Thread

Hello everyone,

With the recent vBulletin debacle, I’m trying to look at my options.
I’m revisiting using the Invision offerings, since IPB3 looks a lot more polished than IPB2, and vB4 by comparison, doesn’t look like it’s all that much of an improvement over vB3.
One thing I noticed is that they offer a tool called “IP.Converge” which is supposed to automatically act as a bridge between various applications after it’s been properly set up.
Some people here may remember my attempts at creating a similar bridge with vB and EE a while ago, but I have not succeeded due to technical difficulties, and my low knowledge of the systems’ inner workings.
I was thinking Converge may be the answer here, as once it’s set up, it handles single sign-on, as well as member information synchronization in the background, while allowing users full use of each application’s unique control panels.

Problem is there is no way for me to demo this feature without purchasing it. Due to the recent events, there’s a very tight deadline for purchasing before prices skyrocket.
Has anyone here been successful or know someone who’s been successful at using IP.Converge to bridge EE with the IP.Board?
For now, just knowing it is possible should suffice, although I’ll eventually need to start figuring out how to go about it if it indeed is possible.

Thanks in advance.

... anyone?

There were a couple people on the Invision forums that indicated they were interested in the IPB+EE pairing as well, though honestly, I don’t care whether it’s IPB or vB, as long as someone has a working bridge with EE.
No one here uses it?

Well…people choose EE so they dodge bridges to begin with 😊.
You might want to look through this thread as they have integrated VB.
EE has a forum module…any reason why you would not go with it?

lol, I don’t know about that - I chose EE because because it seemed like a good upgrade over pMachine Pro.
ExpressionEngine is first and foremost a blogging/CMS tool, which was what I bought it to be used for. Yes, I know it has an integrated forum plugin, but it’s been stated its intention is only that of a basic forum tool. I personally prefer using one of the more ‘advanced’ forum scripts for the added bells and whistles, although the price I pay for that is more work getting the two programs to agree. 😉

xarry, I’m fine with a bridge/integration with either vB or IPB; I don’t care at this point. I still have my license to run vB3, but IB’s actions recently have discouraged me from getting vB4 unless it’s absolutely necessary. In fact, I may have to pony up and upgrade just so my license has resale value.
I’m currently demoing IPB, but their Converge tool looks promising. Either way, if someone has a way around vB’s password hashing system so I can import it into EE, or knows how to get converge working with IPB and EE, let me know. I’m anticipating buying Invision’s “entire product line” promotion, though I probably won’t make extensive use of everything since I prefer EE’s CMS system, but it’s always nice to have extras in case I need them. lebisol, I did take a look at that thread you linked but I doubt he would share how he did it very easily, considering the amount of hours he put into it.

DarkScythe…maybe get in touch with developers and see if only the ‘bridge’ or their time is up for sale.
I hear you about other forum apps, just wanted to make sure you are looking at it from perspective of ‘time vs. feature’. It has been ages since I looked at IPB and they have nice modules now…blogs,galleries etc. I believe VB does as well.
While I like EE…if the site is forum/discussion based as core why use EE?
Anyhow, that is about the only thread I remember seeing people do something with ‘bridges’ for VB…
All the best!

I may think about asking them, but in all honestly, I feel it’s probably going to be expensive and/or not really compatible with what I wanted to do. I don’t need full-on integration, just a bridge to keep member data synchronized.

Anyway, the site isn’t going to be solely based around the forums - I expect to use EE as the front end for various sites; I had planned a blog for myself, another hobby site that may utilize blogs and galleries, and I was also planning a webcomic type site with my friends, which allowed me to think about how to really play with EE. The forums, on the other hand, are in my opinion going to be the critical part in growing a community out of it. Having that direction (maybe I’m overly ambitious?) I figured EE would provide the most flexibility in the front-end sites I wanted to create, while IPB or vB would be a solid forum for me to use as a base, and then adding modifications and expanding on it later on as the community grew or demanded new things.

But of course, my desire to create a bridge was solely from a user-experience standpoint, because honestly, everyone I know hates registering for anything, much less registering twice at a particular site to gain full access. I was hoping to be able to create a two-way bridge so that a user that discovered either one of my front-end sites, or the forums would be able to register and be automatically registered at the other side, while retaining each application’s own unique CP. This isn’t easy though, considering I’m not godlike with code as most of you guys are; I kind of struggled along with the help of Google and a Learning PHP book.

All this is why I’m really interested in IP.Converge.. It sounds like it does exactly what I need (with the added bonus of single sign-on, which I didn’t require) with some editing of a core package, and it comes with a bridge for Wordpress/Joomla to use as a guide.

Well, I decided to just give it a try and bought IPB.

Going to get it all installed now, though from what I can tell, Converge operates using XML-RPC calls or something. I briefly looked through EE’s docs and it seems EE does use XML-RPC as well for something, so hopefully they’re compatible.
I’m guessing I probably need to create a plugin/extension to have EE call out to Converge; that’s going to be a fun headache considering I don’t really know what I’m doing there, lol. My last plugin to calculate an age failed spectacularly, and I don’t know why…

From what I hear IPB is great product. I don’t know about their Converge adon but the reality is if you need a forum application to be the centric of the community then the EE Forum module does not cut it. It simply lacks a lot of settings/features found in applications such as vBulletin or IPB.
You can also consider running WP with it or test out their IP.Blog product.
I have not use XML-RPC in EE so I can’t say what you can do with that protocol. 😊

Hey DarkScythe, any progress on this issue?

Sorry for the late reply, Manji.
I’ve been really busy lately, with finals coming up, so I haven’t had much time to do very much.
As for this specific bridge, it’s currently on hold while I upgrade to EE2.0, among other things.

If I can get it running for EE2.0, it shouldn’t be too difficult to backport it over to 1.6.8 if people need/want it, since I still have my notes of some key locations for data pulling when I made a bridge for EE and phpBB2, but it’s only speculation at this point.
As of the last time I was working on it, I was still trying to understand the whole XML-RPC protocol within the IP.Converge module itself, and how to piece a basic code skeleton together.

Sorry for the lack of progress.  :shut:
I wasn’t aware anyone was actually waiting for it, lol. I’m just doing it as an interesting feature for my little hobby site (which isn’t going anywhere because this framework isn’t done.)