vbDrupal (vBulletin + Drupal)

For those looking for a better CMS for vBulletin, vbDrupal is the best.

vbDrupal

What is it: Drupal is a sophisticated Content Management System (CMS) system (not just a portal), with collaborative authoring tools for books and blogs. I've tried Mambo and Word Press, and they were good, but Drupal is, IMHO, a lot more elegant, powerful and flexible.

License: vB Drupal is open source, free and licensed under the GPL, just like Drupal.

vB Integration: 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, without any code changes to vBulletin. 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 run it on a different subdomain, or even a different domain name.

vbDrupal

 

thanks, is there a demo anywhere?

 

http://www.drupal.org has a demo of drupal.

This is not a bridge between drupal and vBulletin, both drupal and vbulletin share the same user base, login, sessions, user groups, permissions and custom profile fields, style and theme, etc.

 

i know how drupal works, i thought this was a modified version of drupal?

 

Ah, I see. Sorry for the confusion.

It is full drupal, but it uses the vBulletin users and usergroups for the backend.

I have always liked drupal, but the forum module for drupal was very weak.

This allows you to use vbulletin for the forum, and any vbulletin hacks, add-ons, extensions, plugins, etc as nothing in vbulletin is changed.

The only changes in drupal are behind the scenes that allows you to map drupal's roles to vbulletin's usergroups.

With Drupal 4.7 coming out soon this should really be great.

Here are a few sites running it:
http://www.westcoastbikers.com/
http://www.dragonslist.com
http://www.bibliahistoria.com/home/
http://my.boards.ie/
http://de.castlecops.com
http://www.myetalk.com/
http://www.talkhomebusiness.com/
http://www.digiscrapshack.com/blogs
http://www.cuddlesnkisses.com/
http://www.trilliummud.com/holos/blogs
http://www.murmurs.com/
http://www.blaminator.co.uk
http://www.hallagulla.com/vb3/blog/
http://www.hubbing.sg
http://www.irishleagueforums.net/blog
http://www.myitblog.com/
http://www.totalwebtalk.com/forum/blogs/
http://www.controlbooth.com/

 

I'm also running it at www.adminfusion.com

It doesn't look perfect and completely customized, but it is definitely nice because it uses the same member/post information as the forums...has a pretty seamless theme integration...and is easy to install and use...I'd recommend it if you are looking for an easy to use CMS that will integrate with vB

 

I am curious to know if you considered Joomla for the VB integration. If you did why did you choose Drupal over Joomla?

 

I went with Drupal because there's a well developed mod which will integrate everything for you - built specifically for vB...There's nothing that does this for Joomla, to my knowledge. Also, as far as I have seen, Drupal and Joomla appear to be close to identical

 

Thanks for the reply. I have grown to appreciate Drupal much more.

 

hmmm. i've tried drupal before, it didn't really work for sites. i'm now on wordpress, but i recently purchased a vb forum so i guess i'll look into this. thanks for the info.

 

I've been in the process of developing a separate module which might interest you as well. It's for the latest Drupal 4.7 release candidate 1. Instead of sharing tables/sessions, I've built a module that integrates Drupal/vB without modifying the core source of either one. Right now, the Drupal side of things is working and I'm just adding bells and whistles to the admin configuration and blocks setup. To come will be commenting to the forums and PMs through the site. Once the Drupal module is complete, I'll begin looking at a plugin for vB that will handle the reverse.

So right now if a user logs in in Drupal, they're logged into vB. But if they log into the forum directly, they aren't logged into Drupal. I know Drupal code well, but vB I'm a newbie to so it might take a little while to get reverse functionality.

The advantage here is twofold: 1) The latest release of Drupal is technically out of beta and has proven stable throughout all my development so far. The new forms API is worth the upgrade alone... very nice. 2) Drupal isn't "broken" so to speak. This is just another module (drupalvb) that you have to drop into your modules directory and turn on. Once it's on, set the config options in Drupal and you're set! Any other module will still work as well, esp. for my purposes the ecommerce module.

 

didn't really work? lol
this site uses drupal, do you think it doesn't really work; http://www.theonion.com/content/index

rszrama your module sounds interesting, but will it provice the same degree of integration? eg user groups having permissions set in drupal and stuff?

What is the ETA of your modules completion?

 

Use mod_rewrite so that users are directed to drupal's login/registration page when they try to login/register with vB.

 

Thanks for the tip, ryan_uk. I hope to do that side of the work today.

As for peach's question: I'm just not sure where it will go really. As of right now, I haven't added any administration of the vB forum to Drupal. There is a sort of Admin panel with links to your blocks configuration, drupalvb settings, and your vB Admin Control Panel. I'd be happy to take the module wherever it needs to go, though! I'm looking to get the module up on Drupal.org if not today then in the next couple of days. Then I'd be happy to work with anyone to keep building it, as I know I'm missing things/don't know what people would like to be able to do.

The last major hurdle I want to take care of before putting it out there is directing comments on nodes to a Comments forum, much like vbDrupal. I don't think that's going to take me too long to take care of today.

Other things that can certainly be cleaner: better configuration of the options you want new users created in the vB database with, better/more functionality for the included blocks, making sure the monkeying around in the vB database I'm doing isn't breaking anything... Things that it's gonna take other people using the software and finding things wrong so it can be fixed. Thank goodness for open source.

Anyways, I'll post a link here later to the module and let the fun begin.