I can't believe there's no working forum solution

I can imagine a custom forum to cost as much but for something that’s already made (SMF) why not? A lot of other CMS have reliable bridges so I don’t see why MODx can’t follow suit.

As long as we can agree on which forum software we all like, the latest version of both modx and that forum then take it from there. SMF doesn’t update their forum software THAT often that it wouldn’t be a good choice. Currently they have 2 flavours, 1.1.8 which is the latest version of their older build (if that makes sense) and 2.0 which recently just went to RC.

Modx 9.6.3 seems very nice and Rev is still under development so I would say modx 9.6.3 and SMF 2.0 personally. If anyone wants to chip in build versions they prefer or forum software, perhaps a vote on which one is best or which ever software someone is able to work with best.

I would be happy to pay something towards the funds as my community would most certainly be grateful for integration with the work I do on my site that I can’t hook up to the forum.

Quote from: rossco at Mar 26, 2009, 04:07 PM

I would say modx 9.6.3 and SMF 2.0 personally. If anyone wants to chip in build versions they prefer or forum software, perhaps a vote on which one is best or which ever software someone is able to work with best.

I would be happy to pay something towards the funds as my community would most certainly be grateful for integration with the work I do on my site that I can’t hook up to the forum.

I would be happy with that, although I don’t know anything about SMF other than we’re using it here.

If enough people can agree, and we’re sure we can get someone to develop a really good bridge, I would try to get us to contribute a decent sum towards the costs.

Sounds promising so far, seems like we have a few people seriously interested in the idea.

Does anyone know anyone who has the ability to do this or even themselves? Without knowing if someone can or knows how to do it then we are going to be stuck lol.

Please post in this thread if you do and if we know that you can do it, it might generate more interest and ultimately more funds to help you along.

The first thing that would be needed is the SMF API docs I just did a quick search and whilst I can find the api code I can’t find the docs, admittedly i only did one search and didn’t have time to hunt too much.

If anyone can find these and post a link there we could start to look at. I can’t say I can do it but have enough knowledge to do the ground work for someone to then finalize it.

My initial search found this...

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=268365.0

Not entirely a good start for us! Saying this, there are other forum software that may have APIs... phpBB?

Anyway, is it possible to look at the bridges for other CMS and follow how they worked with it?

Interesting:
http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,14109.msg99816.html#msg99816
http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,6692.0.html

Some candy for your work... www.modxcms.de/forum Your integration is cool, works relatively well. I will report in more details soon and am looking forward to the real integration. The work with vanilla teached me how cool a moduled application is (okay, I knew from MODx... )

Thx Sirlancealot!

Quote from: mrhaw at Mar 27, 2009, 01:56 AM

Interesting:
http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,14109.msg99816.html#msg99816
http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,6692.0.html

All these various threads about attempts to integrate forums are kind of depressing, because it looks like no one has reliably succeeded. I’d be interested in knowing whether people think the whole thing is even going to be possible for 0.9.6.3.

The other thing that would need to be sorted is exactly what everyone expects from integration are we talking integration of user accounts only, do we want to have full template integration. What else?

Yeah and I have posted in a lot of them LOL!

I can’t help but think of it in a simple but ignorant way... why can’t you just pass the same username/password from SMF to the MODx username/password fields in the modx_ database. If the user signs in to the forum or modx it’s saved in a cookie that is shared by the 2 platforms which means no sign in is needed once signed in from either or login forms. I know it’s not as simple as that but if we break down exactly what is needed in elements perhaps there’s a way to piece it together.

I know that if someone updates their password that it would need to be sent to the other platform or the link will break so that’s where it starts getting complicated.

I have seen some amazing talent since i’ve been around Modx and those who built it have amazing abilities... I think we really need to know is do you experts who made Modx know you can do it, take away the costs and time... can you actually do it? If it’s a no then perhaps it’s just something we will need to give up hope with but if there is someone who truly knows they can then at least we can try and gather what is needed to make it work.

As I said, can’t the bridges for joomla or drupal that are available and supported on the SMF site be looked at, modified and tweaked to work with Modx?

Quote from: peteedley at Mar 27, 2009, 12:00 PM

The other thing that would need to be sorted is exactly what everyone expects from integration are we talking integration of user accounts only, do we want to have full template integration. What else?

I would be more than happy with database integration... the template setup is easy done on the SMF side and I would be more than happy to help people make their SMF theme match their Modx theme. The most important thing is that the user info and passwords and what not work together.