Is the a module out there to use invision boards in xoops?

Go to http://www.bbpixel.com

I have just installed Invison Board. As far as I can tell, it works perfectly. It's not a conventional module so requires over-writing of some XOOPS core files via FTP or cPanel. As long as you do this carefully (I made backups of each file as I went along) it can be up and running in an hour or so. The core files included with the package are for XOOPS 2.0.7.3. There is a separate download of core file updates for 2.0.9.2. I have no technical knowledge of IPB but you should be able to get help by posting here, or over at the bbpixel website.

Not sure if it is OK to just ask the question here, or if I should make a new thread.

I have been looking for a few changes for my Forum, I like newbb2, but I want to have things like the title of the last post appearing in the forum index, but this does not appear possible with newbb (I am not on about seperate blocks by the way)

Having looked around I saw a XOOPS site running phpbb and it looked OK, then I saw a XOOPS site running the IPB mod for XOOPS and it looks very nice, perhaps still not as nice as VB, but pretty damned close.

As I can't see this mod on xoops.org AND there does not seem to be many topics regarding this module; Is there something wrong with it?

Is there a reason that XOOPS sites running IPB or phpBB forums are in the minority?

I currently have the IPB mod installed on a test site, and it went OK, the install requires (as some else said) manually replacing files, but this only takes a few moments (definately worth remembering to back up these files.) I then ran the update script and it brought the topics, categories and posts across just fine.

My only gripes are that the admin functions do not work for the main administration page, you get forwarded to some other page.
AND the IPB forum does not follow the rest of your sites theme, and I am not sure how you go about changing it.

Those are minor details really, my main concern is that I don't want to install IPB on a working site in case there are security or update problems with using this module.

Any thoughts/tips/insights are welcomed

Dave

The only reasons I can think of to not use something other than NewBB2 would be security and upgrade compatibility.

I'm a pessimist (or a realist depending on who you ask) so bear that in mind. I don't want to discourage anyone from using other forums, but at the same time they should understand what they are trading off when they make that choice.

In order to integrate them with the XOOPS userbase and site, you need to change core files. This changes the functionality of Xoops. These are changes made to the core XOOPS system by people other than the dev team. This might make some people uneasy.

If a security fix comes out for either XOOPS or the third-party forum, you need to wait for a hack to make XOOPS and the forum play nicely together again. If an upgrade comes out for either of them, you again need to wait for a hack. If you don't update after a security fix, you are vulnerable. That's bad.

How long is the update wait? I don't know to be honest. The person doing it for XOOPS seems to have made updates quickly in the past but since I didn't use third-party packages I wasn't paying very close attention. From experience when I was using phpNuke, the time gap between security fix or upgrade till it was added to the phpNuke version by their devs was intolerable. As far as I know, there is only one person maintaining third-party forums for Xoops. If they decide not to continue to do so -- real life, new forums, changing CMS, whatever -- then you are stuck.

If there are things that other forums have that you feel you need, I'd suggest adding them to the wishlist for NewBB2 at the Module Development Forge ( http://dev.xoops.org/ ). The dev team there is very responsive to user needs. NewBB2 was a great first step. Let's refine it and polish it so that it fits our needs even better.

We used the Invision hack from bbpixel for a while, and he did an excellent job of setting it up for Xoops.

One problem you will have, is when you upgrade Xoops, you will also have to upgrade the Invision hack also. He's pretty fast on getting the patches out for XOOPS upgrades. To me it was always a pain to upgrade the hack, and I always feared really screwing up my data base.

Thanks for your points people.

I have to be honest I really like the look and feel of the IPB module, it seems more mature than newbb2, but it is proving to be a pain in the ass to get working as well as newbb2, especially when you want to use blocks on the top page for things like the recent topics.

There are changes that have effected the whole site like the new version of PM; thats great!
Some of the extra features such as been able to warn users, moderator control panels and one thing I have been looking for is the title of the last post to appear in the forums index page, these are all really great.

I wish it would integrate into XOOPS a little easier and I would like it to follow the site theme, but then I guess the standard IPB theme is not too bad, its just unfortunate the rest of my site is not along them lines.

Well thanks for your thoughts, and thanxs for the suggestion about submitting for the newbb2 wishlist.

Thanks

Dave

I agree it would be nice if someone could provide some pointers on changing the IPB colour scheme to tie in more closely with the site theme. If you have a 'brown' site, the default blue does look a bit odd. Not got that far into it yet, but sure it must be possible.

The IPB handling of XOOPS PMs is very good. My only dissapointment is that it doesn't handle notifications from other modules too. Thankfully, with a cross-forum 'new posts' feature forum users don't really need to use the IPB notifications anyway. More importantly, they don't need to rely on posts still being visible in a 'recent posts' block to see what's new.

Visually there are some inconsistencies, but functionally it has all the features seasoned forum users expect to find. I look forward to playing with it some more.

Slowly addressing the colour scheme issue. A lot of changes are possible by tinkering with the CSS, but it appears you should be able to use any third-party IPB 1.3 skin. I found some free colour-based skins here:

http://www.invisionskins.com/index.php?p=skins13

The skinning guide v1.x on the Invisionskins site is a really useful explanation of how to import skins. Because the default way to do this is to upload and de-compress a TAR file in-situ, your host's safe-mode settings can cause problems, but workarounds are explained.

Make sure the module's cache, skins, archive_in, archive_out and style_images folders are CHMOD 777 before you start.