Add-on Crowd-funding proposal - Joomla bridge plugin

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I'm definitely up for chipping in at least $100.

I'm currently running a version of coop's original plugin which I hacked to (more or less) work. But that's on J! 2.5 and XF 1.1, and I'm badly needing to upgrade.

If you need someone to help test / debug, I'm available. I'm an experienced J! developer, I know the original code pretty well, I just lacked the XF knowledge to get it 100%. And I'm desperate for a solution!

Hugh
 
Hello everyone,

Sorry for this late answer. I am totally busy preparing our XF / Joomla coming migration, with a 20 years-old mamouth website (130 000 users, 1M+ messages)

Concerning, the bridge, we have now a first version that is working (XF 1.4.4 // Joomla 3.2 --- dual login and user creation operationnal) but not perfectly yet.
We met several problems with the original plugin code, that are currently being corrected by the developer.

> modifications made on users in xenforo (user status, e-mail - on front or back-end) are not reflected in Joomla but only after the user disconnects and reconnects in Joomla (no real time data update in Joomla). Concretely, when a user confirms its register in xenforo, he is connected and active and xenforo but will not be in Joomla until its next connection.
> password update was simply not coded at all => no update from XF to Joomla.
> member groups update from XF to Joomla : the plugin was only taking into account XF primary groups. We had to modify it to include secondary member groups.

We added 250 $ for these modifications. The developper is currently finishing the 2 first points and should finish the last one this week. I will have then to make final tests.

At this time, if I am correct we are 6 people interested (@Heffalump, @thumped @goyo @popr @Cheesegrits + me) , for a total of 1050 $ => 175 $ each.

For information, we developped a module for Joomla that displays content from xenforo (threads, resources, blog entries). I will be happy to share it here if it sounds interesting for someone.

@goyo : We happened to have such kind of peak times on our current platform (Joomla 2.5 / VB 3.8 / JFusion ) but most of the time we are at around 500-600 concurrent users. We did not have so much server problems and in all case did not identify any problem coming from JFusion but of course I can not assure you that you won't have any issue. I will ask my developer if he is able to us give more info on this point.
 
I'm actually needing it for J! 3.4. Shouldn't be a problem, but I'd be happy to test it now. If there are any issues, it'd be better to catch them as soon as possible.

-- hugh
 
3.4 here also.

What i'd really like to see is an equivalent to jfusion's discussion bot (with K2 support) so i could use xF threads for article comments...
 
Hello everyone,

Sorry for the delay, was gone few weeks for necessary restorative holidays (y) and back on our bridge project since few days.

We have now something operationnal. The two first points I mentioned earlier are now solved. The member groups update is ongoing but from less importance and not a blocking point to start.

There remains one last issue on which I would like to have your opinion, and maybe ideas to solve it.

Here is the case :

When the user registers in XF, a session is opened, which allows the user, even if its account is not activated yet, to modify its account information, in particular its e-mail.
Thanks to the bridge, the user is at this time, created in Joomla, in a "not active" status. BUT no session has been opened in Joomla as sessions are only transferred when a user logins.
Then, when the user validates its account by clicking in the confirmation e-mail sent by XF, his account is validated in XF (and also in Joomla due to the bridge).
Its session in XF is still open and now with full permissions due to its validated status.

But there is still no session opened in Joomla. If the user goes in Joomla side of the site, he is not connected. The only way for him would be then to unlog and login again in XF, which is not a particularly positive first experience on the site.

We thought to 2 options that we are currently investigating :
> Open a session in Joomla at the same time than in XF (at user registration). The issue then is that this "pre-session" function does not exist in Joomla and I am afraid users would have then full access to Joomla functions before having confirmed their account.
> Force session creation in Joomla just after confirmation of account by the user (click on e-mail link). The problem is that this action do not include the password information (contrary to the login action).

I assume putting Joomla as master and using it as registration tool would avoid this problem but I imagine that like me most of you do not want to do this way.

Thanks a lot for any input.

@Cheesegrits no problem to start testing it now. Give me your email by pm and I will send you the files.

Marina
 
Hi,

Here are the last news !! I have waited to have few weeks history without any problem before coming back here.
We had a few bugs at the beginning, coming from small errors in the code, that were corrected.

We are now running since 5 weeks with our new Xenforo website (v1.4.4), bridged with Joomla 3.4.1
All bridges functions work fine : user creation, user validation, e-mail and password updates, member group udpates, remember me function.

Concerning the session issue for new registration, we did not find any technical solution as Joomla and Xenforo have two radically different registration processes as far as sessions are concerned.
We solved the issue quite simply by proposing a login module in Joomla where it is needed. This only concerns newly registered as the session creation process is working well in all other situations.

The final cost to be shared will stay at 1050 $, even if in fact it costed us a bit more to solve the last bugs. We did not do this to gain money but to limit our costs, we would already be very happy if the 1050 $ may be funded :)

We are not developpers and thus cannot guarantee any specific development related to specific needs. The plugin would be provided "as is". However, we will provide all updates that we are going to make when upgrading Xenforo or Joomla versions. And as I said before, we would be happy to share the modules we made to connect Joomla and Xenforo contents (threads, resources, better blogs, global XF stats modules in Joomla, JReviews listings, reviews widgets in Xenforo).

Now we need to know how many we finally are !!
You can test extensively the bridge on our site (url given by pm) and come back here to tell us if you are willing to participate.

We will make a final count within 15 days to determine the final individual cost.

Thanks !!
 
Concerning the session issue for new registration, we did not find any technical solution as Joomla and Xenforo have two radically different registration processes as far as sessions are concerned.
We solved the issue quite simply by proposing a login module in Joomla where it is needed. This only concerns newly registered as the session creation process is working well in all other situations.
I'm a little confused by this statement. Does it mean you solved the problem of having to log in twice or not? Did you create the login module for Joomla or only "propose it?"
 
Sorry for my english, I was maybe not clear enough :) We did not actually solve the twice login issue for new registration. But we realized though that asking new registered users to log a second time in Joomla was not inacceptable. Xenforo is the main part of our site and users do not always use Joomla functions at their first visit.

By "proposing" I was referring to the presence of a module directly in the page (and not only in a top position for example). The main component we use in Joomla (JReviews) has in-built login modules that pop-up when a connection is necessary. Most of major components have the same. Joomla has also its own login module that can be displayed in the sidebar for example.
 
Dear @marremp2 and those replied to this thread,

Can it be considered as a finished/working bridge?
Could you tell us a bit about it's resource usage?
Are there any other members who has experiences with it or chipped in?

Thanks in advance... :)
 
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