integrate CMS with BBS or not

[lecter]

Many CMS and BBS can integrated together, say, xoops+phpbb etc. There have many advantage s to do so.
But, there also have disadvantages for PHP ignorance. If one of them make a great upgrade, The integrations relationship broke up. It would be nightmare to them.
Anyone have any insight on this situation? To integrate or not to integrate, that is the question.....

[mack]

I think it is importaint to join the two applications so that they share a common userbase. It can get confusing if members have a different username of the main cms compared to the forum.

Many cms applications support some form of cms bridge. A bridge is a script to allow more than one application to share a userbase.

Mack.

[rogerd]

I think the more tight the integration, the more difficult upgrading will be. As mack points out, shared user authentication is very desirable, and shouldn't require too much hacking even if one application upgrades.

But, if you get into things like every new CMS topic spawning a discussion thread with links back to the article, etc., upgrading will be more tedious.

At the same time, such integration can be a powerful tool if it's well designed and provides community benefits.

[lecter]

Thanks, mack and rogerd.
If anyone know any tutorial which teach us how to script this kind of hack, please note me!
Or, if I want to search online, what keyword should I take?

[rogerd]

I doubt if you will find a detailed tutorial. Your best bet is to start with your most important software and search their support forums. So, if you want to use Drupal for CMS, then search their own support/hack forums for "forum integration", "phpbb", "vbulletin", etc. You may have to try some different keywords, and also try searching forum sites, too - i.e., try searching for "CMS" or "Drupal" at phpBB.

[Nikon_Guy]

I run several sites that are a CMS and Forum integrated (mostly PostNuke+PNphpBB2).

I've found that a program called BeyondCompare2 makes upgrading one section or the other very easy, whilst still being able to re-include all the hacks and mods you've made.