Hello,

 

I'm creating a website with a members login which will contain notices and other documents and information. But also inside is going to be a forum.

Anyone know a good system so that when the members login into the members login and when they can access the forum with the same login. I don't want them to create another login account.

Hello,

 

I'm creating a website with a members login which will contain notices and other documents and information. But also inside is going to be a forum.

Anyone know a good system so that when the members login into the members login and when they can access the forum with the same login. I don't want them to create another login account.

simple make ur own forum then u have full control otherwise ur gonna have to know the coding of any forum software

simple make ur own forum then u have full control otherwise ur gonna have to know the coding of any forum software

 

yeah thats the problem. I dont know how to make a forum :/

yeah thats the problem. I dont know how to make a forum :/

do you not know php or you don't understand what you have to do to make a forum?

yeah thats the problem. I dont know how to make a forum :/

mmm ur already making a members login/registration i assume thats 2 form elements knocked out right there

I don't know a lot about php im a novice. :/

 

The form I have was coding i got.

There could be few extensions for PHPBB and VBulletin that provides Single Sign On service.

 

some are:

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=270517

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/phpbb-single-sign-on/

 

Good luck!

There could be few extensions for PHPBB and VBulletin that provides Single Sign On service.

 

some are:

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=270517

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/phpbb-single-sign-on/

 

Good luck!

 

Yeah Vbulletin is a bit expensive.

I dont like using wordpress its difficult embedding the existing template of the website.

I faced the same challenge recently and after some research settled on using Small Machines Forum (SMF) as a forum and as a general login system for other content on the site. Once the forum is installed and running you can simply include the forums SSI.php file in your other pages which gives you access to many useful features.

 

To begin you simply include the forum SSI.php file at the very first line of all your pages:

<?php require("SSI.php"); ?>

 

This then allows you to use many of the forums features/information inside your pages:

 

Login Form:

<?php ssi_login(); ?>

 

Welcome Message:

<?php ssi_welcome(); ?>

 

Display Recent Forum Topics:

<?php ssi_recentTopics(); ?>

 

With some more advanced PHP you can also control access to content or entire pages using the SMF user levels.

 

You can find more information on the SMF site and their SSI.php examples page.

I thought like this once. About 3.5 years ago part of a project required me to make a forum - nothing huge, just something roughly 150 volunteers could use to chat.

 

I thought, hey, it's only a forum, how hard can it be? So, I stupidly wrote my own from scratch. There is so much more in a forum than you'd imagine.

 

My advice, NEVER EVER write your own, it IS NOT (and I repeat, NOT) A SIMPLE TASK - it's very time consuming. Stick to a pre written one you can theme to suit your site. Granted, then I didn;t use a framework for development and could probably write it quicker now, but it's still a big job nonetheless.

i agree its very time consuming but i actually learned php off of building simple forums that was my first project actually, but yea i dont have the patience to build one today, so ur prob right best to go with prebuilt. However i dont suggest PhpBB i got so much spam with that

Thanks PeterBooker I'll look into this

How did you add the forum in to that template. I have a template that i want the forum to go into

I hope you do not mind me quoting your PM Vulcan, but wanted to make this public so others can see it too.

 

I was going to look through my SMF files and write a short guide on how to integrate SMF into your websites, however a quick check showed me that SMF beat me to it. You can view an official guide (which is the method I used) here:

Guide - Integrating SMF into Your Website

 

If you have any questions or need any help integrating your site just let me know. I know it can seem daunting at first but it is actually quite simple once you have done it once.

ok thank you very much

Edited May 8, 201214 yr by Vulcan

where can I get the SSI code ??

 

I have added this code into my template in a header include now how do make it read the forum its self??

 

    <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="', $settings['default_theme_url'], '/script.js"></script>
       <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"><!--
           var smf_theme_url = "', $settings['theme_url'], '";
           var smf_images_url = "', $settings['images_url'], '";
       // --></script>
       <title>', $context['page_title'], '</title>
       <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="', $settings['theme_url'], '/style.css?rc1" />';

       if ($context['browser']['needs_size_fix'])
           echo '
               <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="', $settings['default_theme_url'], '/fonts-compat.css" />
               ', $context['html_headers'], '

Edited May 8, 201214 yr by Vulcan

You include the forums SSI.php in each of your pages by putting this line:

<?php require("/var/www/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs/forum/SSI.php");

 

Obviously you will need to change the URL to your SMF folder. Also make sure that this is the VERY FIRST LINE of your .php files.

 

I am not entirely sure what point you got to in the guide, but what you are actually doing is putting your site INTO the SMF forum page, not putting the SMF code into your own page. Try reading through the guide from start to finish before you begin, so you have an idea of what it is doing. If you are still having problems I will make a more indepth description of what you need to do tomorrow evening (time for sleep now!).

 

We will make sure we move this forward tomorrow.

Yep ok we will work on it tomorrow. Im still confused. Maybe there is a video tutorial out there.

Ok, so before we begin there is some preperation to do, which will make this a lot smoother.

 

Splitting Your Current Design

 

So the first challenge is to split your current design HTML into the two parts. The part you want above the forum and the part you want below the forum.

 

Creating Your Own Theme

 

If you have not already, next you need to create your own theme for your forum (or select/install one to use). If you have not already, you can simply copy whatever default theme you are already using (we will cover editing your theme so it fits in with the rest of your site another time).

 

Adding Layers to Your Theme

 

Then we need to create two extra layers inside SMF (one above the current page and one below it).

 

Tonight we will prepare the way and cover some of this. The first step is to find out the 'id' of your chosen theme.

 

To find this id you will need to check the link to "preview" it in your profile. You'll see it say "theme=xyz". Optionally you can view the 'id' in your database if you are happy searching through that.

 

Next we need to run an SQL Query in your database, so login with phpMyAdmin or HeidiSQL, etc. Then process this query (put your id and db prefix into it first):

REPLACE INTO [i][b]yourprefix_[/b][/i]themes
(ID_THEME, variable, value)
VALUES ([i][b]insert id here[/b][/i], 'theme_layers', 'site,main');

Again, please replace insert id here with the 'id' of your theme and replace yourprefix_ with the database prefix you set when you installed SMF.

 

If you can get to this stage you are well on your way to integrating SMF into your website. If you have any problems with stages of this, let me know and I will go into more depth.

 

Good luck Vulcan!

Edited May 10, 201214 yr by PeterBooker