Hello there. I'd been watching this topic because I love SMF, and cannot abide by Joomlaboard. In my frustration, I remembered one of the things I loved about SMF - namely, its SSI, and the fact that the code is relatively easy to read.

Using this, and a nudge from a helpful poster in the SMF forums, I figured out how to make SMF "speak" with CB in a sense.

I've just finished coding up a Recent Posts CB plugin that shows the last five posts of each member in the member profile (I use tabbed display, so the plugin is coded that way). Instead of one big plugin, I'm doing little useful ones that contain info not shown in CB (such as number of posts).

The goldmine SMF files are Profile.php and Profile.template.php. Almost everything you need to display information in SMF can be extracted from these and dropped into a plugin (with some tweaking). Just remember to fix the scripturl variable to point back to SMF via Joomla and there you have it.

Oh yeah... to work with CB, Joomlahack's bridge is better. That's the one I'm using, and that made my life so much simpler. Also, Joomlahack's bridge allows you to link to CB's profile - yeah, not perfectly integrated (i.e., avatars aren't synched), but really, that's just a small inconvenience to live with until some code guru finds a way to work around this. SMF is worth it.

Regards,
Brat.

Post edited by: Brat, at: 2006/07/23 14:23

will you share this plugin with us?

It would be great.

I also have found JoomlaHacks bridge to be more CB friedly

Cheers,
NiCo

joomlahacks bridge has its issues..i kept having the preview post not working in IE thing, and that the database and install has to be included with Joomla. It also seemed like there was no way to sync groups ,only users.
There is going to be an update soon, hopefully some new features were added.

Post edited by: theelite, at: 2006/08/01 20:29

smeallum wrote:

will you share this plugin with us?

It would be great.

I also have found JoomlaHacks bridge to be more CB friedly

Cheers,
NiCo

Hey there. I am finishing up a more extensive CB SMF plugin than I'd originally thought I'd do. Thus far, the plugin pulls the most recent posts, lists the topics a member is subscribed to, and displays the current forum avatar. If you're using the Joomlahacks bridge (wrapped), you already know that the bridge usurps SMF's native PROFILE link. My plugin actually reproduces the original forum PROFILE link so you can access it.

I'm now finishing up the code that allows a person to use his or her CB avatar as the forum avatar. The easiest approach thus far is to insert the member's CB avatar link right into the SMF datatable (which is really how SMF does it anyway). The sync is triggered when a member clicks on the "Use Community avatar in my forum profile" option (or however you want to word it - the plugin has variables you can set at the top to handle your wording, or you can just plop phrases into the correct language file and plug in the text strings).

The reason I like this approach is that there is NO HACKING OF ANY KIND INVOLVED to the core of any product. That way, when something better or newer comes along, you can easily update. You should also be able to change SMF bridges with no trouble, because this is a CB plugin (not dependent upon the bridge used).

I think I'll have something ready to test sometime tomorrow (Friday) evening.

Regards,
Brat.

Post edited by: Brat, at: 2006/08/04 13:34

What are the chances it will work for those using Orstio's bridge to SMF?

Phil

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?

Post edited by: theelite, at: 2006/08/04 18:18

Post edited by: theelite, at: 2006/08/04 18:21