Integrating MediaWiki with Vanilla Forums

A Tutorial

Below you'll find the few simple steps for integration of MediaWiki with Vanilla forums. Please make sure you backup your MediaWiki installation incase you come across any problems.

Step 1: Adding the authentication system

Open up your LocalSettings.php file located in the MediaWiki root directory. Scroll down a little bit in the file and towards the beginning you will find something similar to this:

require_once( "includes/DefaultSettings.php" );

# If PHP's memory limit is very low, some operations may fail.
# ini_set( 'memory_limit', '20M' );

if ( $wgCommandLineMode ) {
	if ( isset( $_SERVER ) && array_key_exists( 'REQUEST_METHOD', $_SERVER ) ) {
		die( "This script must be run from the command line\n" );
	}
} elseif ( empty( $wgNoOutputBuffer ) ) {
	## Compress output if the browser supports it
	if( !ini_get( 'zlib.output_compression' ) ) @ob_start( 'ob_gzhandler' );
}

At the end of this block of code, you will need to insert the following:

# Disabling new user registrations
$wgWhitelistAccount = array ( "sysop" => 1, "developer" => 1 );

# Disabling anonymous edits
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['read'] = false; // change this to true to enable anonymous browsing
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['createpage'] = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['createtalk'] = true;
$wgWhitelistRead = array ("Special:Userlogin");

Note that this defaults to making your wiki private, which users would need a forum account to view the wiki. If you want all users to be able to view the wiki chane the this line to true:

$wgGroupPermissions['*']['read'] = true; // change this to true to enable anonymous browsing

Now browse to the very end of the file, and insert the following code before the ending PHP bracket:

# Vanilla integration script
require_once("AuthPlugin_Vanilla.php");
// if Vanilla and MediaWiki are not installed on the same database
// change these values to reflect your Vanilla database information
$wgAuth = new AuthPlugin_Vanilla($wgDBserver, $wgDBuser, $wgDBpassword, $wgDBname, "LUM_");

Exit and save your LocalSettings.php

Step 2: Upload the authentication plugin

The next and last step is simple, you simply need to upload the file AuthPlugin_Vanilla.php to your root MediaWiki installation directory.

Notes

Credits