Installed, happy! 1st question integration

[netrover]

Hi everyone, very pleased to be part of CMSMS

I am just installed and gradually setting up my site. Very impressed so far and great work.

I just wondered how people get their forums and cmsms to look the same?

I'm on vbulletin and searched for any mods or tips without success. As far as the look goes it it just a case of an include of the cmsms header into vb templates?

on the integration side of things it would be great to display some forum postings, maybe users online and registered members from my vbulletin.

I'm not after anything like user integration just stats and threads.

thanks for reading and look forward to any advice regards the look and the data.

[calguy1000]

if you look at the CMS web site, on the main page, we've pseudo integrated SMF into CMS.  This is done with these tasks

a) Create a link in the content heirarchy that goes to the forum
b) Create a forum theme that very closely matches the CMS theme
c) coipy the menus from SMF into the forum (especially the top level menu).  so that it looks the same.
d) Included a CMS plugin to get the latest N posts from SMF

I've done a similar thing at www.avoca-beach.com (work still in progress).  But here I've integrated Coppermine, SMF and CMS.
I've gone one extra step here, and have Coppermine and SMF both using the CMS stylesheet.

Hope this helps.

[netrover]

Hi there, thanks for the reply and the advice.

It does look nicely integrated here and the way the site and forum blend together is what I was after. I did wonder about the forum posts on the front page and just assumed it to be rss.

I have also been looking at SMF as a replacement to my vbulletin and have a test version installed on my server.

Thanks for the link it's usefull.

If your menu in the cms is changed does the header on the forum update as well ?

[calguy1000]

Unfortunately no, there's no way to call A cms tag from an outside application... I asked Ted about this, and even tried getting it to work myself, but gave up after about two hours.

Currently, whenever the page structure is changed, I must physically copy the menu into the coppermine and SMF themes.  Hopefully it won't change too much