PunBB and WordPress Posts

I've been thinking about this for a long time.

Gamerz (from the WP forums) was talking about getting something like this working for phpbb a while back but his example link was broken, and nothing ever came of it.

Also, Matt, from WP developed bbPress, and writes a little in the dev list about how integrating the two should be easy to do.

imagine a WP post, and a bbPress series of responses? heavy...

As for punnbb:

My thoughts have been that it would be best to first create a uniformed look and feel.

either get punbb to look like your WP install
or your wordpress install to look like your bunbb design.

op ed:
(this is important for continuity... if you want to use one or the other as the "front end" of your site then it is essential. usually, in communities, when people find your message board, they just directly link there, and never read your pages or news sections again.)

once you have them looking very much the same, the easiest thing to do would be to disable comments on WordPres, and altar the "comments" link globally, and individually in WP.

modfy the link to either load the board inline below the post, or as a popup.

The tricky part is to get the number of replies between the two applications. but, punnbb has a superb rss addition that alexking (also a wordpress benefactor) developed.

possible you could maintain those counts on your main site with a feed.

i am not proficient in php to otherwise determine how you could hard code a function to go see how many replies there have been, and then output the number on the wordpress page.

(however, that code would end this issue, and solved the problem completely!)

dunnoe if my reply is even helpful...

good luck.

I started working on a WordPress plugin.  I am not programmer at all, but below is what I have so far.  Any suggestions would be helpful.

//
function wp2punbb( $id )
{
global $wpdb;

/*
* fetch and process wp data
**/
$posts = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE ID = '$id'");

if ( !$posts )
return $id;

$post = $posts[0];
$title = apply_filters('the_title', $post->post_title);
$content = apply_filters('the_content', $post->post_content);

/*
* insert into punbb as appropriate
*/
function connectPunBB()
    {
        // connect to PunBB database
        $this->link = mysql_connect($this->getOption('host'), $this->getOption('username'), $this->getOption('password'));
        if (!$this->link)
        {
            sql_connect();
            doError("Cannot connect to PunBB database...");
        }
        if (!mysql_select_db($this->getOption('database')))
        {
            sql_connect();
            doError("Cannot select PunBB database...");
        }
    }

// add the new information into the database
$query="INSERT INTO punbb_posts (post,poster,message) VALUES ('$_POST[post]','$_POST[poster]','$_POST[message]')";
if(!mysql_db_query($dbname,$query,$link_id)) die(mysql_error());
mysql_close($this->link);
// likely a simple insert query
   
return $id;
}

add_filter('post_publish', 'wp2punbb');
//

I've actually thought about this a lot as well. I set up a site at http://www.newathens.org for me and my friends, and I found myself wishing for an 'integrated' solution to a community site. I'm SURE I'm not the only one.

The way I see it, most people (nowadays) do what I do - install punbb, wordpress, and coppermine.

I've read a couple of posts about integrating the look/theme into one cohesive site (even though it might be 3 different dbs, etc), and I think there is room for a combo install that would do all three in one shot.

As touched on, I think the thing holding that back is bbpress. I'd much prefer that Wordpress used punbb, but it seems that the original verison that relied on tables scared off the devs. (http://codex.wordpress.org/Release_Philosophy) and (http://codex.wordpress.org/IRC_Meetups).

Taking it one step farther and using punbb for comments on wordpress would be awesome, but might be a bit over ambitious for the time being.

Maybe the best solution would be (like macrumors.com) to set up a thread per wordpress entry automatically, with a link to that inserted into the wordpress post (in addition to the comment link?).

I'm up for trying to make this happen, if anybody else thinks it would be a good idea.

That's a really interesting point. I think in the case of Wordpress, the new 'theme' and 'plugin' systems they came out with might help with the upgrading process. What I should look into would be a way to use the same 'theme' between Wordpress and PunBB. Maybe that would be the first step in getting PunBB to work with other programs - trying to use the same 'themes' or whatever they're called in different CMS programs.

Man, I don't know about integrating them at that level. I feel like a good start would be getting a single install, and a unified theme.

Even getting there would seem pretty tough, much less integrating the databases, etc. Don't get me wrong, I think that would be a GREAT idea - but I think it would be better to start with small steps.

As for choosing the programs to integrate, I like the idea of using PHP/MySQL/GPL software as a bundle. That means, to my mind, PunBB, WordPress, and Coppermine.

I think it would be a mean feat to even decide on what programs to tackle! But I'm up for ideas. What I imagined is a single ZIP file to download, a single install script to run, and a unified look when it's all done. Choosing a set of programs to install and getting that far seems like the best first step.

You know my vote is for Wordpress/PunBB. I'm not into Folderblog because license is terrible:

I really like the look of SPG, especially the "special wp" verison:

The license isn't GPL, though, which is a bummer. It's CC by-nc-sa, which is OK, but not as nice as GPL. Here are two more gallery-type programs to consider:

http://phpthumb.sourceforge.net/

http://photostack.org/

I agree that the first hurdle is just css and php, integrating the front-end isn't going to be easy. What do you think about a Wordpress plugin that automatically creates a new thread in a specific directory per post? That would be a pretty non-invasive integration option, I think. You could also show the activity of that thread in wordpress, as a secondary 'comments' type indicator.

I think that "The Gallery Issue" is going to be a setback indeed. There are so many Galleries, and yet, no one is really 100% happy with them.

Here are a couple decent links to people i admire who have thought this over in depth:

http://www.noscope.com/journal/2005/04/photoalbum-cms

http://binarybonsai.com/archives/2004/0 … -solution/

maybe it would be best to worry about the PunBB and Wordpress end before any photo gallery integration?

heh...

yeah, good call.