Wiki and Forum installed on different subdomains
The Issue
When your MW and VB installations are located in different subdomains (e.g.
http://forum.mydomain.com vs.
http://wiki.mydomain.com) you may notice that even though you can use your VB login from within the
Wiki side, your authentication "does not take". Meaning that you login, browse to another wiki page, and you are logged out again.
Cause
This happens because due to the different subdomains, the client browser (IE, FF, Opera, etc) does not send the cookies from one domain to the other one. Cookies from the
Wiki side are sent only to wiki.mydomain.com, and cookies from the VB side are sent only to forum.mydomain.com
Solution
Read the warnings bellow. In VB, login as administrator; go to the Admin Control Panel; vBulletin Options; Cookies and HTTP Header Options; and within 'Cookie Domain' change the 'Suggested Setting' from '(blank)' to '.mydomain.com'. Notice that 'Custom Setting' should be blank and unchecked.
In MW, modify LocalSettings.php, located in the root of your MW installation, and add this line before the end ('?>'):
$wgCookieDomain = '.mydomain.com';
This is the same value that the Cookie Domain was set to in the previous step.
After making these changes you may need to delete the cookies cached in your browser for your site.
Warnings
Proceed only if you know what you are doing. Changing vBulletin's Cookie Domain may result in keeping all your users from logging in, and even your admin login (and Admin CP) may stop working. To reset the cookie domain and path to the default values, you can follow these instructions from vbulletin.com:
Upload the tools.php script in the 'do_not_upload' folder of the vB zip file to your
Admin CP directory and run it from your browser.
Use this to reset the cookie domain and path back to the defaults.
And then leave your cookie domain and path at the default settings.
After installing vbWiki Pro the wiki skin does not use the header and footer from the forum
Cause
Media
Wiki's page cache may contain a copy of the page with the old skin. Or the user may have saved a custom skin in his/her wiki preferences skin.
Solution
Go to
Wiki preferences, and verify that the new skin is selected (change and save if needed). Then, from your browser, press Control-F5 (or Control-R) to refresh the page and tell MediaWiki to use the new skin.
How to run vbWiki / vbWiki Pro Diagnostic Tools?
If your vb
Wiki Pro installation is properly configured, you can enable the diagnostic tools from vbWiki Pro's Admin CP. Go to your Forums' Admin CP > vBulletin Options > vbWiki Pro Admin CP. Enable the diagnostic tools and click on save.
Alternatively, the Diagnostic Tools can be enabled by commenting one line in vbWikiPro_Init.php (or vbWiki_Init.php if not running vbWiki Pro) located in your vbWiki Pro installation directory. Open this file in a text editor, and remove the '#' at the beginning of the line:
require_once dirname(__FILE__) . "/vbWiki_Tools.php";
After the diagnostic tools are enabled, browse to any page in your wiki and the diagnostics will be run, showing the results on your browser.
Does vbWiki Pro work with MediaWiki v1.6.8 and PHP4?
Yes, vb
Wiki Pro works with MediaWiki v1.6.8 and PHP4. However, since vbWiki Pro uses some new hooks added to MediaWiki v1.7.1+ there are some minor differences in operation when using MW 1.6.8. For
more details please read the
vbWiki Pro and MW 1.6.8 page.
Should I use MediaWiki with its default settings in a public site?
Given the aggressive nature of the 'spamming society',
MediaWiki should never be used in a public site in its default settings. Out of the box, unregistered users can create or modify any page in Media
Wiki.
There are several preventive steps that you can take to make your MediaWiki installation
more resilient to spamming attacks:
- Install a CAPTCHA extension, forcing all anonymous users to go through an image verification process before continuing.
- Install the SpamBlacklist extension. This extension filters what users can post on your Wiki.
- Require users to be logged in before they can edit or create a page.
For
more information on how to protect your Media
Wiki installation refer to this page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Anti-spam_Features
If your Media
Wiki site has been attacked and filled with spam, cleaning up each page, one by one, is usually not an option, since this is labor intensive and would take you a large amount of time if your wiki has a considerable number of pages. To aid in the cleanup of spam, you can use the cleanup script found in the SpamBlacklist extension.
How can I map forum User Groups to Wiki User Groups with vbWiki Pro?
You can assign
Wiki user groups to vBulletin's user groups in your forums' Usergroup Manager:
- Go to your forums' Admin CP > Usergroups > Usergroup Manager
- Select and edit the Usergroup for which you want to edit the Wiki usergroup mapping. (e.g. Administrators)
- In the box labeled 'Wiki User Roles', enter the list of wiki roles to which users belonging to this usergroup should be assigned. (e.g. sysop,bureaucrat).
When entering multiple
Wiki user groups, these should be separated with commas: sysop,bureaucrat.
How can I fine tune the vbWiki Pro skin integration?
When using vb
Wiki Pro and its vbWikiSkin to make all your wiki pages inherit the look and feel of your forums, vbWiki Pro uses the templates defined in your forum's current style/template, including: header, footer, navigation bar, background images, colors, layouts, etc.
However, if you would like to change any of the styles (colors, width, position, etc) for the wiki pages created with vbWiki Pro, follow the instructions listed on
vbWiki Pro's Page Layout and Style Information page.
How can I hide the default skins in my MediaWiki installation from the users' Wiki Preferences?
In vb
Wiki Pro's Admin CP, enter the following in the box labeled: '
List of Wiki skins to hide from user selection':
<code>simple, chick, standard, myskin, monobook, nostalgia, cologneblue</code>
Blank page when visiting Wiki
Most likely this is caused by PHP coming across an error.
To determine if vb
Wiki Pro (or vbWiki Std) is causing this error, disable vbWiki Pro (or vbWiki Std) on your wiki, and go to the page that was not working.
To disable vbWiki Pro (or vbWiki Std) from the wiki, simply comment (add ## in front of) the following line in vbWikiPro_Init.php (or vbWiki_Init.php):
<code> require_once dirname(__FILE__) . "/vbWikiPro.php";
</code>
If after disabling vbWiki Pro, you still get a blank page, then this error is not caused by vbWiki Pro, and you should search for other installed scripts, extensions or plugins that may be causing this error.
If the error doesn't happen with vbWiki Pro disabled, then proceed to re-enable vbWiki Pro by uncommenting the line we commented above.
To find the details of this error, open vbWikiPro_Init.php (or vbWiki_Init.php for vbWiki Std installations) and add the following code after the line that says: '## CUSTOM SETTINGS START'
<code> ini_set( 'display_errors', 1 );
</code>
Navigate again to the wiki page that was producing the blank page, and the cause of the error will be shown.
Copy this information and create a ticket at
http://www.nuhit.com/support, or send us an e-mail at
support@nuhit.com.
I moved my Wiki or changed my Wiki URL. How do I update vbWiki Pro?
If you moved the location of your
Wiki (e.g. moved it to a different directory or subdomain), or changed the wiki URLs (e.g. went from /wiki/index.php/<article_name> to /wiki/<article_name>), most features in vbWiki Pro will continue to work unaffected.
However, Forum Headers and the Who's Online integration will stop working correctly. This happens because vbWiki Pro, for performance optimization reasons caches a number of wiki configuration settings in vBulletin (e.g path to the wiki, pattern to generate wiki urls, etc).
To reset vbWiki Pro's internal wiki configuration cache, follow these steps:
1) Go to this URL (enter your domain and path to your forums):
http://www.yourdomain/forums/admincp/options.php?do=options&dogroup=vb
Wiki&advanced=1
2) You may be prompted with your Admin CP login. By going to this URL you are accessing vbWiki Pro's Admin CP in
advanced mode.
3) Go towards the bottom of the page, and
empty the following entries: </article_name></article_name>
- Absolute path of the directory where your Wiki is installed
- Wiki Article Path
- URL to Wiki's skins directory
- URL to Wiki's installation
- URL to Wiki's Script
4) Click on save. Then navigate to your
Wiki. At this point vbWiki Pro will recapture these settings with the new configuration.
I have a Wiki with existing users, Will this affect the integration with vBulletin?
Having a
Wiki with existing users will not affect using vbWiki Pro to integrate MediaWiki with vBulletin.
After you enable vbWiki Pro, the users currently in MediaWiki will be ignored for login purposes. Instead the forums' DB will be used (for logins and for new registrations).
MediaWiki's user DB will still be used for MW's internal functioning, like showing who modified a page.
vbWiki Pro maintains and keeps updated MW's user DB. When a new user registers in the forums, he/she is added to MW's user DB.
However, before adding the user, vbWiki Pro looks in MW's user DB to make sure that the user doesn't exist.
If you have an existing wiki with users already registered there, when vbWiki Pro is installed, it will match and link those users in MW's user DB to the forums' users with the same name.
The only exception is when the user name have spaces or special characters, in which case vbWiki Pro uses its own internal naming (John's => Johns-45)
Summing up, having existing users in a wiki will not affect the integration. Further
more these users should not be deleted, since they will be re-used by vbWiki Pro.
It is strongly advised that you test the integration in a non-production (test) environment. This way you can see how the integration is going to behave, before you deploy it to your public site.
