Description:
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.
Drupal Features: All of Drupal's features
are available. Check the link, as they are quite extensive. Available
Drupal modules and themese can be installed, and most will be
compatible. Read the next post for some tips on handling add-on
modules. Some features have been disabled, since they exist in vB (like
custom profile fields), and the forum module
[img]images/newsm/cheeky.gif[/img]. Two feature, xmlrpc and blog API
have been removed, simply because I have never used them, lack the
knowledge and interest in remote login's.
Style/Themes/Templates[/b]:
Drupal's themes are quite flexible, and can support several template
engines (Xtemplate, PHPTemplates, Plain PHP and Smarty). I've include a
few themes that are optional, and you wil need to enable them for your
users if you want to use them. I have also made one theme that uses
vBulletin template system, this one is the default, and it will use
your current style, and will change based on the style chooser
dropdown. I have also modified one of the default Drupal themes
"Pushbutton", and made it use vB's header and footer.
Powered by: Drupal does NOT
require you to post any powered by links. It's not even included in the
default template. I've added it to the footer, but you are free to
remove it, no one will come knocking on your door.
Performance:
Busy sites may need to use the cache feature in Drupal. If some of your
usergroups do not have any specific Drupal roles, their pages will be
cached, as they will be considerd "anonymous". Note that this will not
effect the comment system, as they can still comment on content, if
they have posting permission in vB. There's an option in the config
file sites/default/config.php to disable the Watchdog module, which can
be too agressive.
Search Engine URL's: Drupal has an
option to enable SE friendly URL's. You can turn it on from the Drupal
admin CP. Some server setups may not work with, in that case, check the
.htaccess file and read the comments, to see if you can tweak it to
your setup. You will need to enable Apache's mod rewrite.
Installation:
1.
Edit the file forum/drupal/sites/default/config.php_new and enter your
drupal and forum directory path. Save as config.php, then upload the
full drupal directory as is (in full) to a directory of your choosing
on your server. You may rename the drupal directory to something else
if you want.
2. Import the product-drupal.xml file through your
product/plugin menu. The steps, in case you have not used the product
manager before, are: go to your AdmincCp -> Plugin Systems ->
Product Manager -> Manage Products. Clcik on Add/Import Products
links, click the "Browse" button, locate the product-drupal.xml file on
your local PC drive, select it, and click "yes" to the "Allow
Overwrite" option, and click "Import".
3. Go to your AdminCP vBulletin Options -> vB Drupal and setup the Drupal URL and site name and the comment options.
4. Browser to your new Drupal URL (you need to be logged in to vBulletin as admin, and click "adminsiter". Set up your site.
5.
If you have a customized style, go to the template manager, and edit
drupal_header template. Note that this template also contains the
navbar/menu code. You simply apply any CSS/HTML changes you used to
customize your style to the drupal_header template. Say you have a
background image to your header, or page, apply that to the
drupal_header as well, additional nav bar items, etc.
Drupal Admin CP:
First
thing is setup your user "roles". These act like vB usergroups. You can
assign multiple vB groups to a single Drupal role, or the other way
around, or both. You can do that for primary or secondary group id's.
Mapping vB usergroups to Drupal Roles:
Go
to administer -> access control -> Roles. Create a new role, then
click edit, and enter the vB usergroup ids you want to have that role,
separated by commas. Each time you create a new role, update Access
Control -< Permissions to refine the new role's permissions.
Module, Blocks, Menus and Settings:
Next
is activating the modules you want. Here's how the usual module setup
works. Clcik "modules" to activate or diactivate a module. Then click
"access control" to set who can use that module. Then click "blocks",
to set where you want the block (if it has one) should be placed. Then
click "menus" to enable any new menu items. Then click "settings", to
see if this module has any additional settings. Some module will add
one admin menu, some will add another one under settings.
Documentation:
Drupal has an extensive online manual, and many hands on examples.
Please visit their online handbooks to learn more about Drupal: http://drupal.org/handbooks
Download: You can download the latest version of vbDrupal at Sourceforge here:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/vbdrupal/vbdrupal-4.6.8.0.zip?download
File:
vbdrupal-4.6.8.0.zip (1.98 MB)
