Regarding the plugin and Ortisio's bridge, like I said, I still have testing to do. In theory, it shouldn't matter which bridge is used because this is a true CB plugin, as opposed to a hack, and because the routines within the plugin itself are based on native SMF and Joomla coding. It uses information from each system's configuration file, etc., because I wanted the result to be as bridge-independent as possible. But, again, I need to test.

theelite wrote:

yeah I had to switch over to Orstio also cause I could not fix the username/real name thing with the Joomlahacks version. I would like to usurp the profile to use CB though if there were an option to edit some features of the forum profile.

So basically your plugin will have an option to go into the forum profile and edit things like forum signature from the CB profile?

Also i guess there's no way to usurp the PM link in the forums to use the CB system?

Good questions. There are many possible approaches.

One way is that you could create a special "CB-friendly" template that simply doesn't include links to items that are duplicated in CB (i.e., the messenger). That would be tedious (you'd have to pull a LOT of the default templates and audit them for things you want left out). Or, you could edit the templates that handle the PM links to reroute to CB. Again, it may take a bit of work, but it is at least a possibility.

Another idea (taken from the Joomlahacks bridge) is to somehow have the bridge itself rewrite that. I don't personally like this approach because that's hacking a product's core, which is something I only do if I'm desperate for a "must have" function.

Regarding the plugin option, by the time you get here, you really cannot usurp SMF's PM. What you COULD possibly do is somehow actually code the plugin to use SMF's native PM system (meaning you'd also need to include the bit of code that notifies a member that a PM is waiting for them). I was actually toying with this as something to try. I've already have adding the member's forum signature on my definite list of things to do.

In fact, the scope of my project is to have CB be a front-end extension of SMF, patching into SMF's fuctions while still allowing SMF to run them natively. So far, this has proven suprisingly successful in my test runs.

I can't guarantee anythingbut I will actually be able to spend a good amount of time on this over the weekend testing CB plugin limits to see just how much interfacing can be done with SMF.

Regards,
Brat.

Hey, I just learned something at the SMF boards. For those who'd rather that personal messages go through CB only, you can disable SMF's PM on a permissions level. Basically, you just disallow all user groups access to the PM. Here is where you can read up on it:

www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=95837.0

This, plus use of the correct template (meaning that in your template you can remove the SMF PM link and/or include the link to your installed PM system), should effectively force all members to use CB for their messenger needs.

Hope this helps!

Regards,
Brat.

Hey Brat, does your smf plugin replaces the smf profile with the cb profile? I am really looking forward to integrating smf and cb.

Post edited by: nipun_jain, at: 2006/08/05 23:43

nipun_jain wrote:

Hey Brat, does your smf plugin replaces the smf profile with the cb profile? I am really looking forward to integrating smf and cb.

Post edited by: nipun_jain, at: 2006/08/05 23:43

Okay, let me see if I can explain a few things.

First off, this depends upon which SMF bridge you are using. If you use Joomlahacks bridge, the forum PROFILE link already reroutes to CB. If you are using Ortisio's bridge, I don't think that is a feature. I am using Joomlahacks because of the CB tie-in, among other reasons (i.e., I don't need a separate login module, which makes it easier to integrate other 3PD applications).

The PROFILE could be handled at either the bridge or template level. In other words, you can edit your SMF template to link to whatever you want. Joomlahacks bridge includes code that will automatically reroute SMF to the CB profile when the PROFILE link is clicked.

If Ortisio's bridge doesn't do that, then you can either hack the bridge to include the code from Joomlahacks that hanldes the link rewrite (it's just a few lines of code) OR you can customize your SMF template to remove the forum's profile link and include the CB profile link. That means you'd also have to edit the template file that controls post layouts, as a member's profile link is included there as well.

Again, not hard to do, just a bit tedious. But, in the end, you could have your desired functionality without having to hack the source code of any platform.

SMF is very robust, and includes a LOT of features that aren't really needed if you are using Joomla with CB. If you genuinely do not want to use something in SMF, you typically can handle it from a template level without even touching base code if you don't want to. The average user/member most probably won't notice or care, so long as everything functions smoothly.

Rather than excluidng, I'm focusing on getting SMF and CB to share information. With some coding effort, you can create CB tabs that pull everything from the forums. You can dump the entire SMF profile into a CB tab if you wish - the SMF programmers have had the foresight to anticipate people wanting to share info between the forum and other platforms, so the software is programmed so that you can "drop" code from SMF into your application if you know what you're doing.

Rather than "replace" SMF's profile, the goal here is to allow members to access its functions from CB as seamlessly as possible. Ultimately, for CB installations with bridged SMF, I'd like the members to be able to access all key forum Profile functions from CB tabs without having to even go into the native Profile panel.

That's why it's going to take me a minute or two to get this working the way I want.

Hope this makes sense!

Regards,
Brat.

Post edited by: Brat, at: 2006/08/06 01:47

Will try the Joomla Hacks bridge. Been using SMF's SMF Joomla bridge till now.

Post edited by: nipun_jain, at: 2006/08/06 05:20

In Joomla Administrator...Components....Joomla-SMF Forum....

Check the attached image:

[img]C:\Documents and Settings\Yo\Desktop\bridgeconfig.jpg[/img]

Cheers,
NiCo

Post edited by: smeallum, at: 2006/08/06 05:26

Post edited by: smeallum, at: 2006/08/06 05:27