As Joomla! continues to grow in popularity, so has the need for a reliable and easy to use forum bridge. As of now, I’d say there are two Joomla! forum bridges out there worth looking into, an discovering for yourself, which package will better suite your needs. So let’s get started and take a look at RokBridge and Jfusion.
Rokbridge is a native Joomla! 1.5 component that will bridge Joomla! with Phpbb3. In the latest release, it’s now possible to setup everything up via the component installer, which makes the task of configuring the bridge, all in one easy place. After installing, all you have to do, is set the actual forum path, and enable the phpbb3 authentication plugin, which will be automatically copied to the forum.
As seen from the image, the control panel of RokBridge is clean, simple, and easy to navigate. All is required, is to log into the forum ACP link, and set the auth method from “db” to “joomla”.
After RokBridge has been successfully completed, user Syncing, logging into both systems, works flawless 99% of the time. There are occasions I’ve seen, where if the cookie settings are different, etc, dual login will not work. However, in this case, all you have to do is take a quick glance over there at the RocketWerx forums, and with some easy searching, should be able to fix the issue. There is another point that needs to be noted, is that for this bridge to function correctly, you cannot install the forum on a “sub-domain”, such as http://forum.mydomain.com , that will not work. The requirements are, that the bridge and forum be installed 1 directory under the root Joomla! path. Such as http://mydomain.com/forum
Jfusion is the other native Joomla! 1.5 component that will bridge Joomla! with a forum. However, Jfsuion goes one step further, and allows support not just for Phpbb3, but also Vbulletin, MyBB, Moodle, Simplemachines, and Magento. If you’re looking to bridge Joomla! with a forum software other than Phpbb3, then Jfusion without a doubt, is the way to go. On the other hand, if all you’re looking at is bridging with Phpbb3, then quite honestly, I’d have to say, go with Rokbridge.
Now, there are some advantages if you are intending on using Jfusion. For example, if you plan to bridge this with Simplemachines, they have a feature that is known as “Frameless”, thus allowing the bridge to be displayed inside of the Joomla template, but without the need of the “evil wrapper”. Keep in mind though, that when I tried this on my test server, I had to actually bump up the PHP memory limit in this scenario, because you’re not loading just the forum software, but also the whole Joomla application as we’ll. I also noticed that the response of the forum page being viewed via frameless, was a little slower, but nothing that should scare anyone off.
Jfusion is also installed via the component installer. After installing the component, the user has a slew of options to choose from. And for many, can be cumbersome to understand what steps to take next. If you plan on using Jfusion, make sure you checkout their site, as they have a FAQ section, on how to get up and running. One thing to remember, that after installing the component, you’ll be presented with a button, that will enable the Jfusion plugins, whatever you do, dont enable them, until you have run through the Wizard process, and set the bridge up!
Now this is only my personal opinion with regards to Jfusion, I’ve tried it, and found it to be just to difficult for it to work. My biggest issues with this was the ability to get dual login working, something that RokBridge has no problem with, if setup correctly. Now I’m sure that Jfusion is just the same, follow the instruction, and you should be golden. But when looking at all the options to choose from, Master, Slave, etc, it just wasn’t that easy. But, if you plan on hooking Joomla! up with let’s say, Vbulletin, then I’m quite, sure, you’ll figure it out, since it’s one of your only options as a bridge.
In the end, it’s really up to you, to decide which one to use. If all you plan on bridging is Phpbb3, then go with RokBridge, and make your life easy. On the other hand, if you’re going to be using any of the other forum software’s I listed out, then yes, Jfusion will work. Might be a bit of a learning curve why you learn how to set it up, but it will get the job done.
If I missed any important issues to note, or misstated anything, please comment, and I’ll update this blog.
For more information on both these bridges, check out
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{ 12 comments }
One thing that you have not mentioned (which is extremely important), is that Rokbridge has not got a usersync function. That means you can not transfer users between softwares. Therefore if you have a phpBB3 user, you will need to ask him to login first before you can assign him Joomla right. Rokbridge can also not update block status, emails or activation status. Also does not fully support converted boards and you should not use rokbridge if you have both an exisiting phpBB3 board and an existing Joomla board. This is because Rokbridge can not handle conflicts between users.
With regards to your dual login issue, you just need to set your cookie domain to: .yourdomain.com and your cookie path to: /
As with frameless phpBB3 is called from a different directory. Yes there is an increased usage of memory with the frameless method, as two softwares instead of one is loaded (that is why it looks so beautiful). However if you use JFusion in direct links or wrapper mode (similar to Rokbridge), there is excellent server performance. The JFusion framework is 60 kb and about 5-20kb is loaded for each enabled JFusion plugin. The amount of SQL queries is increased by 6 for the average setup. Joomla by default loads 30+ queries and 6 Mb of code.JFusion is used on large sites with excellent results and no performance loss.JFusion is extremely efficient with server resources, it is actually impossible to distinguish benchmark results from the Joomla default installation and a setup that runs JFusion with direct integration.
Thanks, Marius
Thanks Marius for clearing some of this up. I’ll re-edit this post.
I’m using 3 bridge in my site (Joomla, phpbb3, Gallery2 and MediaWiki). Rokbridge is geatworks and no conflict with otherbridge.
But now, from Marius, JFusion will support multibridge with Galler2 and Wiki. And i’m waiting some news….
Sorry for my bad english.
Thanks for Rokbridge and JFusion.
Interesting that they’re going to support Gallery2 and Wiki. That sounds like good news.
What about Blogomunity bridge?
http://blogomunity.com
It has bunch of features and works very well.
On the 14th of Februari JFusion will release JFusion 1.1.2 with an extraordinary list of new features. It is has been possible to have such a large improvement, because of 6 different programmers that have been working in JFusion on a daily basis for the last 3 months.
*Gallery2 support
*Dokuwiki support
*Usergroup sync that will allow you to link usergroups between softwares
*Two different SEF modes that work with the Joomla default SEF
*Single click install/configure of auth/redirect mods for phpBB3 and SMF
*Search integration, now when you search in Joomla you get results phpBB3,SFM,dokuwiki, etc
*Discussion bot, when you enable this a forum topic will be created for all Joomla aricles in a Joomla category.
*Better and faster frameless integration for phpBB3 and SMF
*Frameless support added for gallery2, dokuwiki and vbulletin
*whos online module
*simpler to configure, and it gives you advice on your settings such as cookie domains.
*much much much more features and bug fixes (too many to list here).
Moreover, Jfusion is free, the most actively developed (6 programmers work on the project on a daily basis), has the largest userbase (100.000 downloads of JFusion so far) and has the most active support forums (up to 20 new threads per day). One more week until JFusion releases a new revolution in software integration. Upgrading for existing users is as simple as clicking on the upgrade button in the JFusion component
More revolutionary features are planned for JFusion 1.1.3 which should be out soon after JFusion 1.1.2.
Thanks, Marius
I look forward to reviewing this next major build by Jfusion.
Congrats
I’ve tried to use Rocketwerx and Jfusion bridge on my website. Many conflicts between Joomla and Phpbb3 with Rocketwerx, also the forum directory to be necessary in http://www.mywebsite.com/forum. My website has a subdomain forum (not mywebsite.com/forum but forum.mywebsite.com in same host but another web space). With JFusion work like a charm!! For me, JFusion forever!!
Sorry for my bad English.
Marius, i think you can better integrating Joomla with MediaWiki, not DokuWiki. Maybe next time?
Hey James
The above article is a couple of months old and nothing in JFusion remains stationary for that long.
We have released a much better version of the product along with Discussion and Search Bots, better frameless integration etc.
Maybe you could review the product again?
Cheers
I’m planning on doing a review next week. Curious to see how it works with Gallery 2.
Indeed! It does work pretty well.
A few bugs as it is the first release. But sil3nt, the G2 developer will be cleaning them pretty soon. 
Cheers
Imran
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