vB Drupal: Community Plumbing (CMS + Blogs) 4.6.9.0

09-03-2006, 01:23 AM

vB Drupal: Community Plumbing

Post #2 contains a FAQ and some tips. Make sure you read both posts, as this thread is getting too big.

What is it: Drupal is a sophisticated Content Management System (CMS) system (not just a portal), with collaborative authoring tools for books and blogs. I've tried Mambo and Word Press, and they were good, but Drupal is, IMHO, a lot more elegant, powerful and flexible.

License: vB Drupal is open source, free and licensed under the GPL, just like Drupal.
vB Integration: This is not just a "bridge". vBulletin and Drupal share the same user base, login, sessions, user groups, permissions and custom profile fields, style and theme, without any code changes to vBulletin. You have the option to use Drupal's comment system, or use vBulletin for comments, and announcing new content automatically (with links, teasers, of full content). You can allow user groups to have their own blogs, publish stories, collaborate on handbooks and manuals, and contribnute content, with various levels of permissions and revision control. No special accounts need to be created, all done by usergroups and roles.

You can install it in any directory on your server, above, or below your forum. You can run it on a different subdomain, or even a different domain name.

Drupal Features: All of Drupal's features are available. Check the link, as they are quite extensive. Available Drupal modules and themese can be installed, and most will be compatible. Read the next post for some tips on handling add-on modules. Some features have been disabled, since they exist in vB (like custom profile fields), and the forum module [img]images/newsm/cheeky.gif[/img]. Two feature, xmlrpc and blog API have been removed, simply because I have never used them, lack the knowledge and interest in remote login's.

Sites running vB Drupal:
Dragon's List Kung Fu Community
MyeTalk
Biblia Historia
My Boards.ie
CastleCops
Talk Home Business
Cyburbia
Scrap Shack
Cuddles 'n Kisses
Trillium Station Holoboards
Murmurs (REM forum)
I.A.W.M.D.
Blam Forums
Hallagulla.com Urdu Community
HUBBING.SG
Irish League Forums
IT Geeks Blogs
Total Web Talk
West Cost Bikers
Control Booth
Style/Themes/Templates[/b]: Drupal's themes are quite flexible, and can support several template engines (Xtemplate, PHPTemplates, Plain PHP and Smarty). I've include a few themes that are optional, and you wil need to enable them for your users if you want to use them. I have also made one theme that uses vBulletin template system, this one is the default, and it will use your current style, and will change based on the style chooser dropdown. I have also modified one of the default Drupal themes "Pushbutton", and made it use vB's header and footer.

Powered by: Drupal does NOT require you to post any powered by links. It's not even included in the default template. I've added it to the footer, but you are free to remove it, no one will come knocking on your door.

Performance: Busy sites may need to use the cache feature in Drupal. If some of your usergroups do not have any specific Drupal roles, their pages will be cached, as they will be considerd "anonymous". Note that this will not effect the comment system, as they can still comment on content, if they have posting permission in vB. There's an option in the config file sites/default/config.php to disable the Watchdog module, which can be too agressive.

Search Engine URL's: Drupal has an option to enable SE friendly URL's. You can turn it on from the Drupal admin CP. Some server setups may not work with, in that case, check the .htaccess file and read the comments, to see if you can tweak it to your setup. You will need to enable Apache's mod rewrite.

Installation:

1. Edit the file forum/drupal/sites/default/config.php_new and enter your drupal and forum directory path. Save as config.php, then upload the full drupal directory as is (in full) to a directory of your choosing on your server. You may rename the drupal directory to something else if you want.

2. Import the product-drupal.xml file through your product/plugin menu. The steps, in case you have not used the product manager before, are: go to your AdmincCp -> Plugin Systems -> Product Manager -> Manage Products. Clcik on Add/Import Products links, click the "Browse" button, locate the product-drupal.xml file on your local PC drive, select it, and click "yes" to the "Allow Overwrite" option, and click "Import".

3. Go to your AdminCP vBulletin Options -> vB Drupal and setup the Drupal URL and site name and the comment options.

4. Browser to your new Drupal URL (you need to be logged in to vBulletin as admin, and click "adminsiter". Set up your site.

5. If you have a customized style, go to the template manager, and edit drupal_header template. Note that this template also contains the navbar/menu code. You simply apply any CSS/HTML changes you used to customize your style to the drupal_header template. Say you have a background image to your header, or page, apply that to the drupal_header as well, additional nav bar items, etc.

Drupal Admin CP:
First thing is setup your user "roles". These act like vB usergroups. You can assign multiple vB groups to a single Drupal role, or the other way around, or both. You can do that for primary or secondary group id's.

Mapping vB usergroups to Drupal Roles:
Go to administer -> access control -> Roles. Create a new role, then click edit, and enter the vB usergroup ids you want to have that role, separated by commas. Each time you create a new role, update Access Control -< Permissions to refine the new role's permissions.

Module, Blocks, Menus and Settings:
Next is activating the modules you want. Here's how the usual module setup works. Clcik "modules" to activate or diactivate a module. Then click "access control" to set who can use that module. Then click "blocks", to set where you want the block (if it has one) should be placed. Then click "menus" to enable any new menu items. Then click "settings", to see if this module has any additional settings. Some module will add one admin menu, some will add another one under settings.

Documentation: Drupal has an extensive online manual, and many hands on examples. Please visit their online handbooks to learn more about Drupal: http://drupal.org/handbooks

The next post will provide some tips, for items particular to vBulletin, but please use the Drupal site and Drupal forums for questions related to Drupal. Most of your questions can be answered by a quick search on the Drupal site.

Change log:

August 2nd, 2006, v4.6.9.0

June 12th, 2006, v4.6.8.1
June 2nd, 2006, v4.6.8.0

May 25th, 2006, v4.6.7.0 Fixes 2 security vulnerabiliteis found by fixed by Drupal. Recommended patching by just uploading the updated files.

May 3rd, 2006, v4.6.6.2a Fixes corrupt image files. Just copy the new files over the old ones.

May 1st, 2006, v4.6.6.2 Fixes missing code in 4.6.6.1 XML product file. Only the XML product file updated.

May 1st, 2006, v4.6.6.1 New vB blocks and bug fixes by El Muerte, see this post for details:
http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showp...postcount=1921

March 13th, '06: v1.3.3: Several security fixes from 4.6.6. To upgrade, just upload the new files (in the vbdrupal/modules and vbdrupal/includes directories) to overwrite the old ones.

Jan 28th, '06: v1.3.2: Several bug fixes from 4.6.5 and CVS. Credit goes to someone who just emailed the zip file to me, and I just had to review it! (Name will be mentioned if/when I get his permission)

December 3rd, '05: v1.3.1: Bug fix, prevent cache delays from applying new roles to usergroup permisisons mapping.

December 1st, '05: v1.3: Several security update fro Drupal 4.6.3 -> 4.6.4, and a bug fix for login form when used in different language packs.

November 17th, '05: v1.2.6: Bug fix for vBlocks excluded forums.

November 13th, '05: v1.2.5: Bug fix for sessions expiring too soon.

November 12th, '05: v1.2.4: Bug fix, login problem for some users.

November 5th, '05: v1.2.3: Minor bug fix, for case when css stored as files do not exist.

November 2nd, '05: v1.2.2:
Bug fixes: Fixed language/locale problem, it now defaults to vB user language selections. Fixed occasional cache db error. Fixed subscription bug.
To upgrade, just upload the new files to overwrite the old ones.

October 29th, '05: v1.2.1:
Bug fixes: Fixed some charset issues. To upgrade, just upload comment.module and vblock.module to overwrite the old ones.

October 29th, '05: v1.2:
New features: Added vBlocks (new and hot topics from the forum). Enable avatars in nodes and comments. Fixed the hof module (hall of fame)
Bug fixes: Fixed some charset issues, PM phrase in drupal_header. Also removed session hash from XML feeds.

October 22nd, '05: v1.1:
New features: Now allows login from different domain, added the ping module for pingomatic, enabled who's online, and new members blocks.
Bug fixes: Fixed some charset issues, and some login issues.
Template edits: drupal_header and drupal_login.
Config change: New config.php file in sites/default, to eliminate the need for editing settings.php

October 9th, '05: v1.0.3: Two changes for those using vBulletin comments: 1) Only show forums selection based on user's permissions, and show last comment time in recent posts.
To upgrade, just upload comment.module and tracker.module to your drupal module directory.

October 9th, '05: v1.0.2: Minor fix, correct the time of posted entries in the recent posts page. To upgrade, just upload the tracker.module to your drupal module directory.

October 9th, '05: v1.0.1: Minor fix, to save the forum id selection in preview mode. To upgrade, just upload the comment.module to your drupal/module directory.

October 8th, '05: v1.0:
New feature: Allows a selection of a forum from a list to post notifications to.
Bug fix: Occasional crash with taxonomu_dhtml module
Bug fix: Detect vB CSS as files (credit to Paul M)
Bug fix: Clean URL option now works.

October 6th, '05: v0.9b, some bug fixes:
Fixed threads showing up as moderated on some forums (credit to trilljester)
Fixed login problem (credit to cclaerhout)
Fixed logout problem
Fixed display of none Enlish characters (with option to disable uft-8 in settings.php)
Fixed a PHP5 problem (not that PHP5 may still have some problems)
Provided some missing menu images.

October 2nd, '05: v0.8b, added a feature to allow editing which thread is linked to a node.
To upgrade from 0.7 to 0.8:
1. Import the new product-drupal.xml file into vB the product import page. Make sure you click "yes" to overwrite.
2. Upload the new comment.module file into your drupal/modules directory, overwriting the old one.

October 2nd, '05: v0.7b Initial release for vB 3.5 gold, based on Drupal 4.6.3

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Some tips, tricks, how-to's and FAQ:

How to set permissions for usergroups
Create new roles for each seperate set of permissins you want each usergroup to have:

Go to vB Drupal -> Administer - > Access control

Click "roles". Type the role name in the box, like "Bloggers" and hit "add role". Then click "edit" next to the new role, and type in the vB groupids who will use this role. You can enter multiple groupid's seperated by a comma. Now go to the permissions section, and tick each permission you want that group to have. To be able to create blogs, tick the box next to perrmission "edit own blog" (assuming the blog module has been activayed.

How do I make the vB Drupal style look like my forum?
You will need to modify drupal_header and drupal_footer templates, to match the customization done on your forum style. Make sure not to cut and paste any links, as absolute links from vB will not work, you just need to add $vboptions[bburl] to any vB links.

My navbar items are different from my forum!
Edit the drupal_header template, and change it's navbar items to match yours.

How to install modules: Drupal has an extensive set of modules that plug-in directly with Drupal, without code changes. Many of these modules will work without any problems with vB Drupal. But some will not work. Make sure you test them carefully, and try all their options and settings.

Here are some tips to help you install the modules.

1. Follow the included readme.txt and install.txt for the module
2. If the module instructions tell you to create new tables, make sure you add your vB table prefix plus "drupal_" to it. Example: If your vB prefix is "vb_", and the new table is called "module_table", then create it as "vb_drupal_module_table".
3. If the module is specifically made for user accounts, or Drupal profile fields, it will most likely not work out of the box, and may require some customization.
4. If you try a module and it doesn't work, and can no longer view any page (so you cannot deactivate it), simply delete that module file, from FTP or SSH.

Modules confirmed to work: If you install a module and it works properly, let me know, and I will update this list, to make it easier for everyone.

Devel debugger: This will not work as is, but I've modified it here: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showt...threadid=97419 This will help you analyse which blocks are slowing you down.

Amazon tools: This module allows you to easily add Amazon items by search and tick the items of interest, then they are placed in a "we recommend" block. It also add a new node type for book reviews. If you have an Amazon affiliate id (.com, .ca, .uk, .de etc.) enter it in the setting before adding items, otherwise the affiliate id will not be inserted.

Poormanscron - A module which runs the Drupal cron operations without needing the cron application.

Excerpt - Excerpt module allows you to enter a separate excerpt/summary/teaser for a node, which does not have to be a cut off version of the body. This does not affect the excerpt to forumthread feature of vB Drupal, but its wery nice to have this control when listing nodes within vB Drupal.

BBCode: Adds a BBCode input filter.

More modules:
A more detaild list has been posted by silurius
http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showp...&postcount=677

--

Performance Issues: For busy sites, be careful with adding too many modules, as some may add a performance hit. To improve perfromance:

1. Turn on the cache feature from the admin/settings menu in Drupal.

2. Disable the watchdog: There's no admin interface for this, but I've added an option in the sites/default/config.php file to turn it off. By default, it's on.

3. Access Control: In the access control settings, create your user roles to map to vB usergroups ids. Only add usergroupis that you want to give authoring roles to write blogs, setories, etc. If you want to give access to a large group, but only a few of them are interested, you can create a new group, make it joinable, so that only the ones interested will join it. Give that group the access role to write entries.

What this trick does is this: It increases the caching potential. User groups who have no defined role, will be served cached pages. This is great for performance, and they will not miss a thing, as the cache is frequently re-built and renewed with new content.

4. When testing, you can use the devel module addon (listed above) to see which modules or blocks are slowing you down.

Cron functions: Some Drupal modules require a cron action to update. Example: the news aggregator module, and the default search module. To enable Drupal cron scripts:
1. Edit the script in the drupal/scripts/cron-curl.sh change this line:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
curl --silent --compressed http://www.example.com/cron.php

By point the URL to your drupal cron.php, something like this:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
curl --silent --compressed http://www.mysite.com/forum/drupal/cron.php

2. Add a new cron entry to your site's cron (If you have a site panel like cpanel and the like, you can use those:

Code:

5 * * * * /home/user/_public_html/forum/drupal/scripts/cron-curl.sh

This will run the cron file hourly on the 8th minute. Make sure the path points to the script correctly.

3. To run the cron directly, just point your browser to cron.php

WYSIWYG: Theirs a WYSIWYG module at drupal.org that is included with vB Drupal, called htmlArea. To enable it, just visit your modules page, and enable it. In the htmlArea settings, make sure you disable it for admin pages, as it may interfer with custom PHP pages, or your handcoded HTML. To disable it from the admin pages, visit settings -> htmlArea. You will find this filter already added by default in the Pages section:
admin/settings/htmlarea*
Add below it:
admin/*

Also, make sure you enable any WYSIWYG buttons you want in the htmlArea settings. Note that for any formatting buttons you add, you need to make sure that it is allowed in your filters set. Example, for the bold button, your filters need to allow the <b> tag, etc.

vBDrupal Multi-Site Deployment Report
I got this report from Matafleur, describing how to configure vB Drupal to a multi site, just like Drupal does.

Common problems:

The style is messed up, or wrong links!
Edit your vBulletin Options -> vB Drupal and enter the correct URL for the Drupal link. No trailing slash.

I don't see the comments!
Enable the comments module, and make sure to enter a valid forum id in vBulletin Options -> vB Drupal

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of XXX bytes exhausted
You have reached your server's PHP max limit. Edit your php.ini file and update this line:

Code:

memory_limit = 8M	  ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (8MB)

If you are on a shared host, ask your host to up the limit, or disable soem modules.

Access denied for user: 'user@localhost' (Using password: NO)
The forum and drupal paths in sites/default/config.php may be entered wrong, update it.

Non English character look funny
Make sure your PHP has the iconv or mbstring functions included. One of these libraries is required to handle special characters with vB Drupal.

Unknown Location in WOL:
Install the WOL plugin: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showt...threadid=83247

Wrong links posted in threads
vB Drupal assumes you have Drupal's clean url enabled by default, so the links posted in the forum will have the clean url format : forumlink/drupal/node/1

To change this, edit the drupal_vb_thread template and change this:

Code:

/node/$nid] $ntitle

To this:

Code:

/?q=node/$nid] $ntitle

I'm getting this error "failed to open stream: No such file or directory"
In the sites/default/config.php, you need to enter the full path to the vB and Drupal directories. Instead of
'/html_public/forum'
for example, put the full path, like
'/home/users/me/public_html/forum'

Problem with special characters in MySQL password:
Contributed by dpkm: I had some troubles getting the MySQL connection to work, due to special characters in the password and using a non-standard port. This is a known Drupal problem, and I eventually muddled through it using http://drupal.org/node/21719 as a guide from the Drupal site.

Open drupal/includes/database.mysql.inc and find this line:

Code:

$connection = mysql_connect($url['host'], $url['user'], $url['pass'], TRUE) or die(mysql_error());

Add this before it:

Code:

$url['host'] = urldecode($url['host']); 
  $url['user'] = urldecode($url['user']); 
  $url['pass'] = urldecode($url['pass']); 
  $url['path'] = urldecode($url['path']);

How do I add user blog links to the postbit menu?
First, create a new hidden custom profile userfield from the useffield manager in vB adminCP, the defaults will do. It will be set to 1 if the user has enterd content. So a template conditions can see if it's 1, then show a button or a link to their blogs: url/blog/userid. Once the custom profile userfield is created, enter it's field name into the vB Options -> vB Drupal. When a user creates a blog entry, the field will be set to 1. Follow these tips to edit the postbit template:
From: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showp...&postcount=671

Lock access errors
If you encounter errors like this:

it means you don't have MySQL permissions for the lock command. Request this permission from your database admin or host. Some hosts do not allow that, and in that case, you can try this patch: