Having just completed integration (of a sort) between Invision Power Board, MODx, Wordpress and another only semi-linked-in bit of software with the help of IPBWI, I thought I’d start off a topic where you can post your most insane mashups.
Using IPBWI, which allows you to access the functionality of IPB outside of IPB, I was able to integrate a tonne of functionality (logins, registrations, who’s online, member links, board stats) into MODx. Integrate probably isn’t the right word as I didn’t actually join up MODx’s user database with IPB’s, but rather made using the MODx user functionality unneccessary (there will only be two staff members adding content to this particular MODx site and I can now restrict what pages people view with a simple TV containing the relevant IPB member groups that are allowed to view each page).
Then, using the recent Wordpress functionality built into IPBWI, anyone logging in through the login page I built in MODx is automatically logged into Wordpress. This is neat so that when you go to view an article after logging in, you don’t have to log into Wordpress as well to leave a comment. Deoending on their Wordpress role, I can also then give those with access a "My Articles" link that goes to the WP backend after login.
It gets a little less sane from there on - next, I edited MODx’s index.php page to LOAD WORDPRESS INSIDE MODx to use some Wordpress functions to grab certain user and post information (mainly to do the "My Articles" link. Don’t try this at home kids - it works fine, but essentially for every page load you’re then unneccessarily loading both most of Wordpress and all of MODx and it’s not particularly upgrade-friendly
Then after that I did something else that’s not recommended - I booted up MODx inside Wordpress (opposite of the above) so that I could use the MODx API functions inside the Wordpress templates. Same thing applies as above - it worked, but there’s two systems loading with each page load in Wordpress now and the danger of overwriting these custom lines of code with Wordpress’s annoying "Upgrade Now" button in the admin area when they do one of their numerous minor releases. I was impressed though that runSnippet worked in a lot of cases, though I did run into some path issues with WayFinder and AjaxSearch - fairly sure the authors didn’t expect anyone to do anything as bizarre as I was
It did allow me to run the IPB snippets I’d created though and pull in the member bar, stats and online members info again into Wordpress’s sidebar.
Part of the whole experiment was a necessity for a project that I’ll be managing (so the tenuous upgrade path isn’t a big problem as I’ll be handling software upgrades), but it’s very non-upgrade-friendly still nonetheless, and if you had a big, busy WP installation and a big, busy MODx site then the two systems loading together on each page load could really start to chew through server resources.
It did open my eyes to something though - whilst Wordpress has improved in terms of interface and end-usability over the years, it’s still woefully locked into now-obsolete PHP4 code. The core is very much NOT Object-Oriented so the system itself isn’t wrapped inside a class and is therefore prone to naming conflicts left, right and centre when you attempt anything as daft as I have above. It did boggle my mind for a while as to why, with all the improvements they’ve made to WP over the years, they’ve not upgraded the core to use PHP5’s many improvements (PHP5 being quite old now as well!), but then I realised that if they did rewrite it then it would break hundreds of thousands of sites simultaneously as plugins broke all over the show.
Next to that, making IPB "integrate" with MODx using the IPBWI functions was a piece of solid, OO cake that won’t fall apart (crumble if you will) unless I really try and break it. Much more of a joy to work with.
Enough of my latest, crazy mashup - what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever tried to bind together in such a sticky-tape-on-a-leaky-pipe sort of way?
MODX Staff
