Duplicate [Suggestion] XenForo Connect

[Onimua]

Sort of sprung up from when I was going to reply to this thread, but I decided to make it a new thread since this would be different from the approach brought up there.

Similar to Facebook Connect, it would allow administrators to build sites on other domains and by including a file/provide a login and password, you can plug into an XF installation and pull information as needed via API calls.

For example, I can have DomainA be my XenForo installation and DomainB would another site that does not have an XF installation on it. If I want to build a customized experience, I could simply include a file from DomainA and include it on DomainB.

Once that's done, the user could simply log into the site on DomainB and all their information (username, avatar, email, usergroup permissions) get passed to it. If I want to get any other information, I can use a simple call to get posts or threads by them, but mainly I can then know who a user is on DomainB and handle it how I want.

 

[dvsDave]

Syncing forums is a complex undertaking. Here are some challenges for you.

What if the thread was started at SiteA and then synced to SiteB. A user on SiteA see's the thread and responds. Meanwhile, over at SiteB, another user see's the thread and responds... at the EXACT same time that the user on SiteA posted. Now you have two threads with the EXACT same timestamp! How do you handle this? Who's post goes first?

How fast do you sync between the sites? Do you run in it real-time and risk bogging down the servers, (think about 10 sites that all sync the same forum.... how long is it going to take to push that post out to each site?)

Forum syncing is a really complex undertaking. Allowing users to use their own credentials from your site on another xenforo installation is trivial compared to the technical challenges of syncing forums.

 

[EQnoble]

Syncing forums is a complex undertaking. Here are some challenges for you.

What if the thread was started at SiteA and then synced to SiteB. A user on SiteA see's the thread and responds. Meanwhile, over at SiteB, another user see's the thread and responds... at the EXACT same time that the user on SiteA posted. Now you have two threads with the EXACT same timestamp! How do you handle this? Who's post goes first?

How fast do you sync between the sites? Do you run in it real-time and risk bogging down the servers, (think about 10 sites that all sync the same forum.... how long is it going to take to push that post out to each site?)

Forum syncing is a really complex undertaking. Allowing users to use their own credentials from your site on another xenforo installation is trivial compared to the technical challenges of syncing forums.

Well thats why we suggested using rss, as it would literally be downloading the info and making a post from a guest masked as a user that doesn't exist. As far the timestamps thing it wouldn't matter since the site that the post is native to would already have the post and the second site would be checking for new posts every 5 minutes lets say. It literally is just a way to share the content of the posts and not the actual user, thread, and forum IDs...it would merely look to anyone who doesn't know the logistics of it like a real user posting. Timestamps also are also created when the populated data has filled the post and submitted...so regardless the timestamps shouldn't conflict.


Linking two databases especially if I don't own both of them would never happen for me. I tried that with two sites on the same server and it was a nightmare. The cross domain dual login procedure failed in a way that kept crushing my forum to dust. And even when it did work with a pluggin that was specifially written for it it could not merge or rewrite the user tables like it was supposed to. I told myself never again.


Using RSS is way safer faster and would require a lot less work and more people would be able to utilize it. Not only that it provides a solid means of keeping THIS community together outside of the xenforo domain. It promotes admins and webmasters to work together to make the forum experience that more connected and gives the users of said forums that much more content to browse through. Syndication can be a great way to solid leads for members. An example...you might have a photography forum and I have a movie forum but we share news ( you allow syndicated to me and I the same to you for the 'News' forum which we both must manually create to give the illusion of linked db's)....they get linked to your site from me from a link in the OP that got syndicated in the general news section. 1 New member. There is probably so many more over looked positives to this that I won't even think of anymore until more people express here what they feel as I don't want to try and create a biased opinion.

 

[dvsDave]

Hey EQnoble,

Okay, we need to clarify here. You are talking about syndication. Which is different then syncing. Syndication is the process of copying an RSS feed entry into individual new threads. That's a totally different suggestion than what is being proposed.

To clarify the two suggestions that are in this thread. 1) Shared logins: Allowing users of your site to log into another site that also uses XenForo. 2) creating a way for a forum on one site and a forum on another site to be synced and have the forums be identical.

Suggestion 1 is the most feasible. (See my first post in this thread)
Suggestion 2 is pretty complex and has some challenging implementation questions that have to be addressed first.

 

[TNCclubman]

Actually I wasnt proposing the forums be identical. Just allowing a user to take his profile with him anywhere he goes on another xF site. What is linked is if he follows a user on another site, it shows up that he's following them on his original site. Maybe have the FEED display the other member on his original site's feed if possible.

 

[EQnoble]

Problem is I and many like me WILL not share they're db's which IS required to have dual login procedures working as far as I know. RSS feeds are safer and already implemented, I'm just talking making a custom way to handle posts as feed data and not truncate them at all which should make forum owners be able to share data safely. The suggestion in the OP says he's looking for ideas that aren't happening right now...not linking db's necessarily thought that is one venue to go through.

I did understand the difference and did before this post as I have actually had this before between vb and joomla and it sucked...BAD. I don't even want to think of how much resourses would go into making linked db's work. RSSfeeds on the other hand..well we already know those work in xf already I'm just suggesting expanding that. I used sync as a loose term not to define the method of whats going on but the end result. If at the end of the day both sites have the same posts from rss feeds, is the data not in sync? Sorry if my wording mislead you. But as far as linked db's go I want nothing to do with it personally and this is from experience.

Also that method would require the sites to be exactly the same....that's no fun. Sharing data is cool but having two sites display the same exact thing 1:1 could be done simply by pointing two domains at one physical location right?

I dunno, but if this is what we're talking here I must recuse myself from this thread as I want nothing to do with linking DBs as it has cost me way too much time, money, and years off my life.

 

[anotheralias]

Even some of the big forums won't require linking, really. But yeah, all-in-all it does seem a feature for the big forums as opposed to the small ones. I know of a couple of small ones that could link though.

Actually I meant that the other way around. I think it would be more of a feature for smaller forums or startup forums. Big boards don't need the help, they're already dominating the Google rankings. But if there was some kind of a central registration point/umbrella for all the small XF forums, they might stand a fighting chance at competing for memberships.

 

[dvsDave]

@EQNoble.

You are talking about integration of two different systems and forcing them to share a database. What we are talking about is using an API (code that listens for another site to send a request that the end user authorized to get info about that user and copy it to the other database and the code that sends the request). To further clarify, databases will NOT be linked together. Code would be used to manage the communication between the sites. I would NEVER consider sharing my database with ANYONE, period!