SMF Integration

FYI,

For those of us waiting for a plugin for a forum (SMF, phpBB,e tc.) I just posted a poll on SMF's forum for how important CB is to our websites.

www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=60758.0

If you have feelings one way or the other about CB/SMF plugin then I urge you to vote. I think they way under estimate the popularity of CB.

Thanks,
Greg

Great idea, just had a great democratic process in Iraq. Now it's our turn at SMF, make yourself heard.

Hello. I'm just chiming in as a CB newbie (but old user of SMF back when it was YABBSE).

Based upon what I've read at the SMF home site, I'd strongly advise against pushing this issue any further. I went to the poll thread, and it's already degenerating into the same ol "CB is useless - go away!" mentality that seems incredibly pervasive and entrenched over there. Even the most intelligent pro-CB posts are being met with relative hostility, and it just seems to me the SMF team is not at all interested in CB integration of any kind. In fact, right now, I'm not entirely too surefooted as to their relationship with Joomla/$ambo at this point. :S Ironically, it was the closer relationship with this extremely popular CMS that helped pushed SMF more into the spotlight.

I've started a thread over there regarding achieving CB features without CB. If nothing else, I hope that the SMF team understands that "plug and play" extendability is indeed an important issue for any interactive software producer to consider. CB is on the right track with the plug-in architecture. Right now, though it is indeed powerful and can be shaped to provide roughly equivalent functionality (which the team quickly claims), SMF simply is not easy for the average webmaster to extend. THAT is the truth that the SMF team isn't getting right now for some odd reason. Sure, you can tell me I just need to create a special skin/theme - but then that assumes I have the coding skills needed to do so.

My personal spin on this situation? You either want a powerful forum or high level of interactivity/integration. At least until Joomlaboard is a more mature product (no disrespect!), sadly, you can't have both right now. I'm only concerned because I have a site that is heavily entrenched with SMF, and I really don't want to have to restart my forums. For sites in development, I can simply use Joomlaboard and be done with it.

Hopefully, Cowboy (who produces my favorite SMF bridge) will resolve the CB RC2 login issue. If so, then this will become a moot point for me. Whatever the case, whatever version of SMF works at that point may possibly be the LAST incarnation of SMF I use.

For what it's worth...

Regards,
Brat.

Post edited by: Brat, at: 2005/12/16 08:56

Hello,

I just wanted to put my 2 cents in on the discussion of CB and SMF integration. I hacked Virtuemart and Docman to work with CB and JACLPlus to create a membership site. The SMF-Bridge breaks this setup so we aren't using SMF right now.

I'm releasing the hacks over the next few days. After any issues are resolved I'll have a look at a CB / SMF bridge.

Is there anybody currently working on this?

kawika,

First, what kind of hack did Docman require to work with CB? I am in the process of putting up a site consisting of:
- Joomla 1.0.4
- CB 1.0RC2
- AKOLegal
- DOCman
- ExtCal
- joomlaXplorer
- mosCE (& admin)
- Z Weather
- Some forum Software to be determine (phpBB, SMF, other)
- And a few other bots/mods.

I had not really noticed an issue with DocMan and CB yet... but the site is not "Live" yet either.

Second, after cutting through A LOT of negativity I finally got Orstio to give some usefull information about what might be needed to make SMF integrate with a CB plugin. Just have not had time to work on it. Hopefully with that and the phpBB plugin that martijn189 has been working on I might be able to get a SMF plugin working...

I am fairly new to php ( months)... ok really new to php. I first need to finish the testing/help with martijn's plugin before I start a SMF branch. I had better stop before I get too long winded... If your interested you can see what Orstio posted to me on SMF's forum or I can send you a cleaned up text version

Greg

I setup a writing contest site where people upload their entries. The documents are for their eyes only and they could only upload / update the number based on certain virtuemart product purchases. I also needed about 15 other modifications dealing with editing, additional fields in the database, and upselling other related virtuemart products. It was pretty messy but it works for now. Long-term I'd like to get the functionality into docman.

I've read many of the posts on the SMF site and I did see a shift in the harshness of the discussion which is encouraging. I'll keep watching developments for now.