Joomla! Forum - community, help and support

Cant believe this thread is still active!

I would love an integration as well. Currently I bridge my forum users and all other apps with JFusion, and I refuse using any other forum than phpBB as they are incredibly inferior.

Lionzz666 wrote:I would love an integration as well. Currently I bridge my forum users and all other apps with JFusion, and I refuse using any other forum than phpBB as they are incredibly inferior.

I did the same and agree completely, I used phpbb 3.0.8 and JFusion, but I would still like a fully integrated forum for Joomla and I'm surprised it doesn't. It's a great CMS with a wonderful community that has no built in forums? I don't get that...

There are native forums, you can find them here: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions ... tion/forum.

Tonie wrote:There are native forums, you can find them here: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions ... tion/forum.

Yea, but have you seen those? They look horrible compared to phpbb. Users can easily get turned off by those as my users did, I had to wrap my forums in Joomla because no one liked em.

I know some may like them, but coming from phpbb3 to those... Not even in the same ballpark.

I have to agree, forums around the world are governed by phpbb3 nowadays, its pretty much the standard of what members and users expect.

hi all, which bridge would you recommend ?
I like separate databases between Joomla and phpbb, but I would like the forum to be inside Joomla like this site here
I see JFusion, Mehdi's Phpbb ..etc

cheers

I used jfusion before, it works, but can be confusing.....and not all features work the way they should.

4thdesign2 wrote:I used jfusion before, it works, but can be confusing.....and not all features work the way they should.

thanks nice info, all I need.. so what do you use now and face no problems ?

For the website i changed completely. Got rid of joomla (unfortunately) and used board3.de which encompasses phpbb3 entirely. Very good if you just want a small.....ish website which is functional and the main aim for me was to focus on phpbb3 functionaly (there is tons of it, much better than that rubbish thing called fireboard/kenuna or whatever its called - what a load of trash that was)

So with board3.de you have a portal added onto phpbb3 which you can customise to some degree, gives you good basic functionality in the form of blocks but your main focus is using the forums on phpbb3 installed.

yeah I know what you are talking about, but I really love Joomla and mainly I use this, so a forum comes 2nd for my needs, I just installed phpbb today.

I would also say that I am also not that interested at the moment in user sync with joomla, sometimes it is also good to have separate registration, anyway.

so all I care at the moment is the "design" part of the story, making the forum part of the Joomla layout, and of course I don't wanna do this by inserting it in a wrapper etc. (when I say design I don't mean the template design)

haven't tested those bridges yet, so I got no idea what I can have and what not. but I guess my needs so far are not that many.

Since June of 2010 I'm been setting up and administering several phpBB3 systems. I have been going through the pains of adding (certified) third-party modifications and board styles, dealing with the site updates, hand-coding changes, etc. I've also been working on setting up a Joomla 1.6 site for a customer (who understands that version's beta/RC) status). Needing to create a customized site template for him (and possible future) customers, as well as needing to also customize modules has had me deep in the code and APIs (Application Program Interface) for phpBB3 3.0.7-PL1, phpBB3 3.0.8, and Joomla betas 14 through RC1.

The agony of what I've been going through with phpBB3 as a implementer and customizer has been tremendous. To modify site features you can dive deep into the PHP code of the site and roll your own software, you can download and install code modifications from the main site - tested for your code version and usually installs... unless you have made previous changes to your site (more on this later), or look around the 'net for other "mods" and take your chance even more. As for the actual installation? You can do it by hand, unzipping files and uploading to your site (and pray the instructions are accurate!), or you can install on you site a special add-on to upload and extract your zip files. That add-on (called "AutoMOD") supposedly tests and installs your new toy. If your lucky it installs without a hitch with every feature ready to go. The next best thing is it installs and you have to do another step (such as upload code that it created and downloaded to you system). The worst thing that can happen is that it finds that it can't install the software because it can't find the sections of your existing code that it needs to change. It uses a fairly unsophisticated search system, so if you've done previous code changes (such as adding another mod) there is a better than even chance that your new feature won't install unless you modify the xml files used by the installer, or go modify the files it complains about to make it happy. And this doesn't even touch upon styles, themes, and imagesets (which for Joomla users are "templates" and "media").

Every page in phpBB3 is often composed of several different files. A common practice is to have "*_header.html", "*_body.html", and "*_footer.html" files. No, these are NOT complete html files but are incomplete segments. I found out the hard way that some HTML editors like to "fix" such files by adding the "missing" sections of the file.

In summary phpBB3 can be a nightmare to customize as far as content and its layout.

Joomla, on the other hand, is a dream as far as customization. Creating new content is often as simple as a word processor style edit. Uploading and installing new content is seamless. Unless badly written, a new add-on won't interfere with, or be interfered with

phpBB3 is great for generating content member content. That's what it's for. But it suffers greatly in the management of appearance and layout - where Joomla shines.

What actually needs to be done is not a bridge, or creating a simple add-on, but create an entirely different project. Changing all the existing phpBB files, templates, etc. into a set of Joomla modules and templates. Now it would just be a Joomla-based site package. Once I gave it some thought these past few months I think I might take it on myself. I'm qualified enough I think to do it (a full systems programmer proficient in over 15 programming languages and variations). Someone earlier in this thread mentioned money. I wonder if that offer still stands? I'll go it completely on my own unless I get so lucky as to be able to put together a team of people who have been developing in both communities.

Richard Robertson
President,
Basketcase Software, Inc.

As someone who has already done coding in both phpbb and Joomla and understands the architecture of both, I think the previous post pretty much nailed the reason why there is no phpbb Component and most likely never will be, unless someone creates a brand new project and rewrites phpbb for Joomla from the ground up using MVC pattern. But why would anyone want to do that when there are already Joomla based forum software available for free. It doesn't make sense, so if you are waiting for this to happen you will be waiting forever.

If you do want to use phpbb with Joomla it would make a lot more sense for you to create a phpbb Theme to match your Joomla site, then integrate the two logins together using JFusion so that the user doesn't need to register twice to use both your site and Joomla.

Pete

I would also like to integrate joomla and phpbb. Unfortunately, by reading posts within past few minutes I realized that most of the people try to integrate phpbb into joomla. Nice. Is it a reality?

Basically, what I really need is SSO (single sign-on). I don't need to integrate products into other products. I believe that every product has its own users, developers, pros and cons, etc.

There is also a well known product which is widely used for SSO - shibboleth. And it would be nice if both products phpbb and joomla have extensions/plugins/whatever to communicate properly with shibboleth.

joomla <--> SSO (shibboleth) <---> phpbb

By the way, there is a good example already (moodle) which can use various types of authentication including shibboleth.

My question is simple. Does joomla have extension for shibboleth or not yet?

well, that's a bridge program. Probably workable.

I totally agree with the original poster and those that agreed!

Joomla.org should SERIOUSLY consider adding direct support with Phpbb AND JomSocial!

Those 2 components are the key to many websites. Iam the editor-in-chief of Gameworld.gr and we use them both for years and have several issues with communicating all of them.

For me this should be AAA priority.

This same forum is using phpbb engine as it clearly states in the footer section.

Is this a "bridged" installation or a completely separate website under the subdomain "forum.joomla.com"?

It looks perfect and i would be more than happy to have a forum like this inside my joomla installation, but using a separate website with a separate engine in a subdomain, drives google to consider it as a separate website, and this means starting all over from the beggining.

Am i wrong?