Forum:PhpBB3

I've seen that Wikia has been working on Integrating phpBB2 and Mediawiki such as on Inside Wikia However i feel strongly that your trying to integrate it much to fully. I don't see the point of trying to Integrate Wikitext and the entire skin into phpBB2 when there are already a number of modfications that can be made to Mediawiki and phpBB3 such as http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=554737 and http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:PHPBB/Users_Integration#Login_and_logout_with_phpBB_3_.28RC_1.29 that would work just as well without having to solve the complex problems involved with keeping both Mediawiki and phpBB2 updated and configured correctly. Maybe I'm missing something here but I think it would be much similer and easier for Wikia to integrate just the login as compared to the skin. I could make up a few simple modifications that would provide links and the like to return to the Wiki and smiler things also if that'd help.  Will SWC  04:30, 3 July 2007 (UTC)


 * There are 3 issues with that extension:


 * Quote from extension "This extension links MediaWiki to phpBB's user table for authentication, and disallows the creation of new accounts in MediaWiki. Users must then log in to the wiki with their phpBB account." (Every Wikia user will become invalid and no-one will be able to create or login to Wikia)
 * Quote from extension "Synchronous-Login/Logout does not work if your Wiki and phpBB don't share the same domain name (even sub-domains)." (Logins and Logouts using the shared User database won't work properly anymore)
 * Quote from extension "Some users experience an error when phpBB and MediaWiki are in different databases, while other users have no problem doing so. It's possible that this may be related to non-English software, which is common to users reporting the error." (Wikia does things in thousands of different databases, and uses many languages. This would become a huge error for Wikia)
 * After those major issues, there are benefits to what Wikia is doing. Not using the skin it's hard for a user to navigate the wiki and forum. By integrating the skin the Forum and the Wiki are much like one single site like they should be. There should be no visual difference in talking in the wiki and talking to people in the forum.
 * Then there is the issue with BB Code. I myself hate BB Code, it's annoying to deal with. [b]bold[/b] and [i]italic[/i] are much harder to type out than bold and italic because the latter only requires you to use a character which is located right next to the finger you type ; and : with. [b] is also actually harder to use than  because the [ and ] require you to stretch your weakest finger out to type them, while are located right below 2 fairly strong fingers in an easy to reach location. Then there is the issue with links. In a BB Code forum, [ url= http://example.com]text[/url] is used. But in wikitext, it's a simple text, the latter is much easier to do because you don't half to type all the extras. In addition to that, you don't even need to use external links. Internals links to the articles you are discussion are as simple as using TITLE even in the forums. And you can include images strait from the wiki without externally linking to them with [img] which won't let you resize them if they are to big. Then the list format [list][*][/list] is much less desirable than the simple * and # we use.
 * But all in all there's one thing to consider with BB Code. MediaWiki uses WikiText, the people here use that for communicating to. Should you half to learn 2 syntaxes just to work on one site? People are also communicating about MediaWiki, WikiText should also be usable in the forum to allow for proper demonstration and discussion on the topic. ~Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) tricks Jul 3, 2007 @ 05:32 (UTC)
 * phpBB3 already has a basic system where you can define custom bbcode's. It wouldn't be hard to hack in Wiki code or even tie in the mediawiki Parser with phpBBB3.  Will SWC  05:35, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually I could even make an easy piece of BBCode to tie into the Mediawiki parser. I figure that many wiki's would benefit from having a forum which would allow discussion of things related directly to the wiki without disturbing others. Also many users are not comfertable with Wiki code or for that matter the entire Mediawiki system but may be more comfortable with a more Familer forum environment.
 * I think the work to Integrate phpBB2 with Mediawiki was a great idea but the major problem is integrating it so much that upgrading or modifying it later on is difficult it not impossible. On top of that several wiki's are already running a forum hosted by their own servers who would greatly benefit from Wikia hosting them. The #1 benefit would be an integrated login system. As a matter of fact I could even get the code for a Google ad to be placed on the main page of the wiki.  Will SWC  11:04, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Any further thought's on this?  Will SWC  23:09, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I still like the idea of integrating the systems fully instead of just throwing in a few bits of code which just share a user database and parser. Do remember that the extension you suggested for sharing users will not work because it would require Wikia to break the ability for anyone to use the thousands of user accounts already created.
 * Who said that we had to keep up to speed with phpBB anyways? If we base it off a stable release, then integrate it. Why do we need to keep updating phpBB's code? Fork it and title it wikiBB, to make it forum software for MediaWiki Wikis.
 * Just a note, Even if someone isn't used to WikiText they still half to use it in the articles that are being discussed. So it still stands that we shouldn't need to make people learn 2 syntaxes.
 * Back to the note of keeping up to speed with phpBB, even if we wanted to keep up to date, all we'd half to do is use a few diffs and patches to make it so we can reapply the code to later versions of phpBB and then just merge the changes where the patches can't.
 * There's much more benefit to integrating the 2 systems other than just shared users, and WikiText in the forums:
 * Skins will be integrated (I'm on the volunteer site of the team that will be working on properly integrating the skins into the forums); This means your user js/css, and other things will apply inside the forums, and entering the forums will be just like entering another part of the Wiki, as if you didn't leave.
 * By integrating it we can do things like making profile, or other links like your username link to your actual userpages on the wiki.
 * One user suggested integrating the watchlists so that you could keep track of important threads inside the forums to.
 * Another user suggested making talkpages link to forum threads so that there would be a nice thread style way of discussing changes. This can't be done exactly because we don't want to remove talkpages, but we could allow threads to be tagged with articles and have a threads tab show up beside the talk tab.
 * We can integrate permissions so that certain MediaWiki tags give you the appropriate permissions in the forum as well as the wiki, making it as if the forum was just an extended part of the wiki.
 * There are a number of things you can do with integration... Consider this more like giving MediaWiki proper forum software of it's own instead of just linking stuff... ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) tricks Jul 15, 2007 @ 00:29 (UTC)