Real vBulletin and Drupal Integration!

By jeforma on 3 Oct 2005 at 02:52 UTC

Hey all, I have just read the whole thread and mod that a coder from vBulletin have just released yesterday and it just looks too amazing!!! He has chosen Drupal vs. all other cms programs and I am just so happy and proud!

The 3.5 extensions for vBulletin 3.5 Gold is called: vB Drupal: Community Plumbing (CMS + Blogs) and totally merges all of the drupal possibilites with the new vBulletin stuff. Imagine the wonders of what Drupal offers with the greatness of the forum posting and user options offered with vBulletin. This was just totally amazing when I heard about it, best of all it was just released yesterday!

Here is a brief explanation of what the Extension offers:

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. 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 even run it on a different subdomain.

Of course this will most importantly be vBulletin powered, but is the BEST way yet that i have seen for the best forum software on the earth integrated with the best CMS on the earth.

They will be a couple of developpers to test out Drupal modules for them to work with the vB integration so that we all get the best out of it. Maybe some of us could also help them out!

Here is the link to the full extension and comments on the vBulletin.org website: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=97341&page=1&pp=15

Well I am really excited about this new release. If any vBulletin user is interested take a look at this site that I think already has installed and done the whole thing. http://www.blamforums.com/index.php

Well hope you like it!

Leave your comments and tell me if you have tried it as I will be purchasing vBulletin in the next week or so and will definaetly make the switch ;)

Thanks!

Charles

Comments

this is awesome

tidalx3 commented 3 October 2005 at 09:02

i was actually just searching on this site for drupal and vbullentin intergration and your post came right up, on the same day, and just few hours ago.

thanks for the link

I am completely

sepeck commented 3 October 2005 at 16:20

I am completely uninsterested in helping to test proprietery software that does not contribute to the improvement of the existing free forums that are built into Drupal itself.

I also see a lot of very mad people when it comes time to upgrade Drupal versions and even more people wanting support with a proprietiery product on drupal.org.

So, do I see this as a 'good thing'? Nope, not at all.

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

not proprietery

tamarian commented 3 October 2005 at 19:12

... proprietery software that does not contribute to the improvement of the existing free forums that are built into Drupal itself.

Code released on vbulletin.org is not owned by vBulletin/Jelsoft. Some code is released as GPL (all my code is either GPL or BSD licensed) and some is not. vB Drupal is released under the GPL.

I plan to contribute to Drupal, and have already written a few pages in the handbook, describing the integration process. And will make any performance patches available.

However, many busy sites cannot afford to run Drupal for forum purposes, as the cost of the hardware requirements is 3-4 times the cost of running vB for the same number of logged in users. I do not say this as an insult, and no offense is intended, but my forum will instantly throttle to uselessness if I use the Drupal forum module to replace vB. I'd be happy to help, but it will take a long time to make the design changes to enhance the forum module to support busy forums, if that ever became a goal for Drupal. But I don't think that is a current priority, since Drupal is known for it's CMS features, not for it's forum module, So it is a good thing to have a choice of combining two good things, for those who need it, IMHO.

All it takes to improve the

sepeck commented 3 October 2005 at 20:42

All it takes to improve the forum module of Drupal is for interested people to start submitting patches per the documentation and respond to questions, concerns, etc....

So far Dries has said this any number of times in a number of threads that he would welcome this and so far, no one who claims to 'want these improvements' has done anything but talk talk talk.

Drupal has a throttle mechanism and I suspect that if you needed to improve it to deal with improved forums, that would be welcome as well.

He said something recently which kicked me out of a mind set, 'There are no Drupal core developers, only people who contribute code towards Drupal core modules'. Some peoples focus is pretty much on contributing towards core and there are maintainers for some modules, but anyone can submit and advocate for a patch. This has always been so.

I read an early announcement so evidently missed the licensing part as everything I've read previuously to do with vBulletin is a license required type of thing.

I will say this so we're all clear... you are certainly free to scratch your own itch. I think long term it will cause more issues than it solves but that's only my opinion.

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

It's not for a patch

tamarian commented 3 October 2005 at 21:50

IMHO, this is not localized work for a forum.module patch to be submitted, applied, and get it over with. That work would be suitable for bug fixes, and module enhancements, or localized performance tweaks.

Note that my point in the above post is not talking about any bells and whistles/features for the forum.module. To me, the feature set for the forum module is a far secondary issue, to performance as a forum..

But to change the way modules interact (you cannot just do it in the forum module, it won't acheive much), and spare multple queies and combine them into as few as possible, cache blocks per role and uid, serve cached blocks in one go from a datastore, etc. would require a lot of redesign, and would take a looong time, say Drupal 6+, if this became a major priority for Drupal (not just localized performance tweaks). Throttle enhancements won't do, as throttles are meant for peaks beyond the norm, I'm more interested in solving the problem for the norm, on busy forums, or we can call it the constant peak :)

But I'm still a noob here, and the above is just my initial impression. Will need to learn a bit more before I submit any detailed proposals.

I read an early announcement so evidently missed the licensing part as everything I've read previuously to do with vBulletin is a license required type of thing.

Correct. vBulletin does require a license, and is a commercial software. That part is the vbulletin.com domain. Then there is vbulletin.org, where the user community share their own hacks/modules/plugins. Those modules are controlled by the licensing model chosen by the individual author.

So now I am confused

sepeck commented 3 October 2005 at 21:57

So now I am confused again.... To use vBulletin, you need to pay for a commercial license? Your free 'hack' is to integrate authentication with a commercial third party product and to use it I would have to pay for a license?

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

Think of it like Samba, you

tamarian commented 3 October 2005 at 22:32

Think of it like Samba, you can use Samba, which is free, open source, GPL, and don't have to pay for, to authenticate and interact with Windows, but you still have to pay for Windows, Likewise, you can use vB Drupal free, open source, GPL, don't have to pay for, but it maybe of no value to you, unless you own vBulletin (like you do with Samba+Windows)

Ahh, thanks for the

sepeck commented 4 October 2005 at 01:13

Ahh, thanks for the clarification. Now we're back to the you've scratched your own itch (good for you) and did something about solving your needs.

I wish you the best of luck with it but won't be testing it any time soon as I don't have the $$ to play with it. I'm sure others will.

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

So how would I get the

tesla.nicoli commented 4 October 2005 at 07:29

So how would I get the modified version of Drupal without paying for vbulliten?

By contacting me :) I don't

tamarian commented 4 October 2005 at 12:00

By contacting me :)

I don't expect a lot of demand for it from none vB users, probably just of interest to developers who might want to integrate Drupal with other apps, or just curious. So I'll make it available by email.

Organization and a coordinated effort.

Sougent commented 3 October 2005 at 23:47

I think the primary problem is that people are used to a certain look and set of functionality which is already in place with forums such as phpbb and this vBulletin, and rather than expend the effort to duplicate the functionality see an easier path in integration.

I would like to see the Drupal forums improved too, but though I have 23+ years of programming experience, none of those years is with PHP so I'd be hesitant to try to muck around with things, not to mention finding the time to do so.

What might help, and I've seen some sorta/kinda attempts at this, is to organize a "project" for improving the Drupal forums, perhaps a "Forums Development" forum here, something to guide and organize the desire so it becomes action.

However, many busy sites

Toe commented 16 October 2005 at 20:41

However, many busy sites cannot afford to run Drupal for forum purposes, as the cost of the hardware requirements is 3-4 times the cost of running vB for the same number of logged in users.

Where exactly are you getting that '3-4 times' bit from? I don't remember ever seeing any benchmarks comparing Drupal's forum to vB...

I haven't seen any

tamarian commented 17 October 2005 at 02:57

I haven't seen any benchmarks either, so I did my own. Just turn debug in both, and compare the time and queries.

Thankyou for your release.

.Joel commented 8 January 2006 at 01:49

Thankyou for your release. I have spent some time researching CMS systems and Drupal was suited to me. However I was hesitating due to its poor forum integration, and the fact that the prunes on this site jump up and down everytime someone mentions it.

Wake up and smell the damn flowers. People want to use your product, and your product lacks serious arse in the forum department. So stop whinging when people ask for integration. Just because people use Drupal, doesn't meant they HAVE TO CONTRIBUTE to drupal. Add to this some people DO NOT HAVE THE ABILITY to CONTRIBUTE TO DRUPAL. So next time you decide to create a letter on your computer, should we jump up and down and tell you to program your own editor ? Or if Notepad isn't good enough create your own module to co-exist ? No...

If you really want Drupal to expand then shift your attitude and be more welcoming of other parties. Otherwise you will phase out into a minority who use Drupal as a legacy of what it once was.

/ tamarian thankyou for your release and i will be using it.

Regards,

.Joel

I hope the guy is not

Gerhard Killesreiter commented 3 October 2005 at 18:20

I hope the guy is not infringing on the GPL:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlugins

No, it does not.

tamarian commented 3 October 2005 at 19:04

No, I don't think so. The vB Drupal package is released under the GPL, so it cannot violate the GPL. It includes the Drupal license files and headers. The changes do not touch or modify any vB code and vB never calls any Drupal function from vB, all the modifications are done in Drupal.

Note: I've created 4 pages so far in the drupal.org dev handbook section explaining my main method (db_prefix rewrites), and how other projects can do it (phpBB etc.)

You should maybe indicate

Gerhard Killesreiter commented 3 October 2005 at 19:15

You should maybe indicate that your code is GPL licensed to avoid questions.

That's a good idea. The text

tamarian commented 3 October 2005 at 19:24

That's a good idea. The text does mention it's GPL, and the GPL license file is included. But I'll go and add a bold seperate line for that. :)

Thanks for the kind words,

tamarian commented 3 October 2005 at 19:19

Thanks for the kind words, Charles. Just a minor correction, I do not work for vBulletin, so I'm not "a coder from vBulletin". Just to avoid any misunderstanding that this work was done, commissioned or endorsed by Jelsoft (makers of vBulletin), or by Drupal for that matter :)

Thank you, Tamarian.

jeforma commented 3 October 2005 at 22:14

Yes, sorry about that, might just entered that on thought.

Anyways, I have read all the replies that you and Sepeck have been doing and I really think that this is not intended on replacing the forum.module, not at all, this is intended for all the big vBulletin users that wanted a strong and fully capable CMS program to work with it. And this is what Drupal can do.

Drupal developpers can go ahead and modify the forum.module as MOST of the people who use Drupal for their main website will not buy any other forums other then the one offered for free with Drupal. As I think is a very good start. And this, as Sepeck said, can be modified to suit your needs, the only thing it needs is some developpers...

But this extension to vBulletin, I think, is more aimed at focusing on the currently vBulletin users that would like to have Drupal with it. Just like Post-nuke has presently with the PHPBB forum software, but in my opinion, a Drupal and vBulletin integration will just overlap them by far. So this plug-in IS NOT negative, it can just help to have more users get Drupal, as I think alot of people were interested in using it but didn't know what to do with their proffesional software program.

I am really happy to see you, Tamarian, working on this and that will also help update it when both products upgrade. And I am also even more glad to know that you will help contribute to Drupal. It is always good to have another Drupal contributer ;)

Well thanks both of you for solving inquiries that may have been thought.

Charles

Visit GameBGS.com for all your gaming needs.

Integration will increase the number of Drupal installations

phantom-1 commented 4 October 2005 at 11:15

I am new here, and have registered as a result of the new vb Drupal. I run a site based around a vBulletin forum and have been looking for a full featured CMS for some time. I have considered and rejected for a variety of reasons PostNuke, Mambo and some commercial offerings. The new vb Drupal far exceeds the capabilities of any I have looked at before and is likely to become the CMS of choice for vBulletin sites.

I am pleased that several of the Drupal developers can see the potential benefit of having vbulletin integration. This will attract new users and developers who would not have considered this very full featured CMS before. I think this can only be a good thing for the Drupal project. Integration of this quality will give Drupal a massive advantage for sites that are already running vbulletin.

Many thanks to Tamarian for his hard work bringing two products together for the benefit of both user communities.

I am also fully agreeing

jeforma commented 4 October 2005 at 20:30

I am also fully agreeing with your comment Phantom. This is a great way to expand our horizons and get the most users as possible. Now we will bring all the proffesional designers and payed coders getting to use Drupal with their productions forums, such as vBulletin and I think this is a great start towards a more proffesional look over Drupal.

Visit GameBGS.com for all your gaming needs.

Complete Agreement

pds commented 5 January 2006 at 17:54

I am here as well due to the potential to integrate a world class CMS with a large vBulletin installation. The forums are a major part of my site, and I need the robustness (word?) of vBulletin.

I hope the comments by sepeck do not reflect everyone in the drupal community. I took sepeck's response as "if you don't like what comes free with drupal, either make the free mod better or leave. By no means should we integrate with non-drupal applications."

sepeck does bring up a good point though, when drupal changes code via upgrade, anyone using the vBulletin integration module could be left hanging.

This thread has caused me to think twice about using drupal and vbulletin integrated. Thanks for the info.

wow... just wow

sepeck commented 6 January 2006 at 04:03

What part of good luck did you miss?

I am not paying for a forums app. You, or anyone else is free to integrate a for pay forum solution. You are free to do this yourself. I am not going to spend money to test this solution.

I also will skip threads about vBullletin integration problems and issues. Supporting a for pay product for free is not in my best interests. You and others are free to.

I personally think time would be better spent improving and developing a solution for Drupal. But you are free to spend YOUR time as YOU choose contributing to a product that costs money to scratch your own itch in the spirit of the Open Source movement .......

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

yes wow indeed, how dare

nerdo commented 6 November 2006 at 13:06

yes wow indeed, how dare they add another choice to drupal and make it intresting for people who prefer vBulletin!
People like me that want to switch from joomla / VB to Drupal / VB.

Glad to know that I don't have to send you any pm's and ask for support because you really are the only person i could think off when i installed drupal?!?!?!

Oh well, nobody said open source and open minded are the same thing.

Yes

Chad- commented 5 October 2005 at 03:19

Yeah i found this from that thread on vBulletin.org i was just going through plugins and this one really interested me and thats how i got here so yeah!

Wow! Thanks

MrKippel commented 16 October 2005 at 18:51

That's something really needed. Yes, probably not for all the drupal community, neither for all vb users, but some of us have really very bad problems trying to keep drupal forums up (it brings servers to it knees where a vb forum ran without trouble before).

Apart from the forum layout, that as is already known users expect to find an interface like vb, phpbb, invision, etc, and find confusing drupal one, the main issue is the resource consumption of drupal forum. Aspects and themeing of drupal forum can be modified to looks more or less as other forums, giving a big freedom to webmasters.

So, with this, we can have the best forum and the best CMS, every one doing it's work, and doing it well, which is the most important.

Finally, I've been waiting

insomoz commented 18 October 2005 at 07:16

Finally, I've been waiting for this for a long time, wohooo

Without Vbulletin - no Drupal for me

TraderX commented 21 November 2005 at 20:49

Greets all, if it weren't for that fact of tamarian's "plumbing" for drupal and vb... I wouldn't be using drupal. Now this is not to the fact that I haven't known of drupal, but I wanted a seemless intergration between CMS and Forum... for MY needs. I had orginally planned on using Joomla/Mambo, only... and I repeat, only because of the Vbridge. Which... in turn, only ended up being a waste of time (I waited a long time for it... long time), and it is by no mean an intergration.

Now and I have no php skills, but from what I have read, here and mostly from other sites, it is because Drupal is outstanding and flexible is it possible for these two systems to work, thus opening doors for others to be able to enter drupal.

Just my 2 cents

This is a fantastic Integration

flavor commented 8 January 2006 at 06:45

I love drupal.

I wish I was a hard core programmer - or even a semi programmer cause if I was I would work to improve the forum module. I would try at least.. but I am not a programmer I am an implementer who needs to get the job done. So for my www.westcoastbikers.com web site I really wanted to use drupal as the CMS and VB as the forum. When I found this little hack I was thrilled it is seriously sweet and gets the job done well.

You can see what I have created with it at:

http://www.westcoastbikers.com - that's a Drupal / VB working side by side with elegance.

While we are talking about 3rd party integration with drupal (were we talking about that? anyway!) I found a great billing program called agileco which has a module which allows for drupal users to use the billing system with one login.

Any bit of a rant but I think this is a great solution till I learn how to program well enough to write a nice slim drupal version of VB.

J -

Hmm.

jetsetter commented 6 March 2006 at 02:25

I'm looking at using this integration for a major site I run. I currently use a custom built CMS that makes a few calls to the vB database to display various information.

There is probably a lot to gain from picking up the drupal integration. I'll be considering this.

rob

unfortunately

kerrizor commented 16 May 2006 at 23:34

..you can't use this with an existing Drupal installation; this is just a heavily modded version of Drupal, yes?

Is there any way to bridge the two, or some guide or experience in bridging vBulletin with an existing Drupal install?

i dont get this why do all

apina commented 15 September 2006 at 15:16

i dont get this

why do all the sites that say they are running this module all look like a VB portal?
is it the lact or creativity when designing?
it does drupal actually take the face of VB and share the same template or something?

vbDrupal

Gman commented 18 October 2006 at 15:33

The default theme that is tacked on to the vbdrupal project morphes the vbulletin theme into a drupal theme. Since most adopters of vbDrupal are coming from vbulletin, this is a natural extension of what they are used to.

My site, Skejo.com uses the vbDrupal code and though my forum and site themes look similar, the Drupal portion is independent. vbDrupal.org and vbDrupal.skejo.com are starting to write better articles and documentation, and a conversion script for existing 4.7.x installs is actually out in a beta form. It pushes your Drupal userbase and forums (if any) into the vBulletin tables, and then keep them in sync from then on.

The new 4.7 version of vbDrupal is well integrated and really is just some changes to the boostrapping and user modules (to keep database functions and cookie/sessions in sync).

Skejo.com, Rewarding Your Knowledge. Write an Article, get a slice of the Action.

I was a bit worried about

nerdo commented 6 November 2006 at 13:15

I was a bit worried about this as well but ran into a site that made the two look like they belong together, check this one out:

http://www.spacebuffs.com

Here the forum is actually part of the site, not just vb with a big logo on top.

Wow!

Michelle

she/her

English

Wisconsin, USA

commented 6 November 2006 at 14:05

That site looks awesome! Is that Drupal? Or just an example of a nice vBulletin site?

[Edit: Nevermind... Further investigation reveals that it is, in fact, Drupal. Damn, I wish I could theme that good!]

Michelle

--------------------------------------
My site: http://shellmultimedia.com

yup its a vbDrupal site, the

nerdo commented 6 November 2006 at 14:23

yup its a vbDrupal site, the VBulletin Drupal fork. this is where I came across the site actually:

http://www.vbdrupal.org/forum/showthread.php?p=3435

Waiting for the guy that mde the theme to tell me how he did it.

I can do joomla and Posnuke themes but Drupal... not yet.

[edit: you edited during my reply... stop doing that :P yeah its a pretty cool theme. I really like the complete integration of the site]

Theming

Michelle

she/her

English

Wisconsin, USA

commented 6 November 2006 at 14:28

Heh... Sorry about the pre-emptive edit. Was chatting on IRC about it and someone pointed out the drupal css files.

Anyway, theming Drupal isn't that hard if you are able to theme in general. I just totally suck at graphic design. LOL

Michelle

--------------------------------------
My site: http://shellmultimedia.com

Also came from vb

qweeky commented 30 December 2006 at 10:37

I don't have the first clue about Drupal, but I am pretty familiar with vb, which is why I am here in the first place. Give me a year though, and I guarantee you I will be pretty handy with Drupal because I love to break my website and I love to ask questions once I do (although I am sensing that there are people here who are going to be really snobbish and preachy just because not everything on my site is run by "freeware"). My hat is off to those who work to bring these two together; I hope I am one of them because there is no way I am giving up vbulletin in the near future.

I agree...

tknospdr commented 30 December 2006 at 21:41

More integration is always better. If it's not for you then it's not for you, move along. No need to nag the people who've done the hard work or they might go away, and that's a bad thing.

I'd really like to see this level of integration done to phpBB though since you don't have to pay for that but since I can't code on my own I'm happy to sit back and wait for someone else to do it. I might even throw 'em some PayPal cash as a thank you if my bank account allows it at the time.

Thanks,
David
http://www.floridapets.org

migration is better!

tarabas commented 13 June 2007 at 00:12

Our WizardLinuxTeam opted for the migration from VBulletin to Drupal Forum.
Take a look at our site http://wizardlinuxteam.altervista.org/drupal51/?q=forum and here is the guide to migration. http://wlt.netsons.org/wiki/index.php/Drupal_Hacking
Bye!!!

Thank You for Being Active

JazzyName commented 25 March 2009 at 16:14

I can not say I will use the two together, but can say that contributing to a software 'free of charge' and on your own free time is awesome! Not 2 many ppl would do that, and some ppl will be jealous and try to find fault in what you've done.
As a person that uses many different programs, having a brigde to any other software that is popular and is good can only bring awareness to Drupal that may not have been. Additionally, though you say its freeware, even if this integration had a donation so to help Drupal grow would come from people that do not have a problem paying money for a great reliable product, thus helping Drupal financially.
This would make up for the ppl that refuse to pay or contribute to Drupal at all, but yet use the product.

Anyway, Great work and keep up with being a wonderful community contributing member of sociability.

Post from Drupal to VB: Status?

As If commented 5 August 2014 at 22:02

I've got a client who wants to integrate Drupal 7 on top of an existing forum using Vbulletin 3.8.2. I need to send nodes as posts from the Drupal system to the VB system. Has anyone else done this? What's the status on this project these days?

-------------------------------------------
Interactive Worlds and Immersive Obsessions
http://www.asifproductions.com

Real vBulletin and Drupal Integration!

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