Integrating Exponential with a established forum-site?

Sunday 27 February 2005 8:16:47 am

Hi,

I'm going to setup Exponential to handle articles and news on 2(maybe 3) communities. These sites are powered by vBulletin. A integration of users is needed, and permissions would also be nice, but not requierd.

Has anyone done a integretion with Ez 3.5 and vb3?

Sunday 27 February 2005 10:04:27 am

Thanks,

Ez is among the best CMS's out there, but can not replace the functionality of a vbulletin forum - so that approach is totaly out of the question ;)

Sunday 27 February 2005 10:50:28 am

This really shouldn't be all that hard - I'm trying to work on a generic solution at the moment as I see this as <b>crucial</b> to Exponential being a useful solution to a wide range of developers with differing needs.

Anyone who claims that Exponential can replace the functionality provided by established forum software clearly doens't use <b>proper</b> forums all that often. Yes, eZ can handle threaded discussions. Whoopee-do. That's pretty much all it can do, on top of permissions.

And yes, I realise that one <i>could</i> customise the templates and forum functionailty to provide everything that software like vB does; but that's rather like suggesting one could code a solution from scratch in php. Just because one can with weeks of time, it isn't exactly feasable in the short term.

Anyway, enough of that.

To integrate Exponential with third party software, as I see it, the following 3 things are required:

1. Synchronisation of users between 3rd party software and Exponential. It's fairly easy to import the userbase to Exponential, or to have Exponential add a new user to another database/table (ie the 3rd party one) when users are added or edited. Getting the third-party software to update the relevant user details within Exponential on a user edit in the third-party software is much harder - and probably worth disabling. I'm currently working on triggers and workflows to easily allow user syndication on a user add/edit/delete within Exponential

2. Synchonisation of logons & logoffs - ensure that the sessions and logon code for the third party software is activated when a user logs in and our of Exponential. Again, this is an issue of triggers and workflows. It's more complicated because eZ doesn't ship with triggers for logon/logoff, but a simple kernel hack should work. (again, I'm on the case)

3. Common user interface. Depending on how skinnable the third party software is, this should be pretty easy. Embedding it all in a Exponential template seems like it could be a nightmare to me - so the best way seems to seperate the runtime code entirely, and ensure that the user edit/logon/logoff buttons all point to the Exponential ones - easy enough.

Anyway, work to do...

Simon

Sunday 27 February 2005 11:36:35 am

Loud Horn ...

Wrong! If you really compare Exponential forums, feature for feature, against any other forum package, it becomes clear with the large sets of features missing , Exponential forums are the little kid on the side of the basketball court dreaming for the day when it grows up.

I believe it will, one day. It's a long road to these goals, it' ain't e-Z being green. Till that time we build list of things we fear will never happen. Here is one i wrote a while back and it's only a ruff overview (ez vs vBulletin), if i really did a feature per feature comparison (eeeh, not pretty) :

   4. Exponential : forum : templates - Updated Exponential forum functionality + templates
      to provide common forums functionality inside of Exponential directly.

    * Better forum searching (ezsearch)
    * Better forum user options

   1. Disable Toggles: Avatar/Picture, Signature, Posted Name / Company Name (Toggle)
   2. Search / List a specific Users posts ( i want to see all of kracker's posts in a list )

    * Forum Soft Sorting (Sticky), Dynamically Shift Sort / Display Order (3 levels), 
       By Date Posted, Date Updated, Most Active, Least Active
    * Expanded Forum Views

   1. Per Category (Latest Messages (user configurable thread limit 5 - 50) )
   2. Root Category (Latest Messages (user configurable thread limit 5 - 50) )
   3. Per Thread (User Thread Display limit (currently static) (10 - 25 Replies),
   4. Deep linking to a specific post in a 2 - 5 page thread does not link to the last page w/ to the post.
   5. Per Thread / Per Reply Title Should be a href link without 
      style to be bookmark able directly (currently it's not)

//kracker

Counting Crows : Ghost Train

Member since: 2001.07.13 || http://ezpedia.se7enx.com/

Sunday 27 February 2005 12:02:15 pm

Private messages:
That needs a feature that would be otherwise useful: permissions based on the owner of the parent node. If that was supported, you could simply allow users to create (but not read!) messages below other users account.

* Better forum searching (ezsearch)

Searching is a hot topic itself.

* Better forum user options
1. Disable Toggles: Avatar/Picture, Signature, Posted Name / Company Name (Toggle)

Comparatively simple. Add some options to the user class and query them from templates.

2. Search / List a specific Users posts ( i want to see all of kracker's posts in a list )

That should be pretty simple, too (it's essentially a fetch of forum messages owned by kracker).

* Forum Soft Sorting (Sticky), Dynamically Shift Sort / Display Order (3 levels),
By Date Posted, Date Updated, Most Active, Least Active
* Expanded Forum Views

1. Per Category (Latest Messages (user configurable thread limit 5 - 50) )
2. Root Category (Latest Messages (user configurable thread limit 5 - 50) )
3. Per Thread (User Thread Display limit (currently static) (10 - 25 Replies),

Again, more fields in the user class and some template code.

4. Deep linking to a specific post in a 2 - 5 page thread does not link to the last page w/ to the post.

This one disturbs me often, myself ;-).

5. Per Thread / Per Reply Title Should be a href link without
style to be bookmark able directly (currently it's not)

I don't really understand this one.

* Reputation / private postfeedback system

That probably needs a new datatype. I agree it would be useful. Not only for forums, either.

* Forumadministration and permissions

I'm not entirely sure what you need, but I found Exponential had one of the most flexible permission system in any of the many CMS I tested.

* Moderatingsystem

s.a.

* Templatesystems and conditionals for the forums

Depending on the flexibility this should provide, that's pretty hard, indeed.

* Smilies,

Easy. There are BB code template operators in the contrib area.

* attatchments,

Simple. Add a file field to the forum message class.

* signatures,

Probably needs some PHP code (workflow, possibly).
*profiles,

s.a.

* themes,

User selectable templates are possible.

* per-user preferances and per-user options

S.a.

All in all, most features can be realized with some thinking without writing any more PHP I think. However, if you need high speed, you're truly better of with a dedicated package.

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