make requests and sometimes some developer thinks "ah, good idea, I could need that as well." and starts coding it. But this thought apparently crossed nobody's mind when it comes to phpbb integration.

I am also quite confident that you did not investigate the wealth of Drupal's contributed modules that add some of the bells and whistles other forums are bloated with. Drupal's strength is that it ia a) extensible and b) non-bloated.

The setup procedure in the forums has been improved in cvs because people sent code.

I also do not care too much about market share or donations. We have expanded those without a great deal of effort, and I am very confident that we will continue to do so.
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I couldn't care less...

nautis commented 14 March 2005 at 22:37

killes said:

I couldn't care less about the needs of other people when it comes to Drupal's features.

Yikes. I hope you're just having a bad day and that this is not really the way you feel about the drupal project. The entire open source community is built around collaboration and sharing. It's not utopia, but it's certainly a big shift in business as usual. To see someone like you at the center of this with this point of view is disappointing. Maybe I'm just idealistic. I posted a review of the book, The Success of Open Source, on my site ProjectCMS, here. You may not even realize - perhaps you do - but you are a part of something greater than yourself - from a sociological and anthropological perspective. It's an excellent book and sheds light on why people would even be involved in a project where there is no traditional reward system. Some of the basic premises are that altruism and social good are actually reciprocal benefits and that what appears to be selflessness is indeed a complex reward system in disguise.

However, killes seems to be throwing this theory into question. Unless, of course, he really does care what people think about his work. How can he not care? Our work is a concrete objectification of ourselves - it's our art. If you don't care at all and you really are doing it for yourself then why even bother responding to questions or queries? I suspect that killes, like most people involved in the open source movement, do it because they enjoy it, it improves their sense of self-worth, and it makes them feel (just a little bit) loved. I think it's the same impetus that invites anyone to do anything greater than themselves. Writing (code) and building (software) is cemented in these traditional values. That it's virtual is just incidental. "Do you know why one writes?" Michel Foucault asked an assistant. "To be loved."

- matthew | nautis.com

You seem to completely

killes@www.drop.org commented 14 March 2005 at 23:16

You seem to completely misunderstand what I wrote (and then write an awfull lot based on this). The point I am trying to make is that I am writing free software (and there really is no need to educate me about what that is, thanks) for my own needs. If the result of such needs is usefull to somebody else that's fine with me. But if somebody comes and tells me "Users want it, therefore you need it, or at a minimum you need something as good or better." I don't give anything. The code is free and can be expanded to suit those users needs.
Making claims that the Drupal community sort of owed writing the code he needs to somebody isn't going to get any code written.
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Remember that despite the

irwin commented 16 March 2005 at 04:40

Remember that despite the fact that everyone wants phpBB/Drupal integration, there's an easy reason why that has NOT yet happened.

The reason is because it's much too difficult. It would simply cost too much for any one person to do it, and even if they did, then they'd have a neigh-impossible time keeping their patchwork in sync with new Drupal and phpBB versions. I looked at this problem for a grand total of 10 minutes before realising that you wouldn't be able to do ANYTHING without a huge amount of ripping from both phpBB and Drupal.

One problem is their use of sessions are totally incompatible, and the last I recall you can't set up PHP to use more than one session per connection. So I can't maintain both a phpBB session and a Drupal session at the same time.

The database structures are totally different. phpBB does access control in core, Drupal can not, so that is difficult. phpBB has lots of extra crap in their Post tables; Drupal doesn't.

I migrated a phpBB site to a Drupal site (with some problems). I think that's a much better way to go, overall, if you need Drupal's CMS capabilities. I was deeply considering sticking with phpBB, but with a user-and-content migration script, some fancy SQL (since I had to fix problems), and a few links, all of my users eventually went to Drupal and have adapted to it quite well. As I was adding stuff to my web site, it suddenly struck me just how damned natural the Drupal way was for the site I was building.

It took all of three minutes for users migrating from phpBB to Drupal to learn how the system works. Sure, one of them didn't realise that he had to use the "create content" link to post a new forum topic, but he smacked himself on the head for not realising it sooner. Sure, image handling isn't awesome in 4.5, but Drupal 4.6 has awesome image handling. I know the comments in phpBB don't nest, and are pretty, and what not, but you can set Flat-Non-Threaded views in Drupal, and create a nice theme with the awesome PHPTemplate settings.

The rest of it might require some hacking (signatures in Drupal are still rather dumb; but it's being looked at here.

We need migration scripts, or hacky solutions like LDAP or the patch that someone here mentioned that registers both Drupal and phpBB users. Stuff like that would probably satisfy 70% of users to a pretty strong degree; if everyone out there feels so strongly about it, chances are someone out there who knows how to code will be able to come up with something.

Sorry, this was a rant.

-- Irwin
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is rudeness part of your

motion-ex commented 3 October 2005 at 16:11

is rudeness part of your qualifications as drupal team member?

If you think that reply was

killes@www.drop.org commented 6 October 2005 at 16:48

If you think that reply was rude, you haven't read my rude replies yet.
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50 Cent

motion-ex commented 3 October 2005 at 16:13

stunt 101: learn how to outsource!

One way integration

Steven commented 19 February 2005 at 02:51

I know the developers want to stay away from a port of these BB softwares...that is fine. But why? Is it the vulnerabilities??? Valid reason, but to me it sounds like a cop-out. Yes it isn't designed for Drupal and it will take a lot of work, but to me, after reading through a lot of comments on this site about possible integration, it sounds like protectionism of their product.

The answer is simple: even if you would make phpBB work with Drupal, the 'integration' would be nothing more than wrapping Drupal around phpBB. Other Drupal modules could not profit from phpBB's features and phpBB could not benefit from Drupal's extensive features set and modules.

Sometimes, it is better to re-invent the wheel properly rather than trying to use an existing broken one:

phpBB's code is of low quality. It is a tangled mess rather than a structured, lean API.
phpBB is insecure, as shown by the worm mentioned above.
phpBB is inflexible. The reason why all phpBB's look the same is not just because that's what people are familiar with, but because creating a custom phpBB theme and maintaining it between upgrades is a pain in the butt (other than maybe tweaking the stylesheet and changing an image here and there). Its templates mix functionality with presentation.
phpBB is monolithic: there is no easy way to rip out selected pieces of functionality, as everything is tied together.

Don't get me wrong: if phpBB is what you want, then it is ideal. But Drupal is not about creating the 'single CMS to rule them all', but creating a flexible set of blocks that you can plug together the way you want.

All of this not only makes integrating or converting phpBB into Drupal an insane amount of work, it also makes it undesirable as it would not be up to Drupal's standards. Furthermore, this integration would be a one-way process that would have to be redone or maintained whenever phpBB is updated.

Changing Drupal's forum to look like phpBB is 90% a theme issue. With a properly coded phpTemplate and maybe some custom forum.module tweaks, you'd get something that is indistiguishable from the average dedicated forum software.

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something that very basic

motion-ex commented 3 October 2005 at 16:14

something that very basic End user can do with a finger in the nose i guess

Steven: What hole have you lived in?

solipsist commented 2 November 2005 at 12:50

* phpBB's code is of low quality. It is a tangled mess rather than a structured, lean API.
* phpBB is insecure, as shown by the worm mentioned above.
* phpBB is inflexible. The reason why all phpBB's look the same is not just because that's what people are familiar with, but because creating a custom phpBB theme and maintaining it between upgrades is a pain in the butt (other than maybe tweaking the stylesheet and changing an image here and there). Its templates mix functionality with presentation.
* phpBB is monolithic: there is no easy way to rip out selected pieces of functionality, as everything is tied together.

If you knew what you were talking about you'd know that... phpBB's code is quite nice. Have you even bothered checking out the latest CVS branch and had a real look?

As I explained, any open source project runs that risk. If people don't update they have themselves to blame.

Inflexible... worst piece of garbage I've heard in ages. Have you seen all the different projects based on phpBB. As for upgrading, having been on its support team for three years I should know better than anyone that it's a piece of cake if you RTFM.

The templates are pure joy. Once again, you show your lack of knowledge. They resemble Drupal's pretty much and again, I know what I'm talking about as it's one of my main sources of income.

As for your last point, more disinformation. It's highly modular, reusing code is extremely easy as my friend showed by creating a review script for a client of hours in less than an hour reusing components from phpBB and integrating it with its db.

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Themes and forum indices

dmjossel commented 19 March 2005 at 06:22

There is a certain amount you can do with themes. Drupal now supports user pictures in comments; so it's possible to configure a forum with a flat, expanded index by default, with a user picture in the place where phpBB users expect to see it.

You can also support BBCode, as there is a 3rd party module for it.

For me, the problem has always been emulating the look of WebBBS, not phpBB, because if you tinker with the themes you can get something fairly close to a stripped-down phpBB, at least in terms of layout-- especially if you make a flat index and hide the comment controls. I don't go that far, but you can take a look at what I've done here:

http://rampancy.net/forum

My problem has been in emulating forums that use a threaded, collapsed index, like webBBS. WebBBS basically doesn't distinguish between thread-starting nodes and comments, so you can see new comments in any sort order you'd like and (this is the kicker) when you click on a comment subject to expand and see the body, you still get to see the threaded index display beneath that body, showing the comment you are reading within the context of its parents, its children, and the parents and children of its parents and children. It doesn't display the entire index of a given forum, but it gives you enough information to see where you might want to navigate to next. In drupal, when you expand a collapsed comment, you see that comment's body and nothing else; there's no way to see the next reply, or view the parent, or do anything except hit the BACK button.

Webbs emulation

Dublin Drupaller commented 4 November 2005 at 11:58

Hi dmjossel,

I also think the ergonomics of phpBB style boards are not as good as a well skinned webbbs type forum.

It's a very subtle difference but when you have used both styles...it's a huge usability/ergonomic difference.

I've been working on trying to replicate the webbbs style in Drupal and the closest i've got is linked below:

http://modernmediamuse.com/m3m

Click on the New Drupal Forum Test for a demo. If you click on BOARD VIEW it alternates to a phpbb style board so in many respects you have the best of both worlds.

I particularly like the ease of selecting CATEGORIES from the drop down menu.

I'm half way to integrating that with a Drupal site. At the moment I have managed store the posts/user info in the Drupal database..I'm working now on a single-sign-on or authentification module to complete the integration.

Hope that makes sense..

Dub

Edited: By the way..the base forum script I'm using at that link is based on the script here:
http://www.mylittlehomepage.net/scripts

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

We've had this discussion

Wolfe commented 2 February 2005 at 08:02

We've had this discussion before, in fact I'm pretty sure I made a topic concerning this very issue. The last time I was bombarded with pessimism in my search for a developer who might be interested in helping out. I don't have time cause my studies and my other development engagements consumes me completly. If I had time to learn PHP and I needed a flagship project to show off my skills it would be porting phpBB to Drupal. Ofcourse you say "should've, could've, would've". But like I said: Time is fleeting and I'm up a chrono-river without a paddle.

But if there _was_ a petition (not saying there is and I'm not even saying that the idea of having a petition for a project without any developers is logical) I'd sign it as well =)

Popular demand or peer pressure? You decide, you code-monkey you!

I like the drupal forums. It

TheFazz commented 16 February 2005 at 11:29

I like the drupal forums. It is simple, integrates seamlessly with the rest of the site (I can CSS theme all together), and flexible.

What it lacks though are:

ability to restrict access to certain terms (PHPBB et al calls 'em categories) to certain groups of people.. or I simply do not know how to do so
steep learning curve / not intuitive as the rest of drupal installation
can't split or merge threads

It would be nice to have the things mentioned above... but then again, don't think anybody would want to do this. But please please please work on item 1.

http://www.my-kart.org/

1) is already possible, I

killes@www.drop.org commented 16 February 2005 at 11:44

1) is already possible, I think Try the taxonomy_access module.
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In that case, I think I may

TheFazz commented 16 February 2005 at 14:08

In that case, I think I may be doing something wrong, because taxonomy access module does not "hide" the particular forum term (whether in forum view or blocks).

Furthermore, using administer > user > category permissions, I've set some some user groups not to be able to access the term... but in reality, they still can post to the term and see the term groups (although cannot view the nodes or what they posted).

http://www.my-kart.org/

Well, they can still see the

killes@www.drop.org commented 16 February 2005 at 14:42

Well, they can still see the term, that it true. There is no fix for this unless you change the forum module and/or the taxonomy module.
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Just wondering - is there

TheFazz commented 17 February 2005 at 11:00

Just wondering - is there going to be updates for the taxonomy access / forum modules.

sorry if this is a stoopeed question but I am not sure how to search the project status.

http://www.my-kart.org/

There have been updates to

killes@www.drop.org commented 17 February 2005 at 11:37

There have been updates to both modules. the best way to find those updates is to read the cvs commit messages. http://drupal.org/cvs
You can also search them or look at them per project at cvs.drupal.org.
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Hey thanks killes. I will

TheFazz commented 17 February 2005 at 12:40

Hey thanks killes.

I will give it a shot... but one more guidance... where do I read more about implementing the cvs changes? fyi... I use phpmyadmin for my SQL management and CPanel for my website stuff... and I am totally unfamiliar with linux commands.

http://www.my-kart.org/

If you are unfamiliar with

killes@www.drop.org commented 17 February 2005 at 13:25

If you are unfamiliar with the patch command or software development in general I advise you to not try patches but wait for the next release which will contain those patches. OTOH you can download a full cvs tarball which gets generated each day from here: http://drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-cvs.tar.gz

I wouldn't recommend to run a site from it, though, but if you want to help testing the cvs version on a testsite, you are welcome. There will also be prerelease versions of Drupal 4.6 available soon.
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killes - thanks. I this

TheFazz commented 18 February 2005 at 10:25

killes - thanks.

I this case, I guess I'd probably wait for the patch. I only have rudimentary awareness of PHP... but I have no idea how I can keep track of PHP variables and functions used in Drupal... I can get lost so easily. Is there a tool that can let me know what variable and what functions are stored in memory?

Cheers
Fazz

http://www.my-kart.org/

Drupal has a very limited

killes@www.drop.org commented 18 February 2005 at 12:29

Drupal has a very limited set of global veriables, if this is what you want to know. The most often used one is the $user object.

To get an overview over which function calls which, have a looks at http://drupaldocs.org
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The global variables AND

TheFazz commented 19 February 2005 at 04:40

The global variables AND what functions Drupal includes in its memory space. I will try to figure this out from the documents.

http://www.my-kart.org/

It hides them for me.

lilywhite commented 22 September 2005 at 15:14

I have two forums that are only available to administrators on our site, and they can't be seen by anyone else.

Or am I misunderstanding what you mean?

how about a practical way out?

ramdak5000@www.drupal.org commented 16 February 2005 at 13:25

I know this doesn't anwser the requirement for sharing db tables or user authentication integration between Drupal and phpBB, but, why not simply use phpBB and link to it from the drupal site? Customising the phpBB theme to match the main site is all it requires.

Here is a real-life example:
http://portal.wikinerds.org/

Just click on the forum link under projects on the right nav menu.

got a little thing going

arkepp commented 19 February 2005 at 00:00

Well, here's my story:

I started a small site 8 months ago using PostNuke, because I heard that it was better than PHP-Nuke. It was, but not nearly good enough. The phpBB integration was pretty good though and now I have a *lot* of posts that I am not willing to give up and I am willing to pay a pretty steep price to keep them. Sticking with *Nuke is however out of the question ;)

I could probably convert them to the Drupal, but I am really not comfortable with the way the database stores them. I do agree that it is an extremely elegant system and very flexible, I am however not convinced that I'd be able to pull the data back out should I want to move to a different system in the future. That is one nice thing about PostNuke and phpBB, the structure is rigid enough to make it easy to pull out the data and convert to other systems, including Drupal.

So here's what I have almost done:
I have modified sessions.php in phpBB so that when no user is logged in the script checks for a cookie left behind by Drupal . If there is such a cookie, the session is checked and the user id extracted from it. Then the userdata in phpBB is either updated or inserted based on the profile stored in Drupal.

I still need to debug the thing and test a *lot* + update all the phpBB templates. Drupal will be the master in all respects, if you want to login, logout, update your profile or send a private message then all that must go through the Drupa pages. This cripples phpBB to some extent, but hopefully means that only the template + sessions.php file need to be modified.

Some minor tweaks on Drupal may also be required, but I don't think it'll involve much more than a trigger to delete the phpBB session when the user logs out. Perhaps also add a line so that Drupal cleans the phpBB user-table when a user is deleted.

I plan this thing to be a hack, not the serious integration that most of you are probably hoping for. Most likely it wont be suitable for people who cannot read PHP. If you're interested in helping out send an email to my-drupal.org-username.at.kepp.net . Otherwise I'll expect to be back here in a month or two to announce my success or failure ;) Don't hold your breath though

phpBB Integration

snsy commented 19 February 2005 at 01:01

I found this: http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/1532.html and was able to use it with a hand-written site. I don't know what it would take to integrate with Drupal, but seems to be a pretty easy way to share login. Then you could just access phpBB with a link from Drupal.

Thanks for the tip, I

arkepp commented 19 February 2005 at 01:59

Thanks for the tip, I checked it out. The code is a bit out of date (I just noticed the second cookie name was wrong) and it does nothing to transfer a Drupal user to the phpBB database. In other words, the user must exist in both databases to begin with, so you have single sign-on but double registration. And you're in big trouble if you get a username or id overlap.

update 0.0.1

arkepp commented 24 January 2007 at 01:47

See http://drupal.org/node/32818

Old:
If you're interested, have a look at http://linux1.no/phpbb_drupal/

It's a lousy page, it will look better when I move from PostNuke to Drupal in a month or so. I will try to update the hacks as I go along though.

The transfer of users-information and sessions from Drupal to phpBB appear to work adequately. All relevant sessions are destroyed when you log out of either phpBB or Drupal.

I will have a stab at it!

patrik-1 commented 24 February 2005 at 18:08

I intend to create integrated user creation/update/deletion as well as integrated login for phpBB/Drupal.

The approach will be to hook into Drupals features and call out to phpBB to synchronise the data.

I'm new to Drupal, fairly new to php, but have hacked phpBB a bit, so we'll see how long it might take! Any support is appreciated -for example stories of failed or aborted attempts, and any discoveries during similar attempts!

Ideally I'll be able to break apart the phpBB GUI a bit as well, moving some stuff into blocks in the surrounding Drupal framework, for a more integrated feel.

I don't feel phpBB is developing very fast, so I'm not all that concerned if the process means a lot of work altering phpBB (I already have things I must manually port to the latest phpBB).

BTW, the reason is that I soon have 100 000 posts in phpBB which I do not want to lose, as well as users who are used to phpBB.

Separation

Fool2 commented 4 March 2005 at 05:05

Let us also remember that having forums outside the drupal engine might also be beneficial in some ways. For instance- one could easily host the forum and the content on two different servers. Especially large forums can use a lot of server resources, and you may not want this to affect your normal content application. Throttle wouldnt help this because you dont want your forums just turning off when the heat gets too high.

I plan on dumping the drupal forums and using phbb in place of it. The php forums will be mostly independent of the original drupal installation, and only rely on it for registering new users (for now). In the other direction, there will be a block or a node or something that syndicates the forum.

This would also free the drupal database from a huge load of database queries. A drupal forum the size of many of the epic forums of the phpbb format would be clunky, in my opinion.

Dont get me wrong- I am very much for a drupal forum- but its nowhere near the level of sophistication that can be offered by other systems.

The Integration itself, at first glance, looks like it will be easy- especially since the permissions are not really translatable in my situations, all you need is the username and the password hash, which I believe is the same.

more forum integration comment

berlin commented 11 March 2005 at 04:38

I'm not sure if any of you are familiar with photopost. photopost can integrate with vbulletin or phpbb by only using the forum user database, and nothing more. so it is actually just using the forum auth..

i'm not sure how difficult it is to bridge just the user login, but from what i've been reading from this thread, it seems to me that the forum and drupal db's will need synchronization.

I once had Horde IMP integrated with Vbulletin which is several times more complex than drupal since my hack also included ldap auth. So anything is possible. But you either wait around for someone to come up with the hack or, like in my case, spend a few bucks ($300) hiring an elancer (elance.com). If you guys are willing to pool in some money let me know. I might decide to use drupal instead of plog another non-CMS multi-blog script (plogworld.net).

Update

Fool2 commented 12 March 2005 at 03:40

I've developed a custom module for my site (http://www.sbindependent.org)

It's not quite worth releasing yet as it isn't very customizeable.

Anyway, here's what I have working so far.

*A one-time use script to get all of the current user accounts mirrored in the phpbb database
*A drupal module that implements hook_user to both create an entry for all new registrants to the drupal part of the site on phpbb and also mirror any password changes that the user does through the drupal CP

I made the register link on phpbb point to the drupal register page, which means all registrations are handled by the drupal engine. (much easier this way)
Only the passwords and emails are synched for now, though.

Some issues I ran into:
*I had to test my SQL syntax separately from the module because its pretty hard to debug a hook_user insert operation
*Since the two are on different databases, I had to call mysql_select_db() again after the operation to switch it back to the drupal database. Skipping this will cause horrible errors.
*thankfully, both systems use md5 for password hashing. If that were not the case, it would be a lot harder and less secure

Re:

berlin commented 12 March 2005 at 03:59

Nice website.

I recently purchased photopost. In its config, you have the option to use the forum user tables or photopost. When you configure it to use the forum user db, it can authenticate to vbulletin or phpbb (cookie problems are solved in vb easily). Also the registration form is rendered useless, since it automatically uses phpbb or vbulletin. Anyhow, I just find it interesting since no synching is needed or db mirroring. Also the same goes for 4gallery and coppermine. Although more editing is required on the forum side, no synching or mirroring is required either.

Permissions and stuff

Fool2 commented 12 March 2005 at 15:12

Well in order to use the same table I guess the databases would have to be merged. It would be possible, but I doubt it could be pulled off without disturbing the core code of either website.

VB and phpBB are probably easier to do this with because theyre both specifically forum systems. They probably have more similar table structures than drupal, and have a more similar user control system.

I could be wrong, though- it might be as simple as putting them in the same database and merging the two table structures for users- however, this will probably make it a little hard to upgrade or change your setup in the future.

Re

berlin commented 12 March 2005 at 16:39

Putting them in the same database won't hurt. I just have to check out how photopost was able to keep the two separate and just use the forum db to authenticate.

Have a look at the code I've

arkepp commented 18 March 2005 at 20:56

Have a look at the code I've already written (see previous posts). What advantages do you see using your method?

That's a very useful script

pamphile commented 1 November 2005 at 15:29

That's a very useful script that could easily be used with vbulletin - I presume.

Marcel
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Great news!

patrik-1 commented 14 March 2005 at 23:22

"Fool2", that is great news!
I hope we and others who might be interested can help each other out!

BTW, if phpBB and Drupal were to run on separate servers, wouldn't user table synchronisation (or sharing) be problematic?

I do like the idea thought of having a content system which is unaffected by heavy forum processing!

Separate Servers

Fool2 commented 14 March 2005 at 23:33

Well the way I have it written it only synchs upon editing/creating users.

As long as the servers have permission to access each other SQL wise, I dont see how it would be a problem. Instead of localhost you would have to use the SQL server address. Sharing would probably not be ideal in that situation since it means constant remote connecting. Remote connections might also have minor security risks but im not so sure about that kidn of thing as I havent really done it before.

Great!

patrik-1 commented 14 March 2005 at 23:46

Syncing is a perfectly good solution!
Using separate servers also introduces additional risks of failed synching due to one server being down, so in that case a periodic re-sync script might be a good idea? Initially, though, I will run both on the same server.

Testing out?

patrik-1 commented 19 March 2005 at 00:00

Any chance of getting our hands on your changes to check them out?
Regards

Need finishing

Fool2 commented 21 March 2005 at 02:08

I will post them when I feel theyre fit for sharing. Right now theyre pretty dirty; I am also looking to implement an idea that akrepp came up with as far as pulling the phpbb database info straight out of the phpbb config file. Once I do that, I think I can the drupal-master sync it as a plug-n-play module

Here's my opinion: post them

irwin commented 21 March 2005 at 22:32

Here's my opinion: post them now, just in case you suddenly disappear, or decide you don't have time for it. That way, someone can take up the contribution even if you've left. You can always post an updated version later.

Apply for CVS access. :)

-- Irwin
* Drupal at work -> http://suikoden.mine.nu (Suikoden-themed Role-playing Game.)
* My other Drupal site -> http://scrapped.mine.nu (Video-game & Anime-themed Blog)

Voila

Fool2 commented 23 March 2005 at 06:01

Ok, if you insist. I cleaned it up mostly to allow for it to work as a standalone module. Just copy it to modules/phpbb/phpbb.module and enable the module. You must also set a setting in admin for it to work, which is the path on the server from drupal to either the phpbb config.php or a copy of it.

Download it from here
Right now I have a few problems making the queries mysql independent- for some reason I cant use certain db_functions so I had to revert to mysql_functions to make it work. Otherwise, its pretty close to being cross-platform, if you can solve that issue. I'm very interested to know how it works across different installations.

What about the "one-time use

mishaikin commented 7 April 2005 at 13:41

What about the "one-time use script to get all of the current user accounts mirrored in the phpbb database"? Could you post it here?
I have a phpbb forum with 98 users which I want to import automatically into my drupal site.

Thanks!

Agreed.

Adraeus commented 29 March 2005 at 09:07

Agreed. Too many open source projects have bellied up due to code hording, perfectionism, and attention-seeking. Collaboration is defined as "the act of working together to achieve a common goal" for a good reason. Assume the Open Source Philosophy and post your snippets, your incomplete modules/hacks, your complete module/hacks, etc. Everything is useful regardless of "release-readiness".

Just the users

Adraeus commented 19 March 2005 at 00:33

I'm only interested in seeing the cross-integration of users so I don't need to require users to signup for both a Drupal and a phpBB account. This would necessitate a minor SQL hack to Drupal's settings allowing it to load phpBB's user database.

Users

signal9 commented 19 March 2005 at 02:46

Would this be something along the lines of the livejournal auth module, which authenticates against livejournal accounts, or some sort of direct access to a phpBB database? I'm just curious. I don't run a phpBB, but I'm active on a community that does, and it would be handy if they could somehow use their accounts there to login to my own site.

-----------------
Govorite po-russkij? Want to?
http://www.sobrania.net/russian

I've never used livejournal,

Adraeus commented 19 March 2005 at 03:54

I've never used livejournal, but I've seen non-postNuke phpBB forums whose sites are integrated enough to allow phpBB users to login once to the site and be logged into the forum already.

It's actually not that hard

irwin commented 24 March 2005 at 02:47

It's actually not that hard to build a portal frontend for phpBB. All you have to do is copy and paste a bunch of HTML and PHP code and put it in a block-looking like structure on your front page.

Smartor Site is an example of such a project.

It's not really "integration" more than it is "an extension" that uses the phpBB database as a backend.

One problem with cross Drupal/phpBB login is that the sessions are handled completely differently in both systems. You might be able to do some work with some interesting LDAP/user hacks/cookies combination, but the problem is daunting and annoying enough that few people have done it (hence the lack of a phpBB module).

-- Irwin
* Drupal at work -> http://suikoden.mine.nu (Suikoden-themed Role-playing Game.)
* My other Drupal site -> http://scrapped.mine.nu (Video-game & Anime-themed Blog)

Is table synchronization

berlin commented 29 March 2005 at 10:43

Is table synchronization necessary at all? I see scripts integrated with a forum that uses the forum user table only to authenticate users. no sync is done. Check out the 4images integration with phpbb or vbulletin. the instruction is short and simple and you can find it at vbulletin.org

Just to add a comment. I use

IBUnique commented 29 March 2005 at 02:51

Just to add a comment. I use Invision and not phpBB but nevertheless, as there would appear to be no integration for my product with the excellent looking drupal l will write it for Invision.

This month we are also getting vBulletin, and likewise l will integrate drupal with that forums software.

My thinking is the forum software should integrate with the CSM software and not vice versa.

Will get back with regular updates on progress.

Another badly worded post byu IBU.

www.ibunique.com - skins, hacks, graphics (for invision only currently, soon adding vBulletin content).

Just a quick note. We've

iraszl commented 22 April 2005 at 12:11

Just a quick note. We've decided to rather convert the old phpbb forum into Drupal. Check the sig for the results. Missing some phpbb features, but will gradually add everything that's needed with the Drupal modules.
---
http://creativebits.org

we converted from phpbb2 to

azote commented 24 May 2005 at 04:12

we converted from phpbb2 to drupal this weekend! everyone is happy
http://globalheroics.com (running 4.6.0)

all was imported: topics,replys,users,signatures,etc...
only thing we had to do the forums privilages again..

with the instructions here---> http://drupal.org/node/12311#comment-23314
and here:
http://drupal.org/node/12311#comment-28057

That's great news! But your

iraszl commented 26 May 2005 at 09:41

That's great news! But your forums seem to be empty. Is it still in progress, or am I missing something?

---
http://creativebits.org

I wipe all the data!... but

azote commented 27 May 2005 at 17:45

I wipe all the data!... but it work!....

the reason I did this is becuase When I followed the steps everything was great....
but after playing with the website I notice that the previews containters on phpbb2 were converted to normal forums with subforums.....
so I tried to convert them back to containers and Pressed CONFIRM DELETE! with out reading that I was going to delete everything recursevely.. :s...

and I was to lazy to add all this stuff again..

adding features

tigrezno commented 26 May 2005 at 10:33

You can try my module to get a reply notification system cloned from phpBB for drupal forums.

http://drupal.log01.org

theming drupal forums to look like phpBB

zirafa commented 8 August 2005 at 10:04

Just letting anybody that is interested know that I posted some documentation on theming the drupal forums to look exactly like phpBB. By adding modules like private message, and profiles, you can build a much more powerful bulletin board system than phpBB very quickly.

Theming drupal forums to look like phpBB

It is based on chx's flatforum module, but doesn't require it.

Farsheed

Looks great! Thanks for

iraszl commented 8 August 2005 at 13:22

Looks great! Thanks for sharing.
---
http://creativebits.org

Thanks for the

pamphile commented 8 August 2005 at 13:27

Thanks for the link...

Very Very useful...

Marcel
YP.BZ - Yellow Page Dot Business

Problem with promoting forum topics to the front page

ryooki commented 7 October 2005 at 07:26

I tried out your code, which appears to work pretty well, so far - except I'm missing a couple of gifs (icon_mini-post & icon_profile). Perhaps I haven't copied the icons correctly...

Anyway, the main problem seems to be when forum topics are promoted to the front page. The display gets confused or something. I get the regular node items listed 100% across the top, right under the nav-bar with the pages 1-5 links. Then, I get the Left block column, the mission statement, & any "sticky" regular nodes. Below that, I get the forum posts that were promoted to the front of the page in forum style. Below that I get the right hand block column.

Any idea how to fix that?

Thanks!

those pics

zirafa commented 20 October 2005 at 02:11

those pics are provided on the example, just download them from the example site and put them in your misc/ directory!

and i know what you mean with the promoted nodes issue. as it stands, it probably won't work to promote forum nodes if you do custom theming to the forum. at least, i haven't tested it so i'm not sure how to fix it, although it seems do-able....

-farsheed

Time passed since this

lastnico commented 26 August 2010 at 09:20

Time passed since this comment. Here is how to theme Drupal Forum like phpBB3:

http://www.forum-software.org/list-drupal-forums-tips

A module for integrating phpBB into Drupal

arkepp commented 1 September 2005 at 22:52

Ok, I have yet to hear from anybody actually being able to use my last hack, which wasn't really a surprise.

However, Mac1.no and Linux1.no have been running quite well on it, but now it is time to move on to greater things (ie. Drupal 4.6.x) and in that connection I have written a _real_ module that shares none of the code and/or ideas with the previous version. Before you get too excited though, note that it is not quiet done yet, but it is working.

You can find an explanation and links to the current code here:
http://linux1.no/phpbb_drupal/

Short summary:
All the code is in one file and done through the proper hooks. An added bonus is that you don't really have to modify phpBB either, I am using mod_rewrite to send you to the proper pages. For example, if you reply to a post without being logged in you are first sent to Drupal's login-page, then redirected to reply-mode on the post that sparked your interest.

This should make it extremely easy to keep both Drupal and phpBB up to date, and you can work off any phpBB-theme you want.phpBB is still not embedded into Drupal, which is something I do not plan on doing either because it would require lots of modifications. Instead I intend to theme phpBB to look similar to Drupal.

very interesting... keep us

pamphile commented 2 September 2005 at 15:08

very interesting... keep us updated :)

Interesting approach to this...

sethcohn commented 2 September 2005 at 17:45

Looking forward to some stable code.

4 arkepp

3B commented 2 September 2005 at 16:39

i roughly did something similar, but updating phpbb ... i'm very interested in working to this solution ... most of all on the avatar topic ... pls write me via email --> alberto at gaiga dot it

Worked for me!

admin@scgy99.net commented 6 September 2005 at 03:51

OK, so I'm here to tell you I'm able to use it:)
I'm using your module with my heavily modded (yes!) phpbb 2.0.17 installation (and drupal 4.6.3) and so far it works just fine. I have tested registration, logging in and out, profile editing and private messaging, works well. The only problem I see being that the signiture doesn't seem to work though.

The most important thing is that you implemented it exactly the way I would like to see it implemented:). Actually I originally wanted to do it myself before I realized it was quite difficult, and I found your module and it was like a wow! lol

Thank you so much for this work! Kudos to you!

BTW I had to recompile php on my host to get it to support mbstrings. Since many hosts don't support this extension by default, I suggest you mention it in the instructions. Another thing is that I had to use line 181 instead of 182 to connect to my mysql db, why did you change 181 to 182?

And I just noticed that the page has been removed (just hours after I downloaded the files!). I hope you are not going to stop working on this.

OK, I have found another

admin@scgy99.net commented 6 September 2005 at 04:23

OK, I have found another problem now. phpBB doesn't know that I'm the system administrator when I log in as "admin" and I cannot access the control panel!!

Hi :) thanks for testing,

arkepp commented 6 September 2005 at 23:49

Hi :)

thanks for testing, it's crucial for my motivation. The files are not 100% up to date at the moment, we have started using them on Mac1.no and Linux1.no (_lots_ of users), so we're having our fair share of transition problems. I'm trying one hack at a time, so committing them to Subversion is not really sensible.

The control panel problem is due to a catch-all login.php rewrite-rule at the bottom of the .htaccess file:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^sid=(.*)$
RewriteRule ^login.php(.*)$ /user/login?destination=phpBB2 [L]

Just put "#" in front of these two lines. This means there is no safety, but I will have to work on that at some other point.

We also found out that you're better off not setting any cookie_domain in phpBB. I think the default is none, so that is okay.

I will also look at doing the character encoding conversion in MySQL, but in a few hours I will fly to New York, so it may take a week or more until I get a chance to do thi.s

In the mean time Linux1 and Mac1 will accumulate lots of errors that'll be interesting to look at for me, and cause our users great despair ;)

Im Back

Fool2 commented 7 September 2005 at 05:39

Its been a while, but I am finally upgrading the site and I have been working on Arkepp's code. I have not yet gotten it totally working but I did notice something with the sessions that tends to happen on my computer. For some reason if there is an anonymous session in PHPBB and I log in through drupal the login does not totally carry over fully unless I exit the browser window with the anonymous forum session and go back to the forums. This is probably an oversight on my part having to do with cookie matching.

Also, I have a question-

Why does your script create a group for the user? I don't understand what use this could have. Good job on making this a 4.6 mod, I've integrated a lot of your script into my code.

Thats a bug

xmats commented 7 September 2005 at 11:22

I'm not the developer, but I'm one of the admins on the sites arkepp originally wrote this module for (Mac1.no & Linux1.no). I can confirm that we are experiencing more or less the same bug with anonymous session in PHPBB.

We're also having some problems with the PHPBB-login if you close your browser and go to the same site again. In some cases you do not stay logged in in PHPBB, but Drupal markes you as logged in. This creates an ugly loop when trying to post new posts in phpbb as mod_rewrite sends you back to Drupal to login. Drupal then sends you back to phpbb and we have an endless loop until the browser fails.

Anyone have any clue what might fix this issue? We have used several hours now trying to fix this bug. With this bug fixed the module would be a whole lot more useable. Please do contact me if you find any fix for this issue.

Usergroups

arkepp commented 7 September 2005 at 12:24

Why does your script create a group for the user? I don't understand what use this could have.

Neither do I :D but it's what a normal phpBB installation does too, and that's what I am trying to mimick.

At this point, one could actually argue that my old script works better than the new one. It doesn't have the session-problems, but it's a very ugly phpBB-hack that would be too much work to maintain in the long run.

Next week I will have a fixed internet connection again.

Recent Install

Snowbird-1 commented 12 September 2005 at 10:53

Hello,

Thank you for creating this mod!! I recently downloaded this, but when I try to create a new account I get this error...any ideas what I did?

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: mb_convert_encoding() in /home/snowbird/public_html/modules/phpBB2/phpbb.module on line 244

Thank you,

Snowbird!!

Have a look at admin@scgy99.net's post

arkepp commented 12 September 2005 at 15:33

Have a look at "Worked for me! admin@scgy99.net" above. It looks like some distributions don't compile PHP with support for mbstrings.

You can recompile PHP, but I will soon try to do the conversion in MySQL. It should not be hard, you can try yourself too (send me the code if you do!). I'm on the move Norway -> NYC -> Vermont right now, so I don't have everything set up to test the changes.

I hope to be ready after the 17th of September.

can't recompile PHP

gaiga commented 27 October 2005 at 09:38

arkepp ... unfortunately i cannot recompile PHP due to hosting security restrictions ...

any other escapes?

many thanks in advance for you reply

kind regards
alberto

That's fixed in the latest

arkepp commented 2 November 2005 at 05:18

That's fixed in the latest version. It tries all the possible ways of converting from/to utf-8, one of them is very likely to work.

Where can I find the integration module?

Mikey-1 commented 10 September 2005 at 17:07

> You can find an explanation and links to the current code here:
> http://linux1.no/phpbb_drupal/

Arkepp, I'm very keen to try this out for myself as it's just what I'm looking for - if I can get this to work then I'll migrate my sites over to Drupal.

But....but the download page isn't there - do you have a new url or have you taken it down for a reason?

Oops. Switched word in URL-alias.

arkepp commented 12 September 2005 at 15:38

Oops. Somehow the aliases got deleted when I upgraded to 4.6.x, and when I entered it again I wrote drupal_phpbb instead of phpbb_drupal.

It's now operational again, thanks for the heads-up.

Be warned, I'm still losing phpBB-sessions every now and then. I think it is related to time and somewhere in the phpBB code, but I haven't nailed it down just yet. Start testing, and I'll keep working on it.

mb_convert_encoding problem

zyurph commented 13 September 2005 at 18:44

I keep getting this error every time I login:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: mb_convert_encoding() in /home/username/public_html/drupal/modules/phpbb.module on line 244

Both my drupal and phpbb installs are new, and working properly.

Thanks for any help you can provide,
Zyurph

Another potential solution?

Mikey-1 commented 15 September 2005 at 09:07

Just letting you all know:

http://www.hivemindz.com/drupal_quick_bridge_for_forums_work_started

Beware

chx commented 23 September 2005 at 09:28

This guy's code has been proved to be extremely unreliable.
--
Read my developer blog on Drupal4hu.

--
Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile.

Fixed session problems

arkepp commented 16 September 2005 at 19:58

I have fixed a bunch of the session problems, so download revision 10 of phpbb.module

I don't know how to help the mbstring people yet, I'm open to suggestions (email webmaster@linux1.no)

new thread perhaps?

sepeck commented 19 September 2005 at 01:20

Perhaps you could announce in a ne thread what you are doing and your progress so far. That will help you keep your comments that are specific to your module more relavant to it.

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

I wanted to clear it with

arkepp commented 23 September 2005 at 20:08

I wanted to clear it with the core developers first, since it is sort of competing with their forum. On the other hand, this implementation will always require a magnitude more of work.

I just got my CVS account today, I will try to start a project over the weekend and I'll post at the bottom of this thread.

I got the account, but it

arkepp commented 27 September 2005 at 17:40

I got the account, but it doesn't work. Still waiting to have that resolved before I start a new project page here.

Small update: The module got cleaned up to conform to Drupal coding standards (to the best of my ability anyway) and the block with recent topics no longer shows things in private forums (auth_read != 0).

Next up is a script that examines Drupal's database for userids and possibly adds extra fields to the user-profiles so that more of the phpBB stuff works (direct links to AIM and so forth).

If people could let me know what character encoding tools they have installed with PHP (mb_strings, iconv, convert...) I would appreciate it.

I posted a reply to your

ryooki commented 2 October 2005 at 03:55

I posted a reply to your thread on the phpBB website, only to find the discussion here! Thanks a bunch for doing this. I can't wait till I get home and can try to implement it.

(yes, this is a shameless post to try to put this thread in my recent post list)

I read your comments, thanks

arkepp commented 2 December 2005 at 00:28

I read your comments, thanks :)

The module is now here, except the I have not committed the first version of the code yet: http://drupal.org/node/32818

I guess I'll keep CVS and bugtracker here, description in my site + in README.txt file.

If someone could tell my professors that I have enough to do already, that would be great ;) Sorry about the delay, but not getting enough sleep as it is.

Corrected link above, it was

arkepp commented 2 December 2005 at 00:30

Corrected link above, it was missing an "8" on the end. Sorry.

The module works fine, but is still a hassle to install. I'm going to do user profile stuff over the holidays. College can be so distracting...

I know...

Fool2 commented 10 December 2005 at 03:59

Does it look like we are going to be able to get the sessions working perfectly?

Good work so far, college is distracting, I agree.

BUT, holidays are for programming.

May we all roll around in 4.7 bliss

Works except if a user

arkepp commented 15 February 2006 at 00:51

Works except if a user manages to delete the phpBB cookie and not the Drupal cookie. In that case the two start playing ping pong, and the only solution is to log out from Drupal and back in (or delete the Drupal cookie manually).

Could be fixed by modifying Drupal or phpBB, but I don't want to do that at this point.

How does one subscribe to

beginner commented 23 September 2005 at 09:00

How does one subscribe to interesting threads?

--
http://www.reuniting.info/
Healing with Sexual Relationships.

I don't think you can.

lilywhite commented 23 September 2005 at 12:51

I follow them in my "recent posts" control panel -- I think this only works if I've replied, though.

How about if we all started

tesla.nicoli commented 3 October 2005 at 17:48

How about if we all started doing

SUBSCRIBER MARK

To show that it is really needed? It would also be less interuptive of a thread that funny remarks or saying nothing at all.

Bump

Maniac8888 commented 27 October 2005 at 16:30

Bump

bump to subscribe

daniel.hunt commented 24 November 2005 at 08:49

*bump to subscribe*

I want to keep this thread in my list :)

SUBSCRIBER MARK

Biceps commented 13 December 2005 at 02:24

SUBSCRIBER MARK

Subscriber mark

TraderX commented 22 December 2005 at 07:58

Subscriber mark

Update needed?

jswart commented 27 January 2006 at 09:01

Does this module needs to be updated when phpBB updates?

/ Swart

--
http://www.filmanmeldelse.com/drupal-phpBB
Danish movie reviews

If the tables that store

arkepp commented 15 February 2006 at 00:49

If the tables that store users or sessions are changed.

Probably also if any of the important files get new names (viewtopic.php), but I don't see that happening in the 2.0.x branch.

subscriber mark

annab-1 commented 28 January 2006 at 17:00

subscriber mark

Subscriber mark

Appleboy commented 4 February 2006 at 15:16

Subscriber mark

Subscriber mark?

Heine commented 4 February 2006 at 15:31

Perhaps Drupal.org will have user bookmarks in the future, but until then I don't hope this practice of subscriber mark will become popular.

Just imagine what would happen if all visitors here would do the same... The tracker would become useless.

Please use an alternative; bookmarks in your browser or an external site such as http://del.icio.us .

(btw I saw we are both near our first drupanniversary...)
--
Tips for posting to the forums.
When your problem is solved, please post a follow-up to the thread you started.

SUBSCRIBER MARK

nathandigriz commented 1 March 2006 at 16:27

SUBSCRIBER MARK

A subscriber mark option

cog.rusty commented 1 March 2006 at 17:14

A subscriber mark option would also be nice for gauging the interest/popularity of a topic. Better than page-views, since it is a deliberate user action. (This was a sly SUBSCRIBER MARK.)

Some installation help please !

smilodon commented 10 April 2006 at 14:54

I want to get this: http://drupal.org/node/32818 to work. I use the 4.6.x drupal, so heres the problem...
I uncommented all the 4.6 code and commented 4.7 code.

  $output.= form_textfield(t('Location of phpbb'), 'phpbb_dir', variable_get('phpbb_dir', 'phpBB2/'), 64, 64,

Firstly it was a pain in the ass to change all the phpBB2/ to the actual full URL-s, because the bath folder name did not work.
And finally i got "Only MySQL is currently supported for phpBB integration. $dbms:" I AM USING MYSQL, so what am i doing wrong ?

I thin its something wrong with this code, so i trashed it:

	if ($dbms == 'mysql4'|| $dbms == 'mysql3' || $dbms == 'mysql') {
		$dbms = 'mysql';
	} else {
		die('Only MySQL is currently supported for phpBB integration. $dbms: ' . $dbms);
	}

And now i got this, please help me !!!:

Fatal error: No Database Selected query: INSERT INTO eaap_watchdog (uid, type, message, severity, link, location, hostname, timestamp) VALUES (1, 'php', 'No Database Selected query: SELECT f.name, f.type, v.value FROM eaap_profile_fields f INNER JOIN eaap_profile_values v ON f.fid = v.fid WHERE uid = 1 failis /home/smilodon/public_html/portaal/includes/database.mysql.inc real 66.', 2, '', '/portaal/', '80.265.51.55', 1144679911) in /home/smilodon/public_html/portaal/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 66

Fatal error: No Database Selected query: UPDATE eaap_sessions SET uid = 1, hostname = '80.265.51.55', session = 'messages|a:0:{}watchdog_overview_filter|s:3:\"all\";', timestamp = 1144679911 WHERE sid = 'e683f2e6a41440d872ac4d3ec4989f43' in /home/smilodon/public_html/portaal/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 66

THE LINE 66 is:

  trigger_error(mysql_error() ."\nquery: ". htmlspecialchars($query), E_USER_ERROR);

phpBB2 migration module

beginner commented 11 April 2006 at 05:39

I just would like to make people aware that there is a new module that works quite well for people who want to migrate their phpBB2 board to Drupal.
See the documentation (to be completed):
http://drupal.org/node/57197
and the phpbb2drupal project home page:
http://drupal.org/node/45403

The phpbb module would still be useful for people who don't want or cannot migrate to a Drupal forum.

--
http://www.reuniting.info/
Healing with Sexual Relationships.

?

smilodon commented 11 April 2006 at 13:56

Thanx for reminding, but im really sure i dont want to migrate, i want to integrate...
This thread here is about integration. But seems its not possible to integrate... lots of errors here and there :(

smilodon ... i just

3B commented 11 April 2006 at 15:59

smilodon ...
i just integrate sucessfully and quickly phpbb and drupal as suggested by the author ... nice and clean work
reccomended!

:-)

YEA, FINALLY !

smilodon commented 11 April 2006 at 16:37

Ok i made a clean install and got it to work :) Great script.
Hear me out now, this is important !

ADD TO THE INSTALL.txt file:
13) After installing the module, log into drupal and go to admin - > settings - > phpbb and configure the settings.

REMOVE LINES 13) and 14) , because they have nothing to do with the INSTALLATION proccess.
But the information should not be erased, it should be up after the "NOTE:"

I didnt know, that this module has a interface, so i tryed to edit the file to get it working... as many scripts require... All this because of no-info in the install.txt. Hope this helps other ppl, who are as "dumb" as me.

PS: I will try to figure out the link problem for profiles and private messages on phpBB...

Not for beginners, but certainly possible

solipsist commented 11 April 2006 at 16:27

See:
http://drupal.org/node/44977

--
Jakob Persson - blog
Leancept – Digital effect and innovation agency

Sessions with different browsers dont work ?

smilodon commented 11 April 2006 at 18:18

Major bug in this thing...
The session managaer cant handle FireFox...
Its ok in Internet Explorer, but not in FireFox.
You need to log in on forums and on drupal seperately with FireFox...
And you CANNOT log off the forums within drupal using FireFox, only way is to delete the appripriate cookies, but this is not very comfortable.

I cant quite understand these linse:

  RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^sid=(.*)$
  RewriteRule ^login.php(.*)$ ../drupal/user/login?destination=phpBB2 [L]

In .htacess in forum folder.
If there is no sid, then you can actualy avoid drupal login, and log in to the phpBB, without logging in to drupal. So now if u want out of the forums, u have to log in to drupal and log out again. Quite confusing.

Im dont know much about cookies, so could someone suggest something about this ? Please.

I think this is your

jase951 commented 11 April 2006 at 18:44

I think this is your problem??????? Backup first.

In your phpBB admin config, what do you have as the "Cookie domain"?
If you have something in it (e.g. your domain) empty it and save.

If you can't login to your admin config panel; go into your database and edit there.

think its not it..

smilodon commented 12 April 2006 at 14:49

I think its how the firefox handles the cookies, not in the settings.
In the phpBB admin panel i have the seting like:
Cookie domain - my domain name - as it should be, confirmed.
Cookie name - phpbb2mysql - not wrong i guess
Cookie path - / - only the character "/"
Cookie secure - Disabled - only for SSL
Session length [ seconds ] - 3600

Ok some more testing now... Im gonna use FireFox - > Tools - > Cookies - > View Cookies, to discribe what i see after different actions.

FIREFOX TESTING
1ACTION: logging in as user named 2 to drupal
1RESULTS: there are created 2 cookies named phpbb2mysql_data and PHPSESSID, both with different content. phpBB2 cookie has huge info with lots of "%" in it, but drupals cookie has like 30character ID GUID. Both cookies have marked in the info "Host: domainname.com"
1AUTHORIZATION: GRANTED!, i can do everything in drupal, as i am now logedd in. No errors.
2ACTION: going to formus with typing its URL to address bar
2RESULTS there are 2 more cookies created. One is phpbb2mysql_data, and other is phpbb2mysql_sid. The phpBB2_data also contains huge info with lots of "%" in it, but it is not similar to the firs same named cookie created. phpbb2mysql_sid content is as PHPSESSID has.. a 30 char. ID GUID, but it not identical with PHPSESSID's guid code. Both cookies have marked in the info "Domain: .domainname.com". Word Host is replaced with Domain somehow.
2AUTHORIZATION: NOT granted. Under "Who is Online" i see my user is logged in, but if post a thread, it sais i am "Guest". Also the login link does not change to log off link.
3ACTION: i press the login button on phpBB, (or try to login with the quic login form)
3RESULT: I am redirected to ...phpBB/login.php?sid=(The 30 char. guid in phpbb2mysql_sid cookie). I see drupal login page, as i could log into drupal one more time ? If i log in again, im redirected to drupal/user/* , where is * is my user id. Or if i just type the drupal address again, then i see i am still loged in drupal.

INTERNET EXPLORER...
All i see is one file in the temp files folder. I cant open it, so no ide what goes on, but everything works with IE.
Some more info: If i change the "Cookie path" in phpBB settings, then IE does not work either, as supposed. The sympthoms of no authorization are the same as with Firefox, but i didint look, what cookies it creats, though i know php puts its cookies to a folder now. If i emty only the "Cookie domain", then IE works fine, but Firefox has the same faults.

PS: my site has 30% Firefox users, this is enought reason, not to use this module... I think this issue is so deep, thath it affect all mozilla based browsers and maybe even others. This MUST be mentioned in the module readme or near download link.

QUOTE: "Both cookies have

jase951 commented 12 April 2006 at 16:16

QUOTE: "Both cookies have marked in the info "Domain: .domainname.com". Word Host is replaced with Domain somehow."

I think you need to get the two cookies to become "host", look at drupals cookies which all have host, except the cookies named with an underscore prefix.

That was what I was trying to get you to solve, in my first post (seems that it doesn't work for you).

However, I still think that this is your problem.

not my problem still

smilodon commented 12 April 2006 at 17:08

I got some ppl in MSN together and we tested the stuff.
All the firefox users had the issue, and all the IE users worked.

Also, this is a FRESH install of phpBB .19 and drupal 6.5 and the host is not quite good.

I have no idea how to fix it... so i have much testing to do untill i figure something up... Where can i find the Drupal cookie system ? I didnt spot anything in the admin panel to change for changing the cookies properties for drupal.

When I said cookies for

jase951 commented 12 April 2006 at 17:31

When I said cookies for drupal, I meant look in firefox where the cookies are.

All drupal cookies have "host" and then the domain.....have a look at drupal website cookies.

I think i talked about it...

smilodon commented 12 April 2006 at 20:17

I named all the cookies what were made PHPSESSID and the phpBB_sid (sid is made by the integration module i think) are Drupal cookies. Drupal is using the 30 character GUID ID, i know because i had some problems to fix eralyer about it.
The only problem is, that i cant compare these results with IE cookie results, because i dont know how to open the cookie files in IE temp folder (IE is so poor, you cant eaven look your own cookies - im a firefox fan). So i have no clue, how they SHOULD be right - i know thath firefox is messing something up.

IE cookies

smilodon commented 13 April 2006 at 13:24

Oww, it actualy is possible to open the IE cookies in notepad or wordpad... But before you do that, emty the temp folder and create new cookies by logging in or you will not wind them... all kinds of stuff there.

INTERNET EXPLOERER TESTING
1ACTION: logging in as user named 2 to drupal
1RESULTS: There is one file created with anme admin@domain.com. Inside it there is like two identifiers. First one is : PHPSESSID with about 30char guid for drupal. It is for eestiaa.cjb.net/ and below is more numbers like 4 char number, then 11 char number, then 9 char number, 11 char and finally again 9 char number. These numbers at below are identical to the other identifier numbers below it.
Secont one is: PHPSESSID_data with huge info with lots of "%" in it for phpBB. It is also eestiaa.cjb.net/ and below are the same number codes i mentioned before. Both of them end with "*" character.
1AUTHORIZATION: GRANTED!, i can do everything in drupal, as i am now logedd in. No errors.
2ACTION: going to formus with typing its URL to address bar
2RESULTS: Nothing changes, no new cookies are created and the information in the first one remains the same.
2AUTHORIZATION: GRANTED!, i can do everything in phpBB, as i am now logedd in. No errors.
3ACTION: i press the log out button in phpBB (the login button changes to log off, if you are loged in)
3RESULTS: No cookies are added, but the only one thath is, is changed. 30char guid for drupal and the huge info with lots of "%" in it for phpBB are changed. I think it is for "guest" user now. But all the other information is same. The names, host names, and the below number sequences of both identifiers.
2AUTHORIZATION: Im no longer logged in on forums and on drupal. I was redirected to drupal, when i pressed the button.

So now i know what is wrong. Firs one is, thath firefox is creating some identifiers named "phpbb2mysql_" wich are not needed. And then it adds domain and host names as the same information two times.
Getting closer to solving this thing.. any help would be appriciated.

Something better now...

I do the ACTION1 and ACTION2, the cookie.txt file of FireFox brauser shows:

.domain.com TRUE / FALSE 1176469389 BBSESSID_data a%3A2%3A%7Bs%3A11%3A%22autologinid%22%3Bs%3A0%3A%22%22%3Bs%3A6%3A%22userid%22%3Bi%3A-1%3B%7D

domain.com FALSE / FALSE 1176469383 BBSESSID_data a%3A3%3A%7Bs%3A6%3A%22userid%22%3Bs%3A1%3A%224%22%3Bs%3A11%3A%22autologinid%22%3Bs%3A32%3A%22492876818443e4c04afe3e4.05127250%22%3Bs%3A11%3A%22user_active%22%3Bi%3A1%3B%7D

domain.com FALSE / FALSE 1146933383 PHPSESSID 38d7dde06bfadac9f5b590a931e65a60

I do the ACTION1 and ACTION2, the cookie file of Internet Explorer brauser shows:

PHPSESSID
a4d9133c09d160661a5c8b26c4f1109c
domain.com/
1536
2585829760
29782315
4272117232
29777658
*
BBSESSID_data
a%3A3%3A%7Bs%3A6%3A%22userid%22%3Bi%3A4%3Bs%3A11%3A%22autologinid%22%3Bs%3A32%3A%22932444377443e4ce059cfb8.53607068%22%3Bs%3A11%3A%22user_active%22%3Bi%3A1%3B%7D
domain.com/
1536
2469851136
29851084
470119936
29777659
*

Internet exploerer inserts the BOLD id for phpBB cooke correclty. So if i go to forums, not cookies are changed.
FireFox phpBB id is different from the IE id.. WHY ? I think this is the problem. So Firefox creats a new cookie and "Guest" session with the .domain.com UNDERLINED. If i log in to the forums with firefox, then the id is:
a%3A2%3A%7Bs%3A11%3A%22autologinid%22%3Bs%3A0%3A%22%22%3Bs%3A6%3A%22userid%22%3Bs%3A1%3A%224%22%3B%7D
Yet another kind of ID, but the Guest id is changing to this id, not the one supposed to be the "original", which is different from the one in IE cookie.

phpbb.module line 426

		setcookie($phpbb_cookie_name . '_data', serialize($sessiondata), time() + 31536000, "/" );
		setcookie($phpbb_cookie_name . '_sid', '', time() - 6000, '/');

So i suppose, that there is something wrong with serialize($sessiondata) , because this is different in firefox, but it is correct in IE. I have no idea how to fix it, this php wich handles cookies is out of my legue.

same problem

apina commented 24 July 2006 at 17:53

im having the same sort of problems

it takes me 3 tries to log into any account on drupal then when i go to my forums i am not logged in or i am logged in under a different name.

i cant enter my admin panel in phpbb because it keeps askin me to re-auth in drupal and then it never redirects me

-bump-

smilodon commented 17 April 2006 at 19:34

-bump-

issue link

smilodon commented 21 April 2006 at 16:51

Here is the issue link for that problem at the moment:
http://drupal.org/node/58288

Make Drupal forums better

Vyoma commented 16 July 2006 at 16:57

Up until this point, I was looking for phpBB integration with Drupal. I even searched for 'phpBB Drupal integration' in the search box and this thread came up.

I was patient enough to read through all the things that people had to say, and I think we are better off getting the Drupal forums more feature rich, and make it more like other forums.

Well, I am off to install another Drupal setup on my workstation and start tinkering around. I may add to the forum module already present, or try to come up with something afresh. Not a one mans task, but I always venture out on such things.

i recently installed phpbb

apina commented 24 July 2006 at 06:44

i recently installed phpbb mod on a clean NEw drupal install
i can not log in to any user accounts with the phpbb module installed,
i can not figure out why this is could you please help?
my forums are at www.snowboardsummit.com/forum
and drupal is installed in my root

Drupal/phpBB intergration & theme stuff

seersucker commented 30 October 2006 at 15:57

Installed the Drupal/phpBB intergration module by arkepp, http://drupal.org/project/phpbb which seems to work well.

Instructions say to put Drupal theme stuff in the overall_header.tpl & overall_footer.tpl. Problem I have is trying to encapsulate the forum within my drupal header and blocks (like this: http://mac1.no/forum/) but I'm unsure of exactly what drupal stuff to put into these files to acheive this.

My paths are:
/localhost/drupal/themes/friendselectric
/localhost/drupal/forum/templates/subSilver

Would really apreciate it if someone could give advice.

Without MODs for phpBB you

solipsist commented 30 October 2006 at 22:09

Without MODs for phpBB you can't use PHP code in phpBB's tpl files so the HTML code in these files must be static HTML. You take the code out of page.tpl.php, put the code before your content area in overall_header and the code after the content area in overall_footer.tpl. Remember to copy the static code for navigation from the browser and such since phpBB won't be able to execute Drupal's theming code for primary, secondary links and menu trees.

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Jakob Persson
Drupal developer, web designer and usability consultant
http://www.jakob-persson.com

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Jakob Persson - blog
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