Thread

vBulletin integration has been discussed in the past at several occasions. It appears to have been impossible, or at least very difficult/cumbersome in the past.

Will ExpressionEngine 2.0 bring any kind of change to this? I’m sourcing software for a new project, and the first item of importance is: vBulletin has got to work. If EE won’t work with it (unified login, etc.), then I it is not an option. You might discuss this ‘til you’re blue (“what features do you need”, etc..) but I simply think EE forum module is not as capable (i.e. not as configurable, extendable, lacks 3rd party extensions) and it is also not very aggressively developed. I think it would behoove EllisLab to provide integration for vBulletin; concentrate making a good CMS with optional basic forum module, or an optional vB bridge module.

In the old discussions on the topic it was pointed out that if one starts building/maintaining bridges, were will it end? Just limit it to vBulletin! There are some other forum software out there, but few as widely used.

It is my belief that by preventing vB integration EE negatively impacts its sales. It is quite apparent that EllisLab resources are stretched thin. That is, for example, why Kohana exists - people got tired of waiting for updates to CI, so they forked it.

I am not sure I agree. Yes, the forum module is rather lightweight. To me, however, this is the charm of it: it does what it does very well, and the integration with EE is the kicker more often that not. And yes, I use phpBB and vBuelltin, too, when and where needed.

But that’s my point exactly. EE forum is a clean, basic forum, but it does not compete with vBulletin, and probably is not intended to compete with vBulletin. It does the job for many users, but not for everybody. In many contexts the extensibility of vB is needed. In many cases the 3rd party extensions are critical in adding some needed feature to the bulletin board.

For this reason I think it would be a good thing to at least make the integration possible. I have a feeling it’s been somewhat intentionally prevented (as in “vBulletin == competition”). I think a bridge would add value instead. vBulletin’s blog system is pretty terrible—it looks just like the bulletin board itself (though perhaps you can make it look more like a separate blog by creating a custom template for it), and I don’t have very high hopes for vBulletin’s CMS when it gets released. I’m thinking it’ll be a CMS on the same level as EE’s integrated forum is on as far as bulletin boards are considered.

Being able to use both EE and vB in the same system with unified login would truly offer the best of both worlds.

For this reason I think it would be a good thing to at least make the integration possible. I have a feeling it’s been somewhat intentionally prevented (as in “vBulletin == competition”).

Oh, it is possible. Nothing prevents you or anybody else from building such a bridge. The forum module’s code is clean, documented and unobfuscated, the db structure straightforward. The fact that no third party developer has created such a bridge yet (despite it certainly being possible) lets me believe that you are, perhaps, overestimating the market for such a solution.

The fact that no third party developer has created such a bridge yet (despite it certainly being possible) lets me believe that you are, perhaps, overestimating the market for such a solution.

This is the key to understanding why some great ideas never make it to the light of day. It works with features, too. There can be lots of effort to develop and support features or modules or add ons that seldom get used. EE’s resources are finite, therefore they need to ‘choose wisely’ (best said by the old knight guarding the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade).

It would be interesting to know what percentage of EE users/developers have set up Simple Commerce or the Wiki in EE, though both required plenty of development, and ongoing resources to support.

Having a bridge to VB would be nice as it seems to be the most widely used. I think I would rather have a bridge to be able to use PunBB with EE though. I just like the simplistic nature of it and it seems to be easily customizable.

I’m sure the lack of official bridge is due to EE’s integrated bulletin board. However, many people prefer to use some other board. Perhaps they like to have more features, perhaps they’re more familiar with another bulletin board software, or perhaps they have a huge user base using one bulletin board software and they’re unwilling to switch just because EE doesn’t provide integration with what they’re currently using. As has been discussed before, the built-in forum is fairly simplistic: it does the job, but it has nothing on, say, vBulletin in features.

I would venture to say that it would benefit EllisLab EE sales if they were more open about integration with external components. Web today is all about mash-ups and those who resist it will inevitably fade away. Forum software is in many cases the heart of the website - where all the action is - and if the owner of the system is not willing to switch the board software, they’ll look somewhere else for a CMS that does provide the integration (such as Drupal).

I would venture to say that it would benefit EllisLab EE sales if they were more open about integration with external components. Web today is all about mash-ups and those who resist it will inevitably fade away.

Does Drupal provide a bridge to other forum packages other than vBulletin? Why doesn’t vBulletin and others provide bridges to CMS apps?

It’s less about not wanting to give users the opportunity to integrate with other products and more about the basic logistics of blending two applications with very different markets and goals both as applications and as companies.  Whether handled by vB or by EllisLab, it would take a significant investment into nebulous territory (lack of control of the other product’s changes), with little to gain.  All in all, it would likely be resources misused.

I think third party bridges would spring up left and right if there was an exposed API/hooks in EE that would make it easier for someone to build a bridge. On vBulletin side such integration is fairly straightforward. Perhaps EE 2.0 will offer better extendability in that manner.

I don’t have much of any experience, and know little about php, but I tried to do something similar - create a basic bridge between EE and vBulletin.
I don’t know about EE’s hooks, but I did manage to find where to edit in EE’s files to export pertinent data over to another database (at the time I tried it, it was with phpBB.)
The real challenge for me came with trying to work with vB, because they don’t give you a chance to capture the password - it gets hashed via JS before it even hits the server.

IMO, it’s ‘easy enough’ on EE’s side, especially when from EE you simply have to call vB’s User Data Manager to set up a new user using data gathered from EE’s registration form.
I could never get it working in the other direction though, from vB back into EE.

Since vB’s poor handling of the recent events, I’ve given up and am giving Invision’s IP.Converge a shot at bridging EE with IPB instead.

@DarkSkythe, it would be interesting to hear how IP.Converge works out! I looked at it recently, but being in a middle of a project I haven’t had the time to experiment with it more.

The same topic has been recently discussed on the vB forums.

I, too, am interested in merging an established vBulletin-based community with EE 2.0, but I haven’t decided yet whether it would be better to import vB data into EE 2.0’s forum module or just work on a bridge between the two.

Since EE 2.0 is based on CodeIgniter, I found where CI has some documentation on their wiki at http://codeigniter.com/wiki/vBuser_-_vBulletin_based_Auth_Library/ on forcing CI (and therefore EE 2.0) to use vBulletin’s user table for authentication. I haven’t experimented with this approach yet, so I’m not sure how usable it is - especially when the upcoming release of vBulletin 4.0.

Since EE has declined to create a bridge, what if we joined together and contacted Solspace and see whether we can help get a bridge for vbulletin created?

We have actually created a bridge with Vbulletin. It does do the job and we use the vbulletin profile sections instead of the EE one for users because our community had been long established on VBulletin before we moved our content over to EE (which is great). While the system is probably not perfect it works well and you can login on the EE site with he same account as your VB forum account. I didn’t develop this but our web dev put it together a year or so ago (he’s now moved back to Sweden). However, if I recollect, it didn’t take him that long and he had been doing some serious work with Code Igniter before he worked on that so he knew his way around.

We have had numerous EE and Vbulletin upgrades since we implemented the system and it has yet to break so it seems quite robust. I am sure it can be better than it is if we went back and looked at it, but yes it is possible and if you know what you are doing quite easy it seems.

I would like to see it developed further though but my knowledge is very basic in the coding department. I do think there is a market for a Vbulletin bridge, it is the forum software of choice and it would expand EE’s sales I am sure.

It is my belief that by preventing vB integration EE negatively impacts its sales. It is quite apparent that EllisLab resources are stretched thin. That is, for example, why Kohana exists - people got tired of waiting for updates to CI, so they forked it.

I don’t think that is true. Kohana has an entirely different mindset and goals than CodeIgniter - it was more the case that the people behind Kohana was tired of PHP4 support, wanted strict OO PHP5 and “do stuff right” from the start; as opposed to CodeIgniter (who, understandably) needs backwards compatibility and PHP4 (unfortunately).

But to get back on track; writing a login bridge could be pretty easy, for instance:

1. Write an extention for EE that hooks onto the member_member_login_single hook
2. In that hook function you’d use vBulletin’s Connector API or vBulletin login functions to log the user in there as well.

Repeat for logout.

Of course, you’d need to change all login/logout links to point to the EE ones.