Forum / Message Board Integration With TNG

[kazooter]

I've been looking for a forum or message board I could integrate as an accessory to my TNG website. I could not find anything suitable, so I tried integrating a couple of them on my own. My first successful attempt was Vanilla. It worked, but it sucked. I've been able to get a pretty good integration using miniBB. It is single login/logout, and it lives happily inside one of my TNG pages, so it has the exact look and feel of the rest of my website. You can see it at www.bisbeefamily.com/forum. UPDATE: I've removed the BBS from my Website. It was working fine, but it simply wasn't being used by site visitors. Not sure if this is just the nature of genealogy Websites, or if I just didn't promote it correctly/enough. In any case, I will leave the script here for anyone who has a use for it.

I wrote a script that automates 95% of the integration and have attached it here if you care to try it. Depending on your experience, the process goes pretty quickly. You download and install miniBB as a standalone application in a folder named 'forum' in your TNG root directory. Once it is functional, you download the attached file, unzip it, place the 'integrate' folder inside the 'forum' directory. Then you just navigate to it with a browser and the script will do the rest.

I've used it on several of my test sites, with different TNG templates, with no particular problem. Please see the text file inside the 'integrate' folder for a bit more detail and my absolute disclaimer.

integrate.zip

[lesdelc]

Thanks for your hard work on these files. I have added them to my integration of Joomla and TNG. I still need to do some tweaking.

I have the files installed at My Genealogy. Selecting Genealogy on the Main Menu is where TNG is installed.

Thanks again.

-Les-

I've been looking for a forum or message board I could integrate as an accessory to my TNG website. I could not find anything suitable, so I tried integrating a couple of them on my own. My first successful attempt was Vanilla. It worked, but it sucked. I've been able to get a pretty good integration using miniBB. It is single login/logout, and it lives happily inside one of my TNG pages, so it has the exact look and feel of the rest of my website. You can see it at www.bisbeefamily.com/forum. There are a lot of configuration options and many addons are availbale.

I wrote a script that automates 95% of the integration and have attached it here if you care to try it. Depending on your experience, the process goes pretty quickly. You download and install miniBB as a standalone application in a folder named 'forum' in your TNG root directory. Once it is functional, you download the attached file, unzip it, place the 'integrate' folder inside the 'forum' directory. Then you just navigate to it with a browser and the script will do the rest.

I've used it on several of my test sites, with different TNG templates, with no particular problem. Please see the text file inside the 'integrate' folder for a bit more detail and my absolute disclaimer.

[BradleyC]

I've been looking for a forum or message board I could integrate as an accessory to my TNG website. I could not find anything suitable, so I tried integrating a couple of them on my own. My first successful attempt was Vanilla. It worked, but it sucked. I've been able to get a pretty good integration using miniBB. It is single login/logout, and it lives happily inside one of my TNG pages, so it has the exact look and feel of the rest of my website. You can see it at www.bisbeefamily.com/forum. There are a lot of configuration options and many addons are availbale.

I wrote a script that automates 95% of the integration and have attached it here if you care to try it. Depending on your experience, the process goes pretty quickly. You download and install miniBB as a standalone application in a folder named 'forum' in your TNG root directory. Once it is functional, you download the attached file, unzip it, place the 'integrate' folder inside the 'forum' directory. Then you just navigate to it with a browser and the script will do the rest.

I've used it on several of my test sites, with different TNG templates, with no particular problem. Please see the text file inside the 'integrate' folder for a bit more detail and my absolute disclaimer.

Was there suppose to be a couple of extra files in the zip? I didn't see * download _insert_bb_users php to TNG root and * download _install_bb_files php to TNG root.

I have installed this on my localhost USB drive and the foum seems to be working correctly, but the TNG template #7 does not link correctly. all the links on the left panel want to go to the form folder and not the genealogy folder." http://localhost/genealogy/forum/login php ;they should link to http://localhost/genealogy/login php".

The search box and the dropdown menus work correctly, just not the left panel links.

Any ideas?

Thanks for any help

Bradley

[kazooter]

name='BradleyC' date='Jan 3 2010, 02:33 PM' post='25556']

Was there suppose to be a couple of extra files in the zip? I didn't see * download _insert_bb_users php to TNG root and * download _install_bb_files php to TNG root.

BradleyC, I didn't include any files to assist with downloading and installing the bulletin board. Since there are so many variables, I left it to you to download, install and test the bulletin board as a stand alone script, prior to integrating it.

I have installed this on my localhost USB drive and the foum seems to be working correctly, but the TNG template #7 does not link correctly. all the links on the left panel want to go to the form folder and not the genealogy folder." http://localhost/genealogy/forum/login php ;they should link to http://localhost/genealogy/login php".

The search box and the dropdown menus work correctly, just not the left panel links.

Any ideas?

Thanks for any help

Bradley

For some reason, your links on the left seem to be root-relative. That means they work fine if called from the TNG root directory, but when called from a sub directory (forum), they look for their target files in that same sub directory and, of course, they don't find them. I think those links are coming out of your topmenu.php file. The template 7 distro topmenu.php links are inserted by TNG into your page and should work okay in the forum sub directory, unless you changed the paths (removed the "$cms[tngpath]' portion). The links should look like this: "<a href=\"$cms[tngpath]searchform.php\" class=\"lightlink\">$text[mnuadvancedsearch]</a><br />\n";

If that is not the problem, carefully check your USB drive configuration, making sure that all the values in your TNG config.php are correct. Hope this helps.

[BradleyC]

BradleyC, I didn't include any files to assist with downloading and installing the bulletin board. Since there are so many variables, I left it to you to download, install and test the bulletin board as a stand alone script, prior to integrating it.

For some reason, your links on the left seem to be root-relative. That means they work fine if called from the TNG root directory, but when called from a sub directory (forum), they look for their target files in that same sub directory and, of course, they don't find them. I think those links are coming out of your topmenu.php file. The template 7 distro topmenu.php links are inserted by TNG into your page and should work okay in the forum sub directory, unless you changed the paths (removed the "$cms[tngpath]' portion). The links should look like this: "<a href=\"$cms[tngpath]searchform.php\" class=\"lightlink\">$text[mnuadvancedsearch]</a><br />\n";

If that is not the problem, carefully check your USB drive configuration, making sure that all the values in your TNG config.php are correct. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply.

The two files I mentioned were listed in the install.txt file in the zip, just thought they might have been needed.

Installed minibb to the website server and it did the same way. Checked files,topmenu and TNG template 7 and they don't have "$cms[tngpath]' in any of the links and the original template came that way.

Tried inserting "$cms[tngpath]' into the links and tried an include statement at the beginning of the links, but I could not get it right.

I have entered the full url in the links in topmenu, so now they go to the correct folder.

Thanks again for the script and the help

Bradley

My Webpage

[kazooter]

Thanks for the reply.

The two files I mentioned were listed in the install.txt file in the zip, just thought they might have been needed.

Installed minibb to the website server and it did the same way. Checked files,topmenu and TNG template 7 and they don't have "$cms[tngpath]' in any of the links and the original template came that way.

Tried inserting "$cms[tngpath]' into the links and tried an include statement at the beginning of the links, but I could not get it right.

I have entered the full url in the links in topmenu, so now they go to the correct folder.

Thanks again for the script and the help

Bradley

My Webpage

I corrected my install.txt to eliminate the unnecessary files references. I wonder if you are using an older version of TNG. I just rechecked template 7 in TNG V7.12 and the links are as I stated. I can see from your website that the links are relative on your home page and that you've made them absolute on the forum page (which works).

[BradleyC]

I corrected my install.txt to eliminate the unnecessary files references. I wonder if you are using an older version of TNG. I just rechecked template 7 in TNG V7.12 and the links are as I stated. I can see from your website that the links are relative on your home page and that you've made them absolute on the forum page (which works).

I figured out why I was not seeing any difference in the files. I compared my file to the file in the prebuilt templates folder on the TNG downloads page, which has not been update,I dropped Darrin a note about it. Should have compared it to the upgrade file, or full install

Of course if I had updated the topmenu file when version 7 was released I would not have had any trouble, I must have just copied my old file over when I upgraded, I probably set it aside and said I would get to it tomorrow. If only my memory had worked.

I have upgraded now and everything is working like it should

Thanks for your help

Bradley

[kazooter]

I figured out why I was not seeing any difference in the files. I compared my file to the file in the prebuilt templates folder on the TNG downloads page, which has not been update,I dropped Darrin a note about it. Should have compared it to the upgrade file, or full install

Of course if I had updated the topmenu file when version 7 was released I would not have had any trouble, I must have just copied my old file over when I upgraded, I probably set it aside and said I would get to it tomorrow. If only my memory had worked.

I have upgraded now and everything is working like it should

Thanks for your help

Bradley

Been there, done that. Glad I was able to help.