PhotoPost and phpBB

[CEDillard]

I have read through many threads about phpBB but can't get my hands around the basic integration instructions. Everything I read implies the phpBB is installed at the time I am installing PhotoPost but my situation is the opposite so I am trying to determine if I can change a parameter somewhere or if I need to go through installation steps again.

I have PhotoPost 4.8.1 installed and am a happy user.
I then installed phpBB 2.0.10, I believe successfully.

I am not after a tight integration where the two products are merged. I want to keep them as two separate entities on my site. My sole objective is one sign on, a shared user database.

If someone comes to my site and wants to just use the photo album they sign on there. If they want to just use the forum they sign on there. But in any case if they move on to the other php product (while in the same session) they are not asked to sign on again, but are recognized as already signed on.

I am a novice at php but would appreciate someone pointing me to the write variables to change to pull this off.

Thank you.

[Chuck S]

Well if you switch to phpbb all your photos and such will belong to other users or nobody since you did not do it first.

To make it work right you would need to write an import script to import the users from photopost into phpbb then you need to edit the config file and point to the phpbb database where it asks for forum database info and in admin section choose phpbb2 as the integration and also put the table prefix in the forum options as well and lastly realign cookies

[CEDillard]

Thanks.
I only have about 25 registered users in PhotoPost. I will manually set them up in phpBB and then follow your steps. Does that sound reasonable?

[Chuck S]

Yep totally doable

[CEDillard]

As you are aware, I had trouble linking the two programs, incorrectly putting in the User Registration System as phpBB and not phpBB2.
I edited the settings database and changed the Registration system to phpBB2 but continued to blow up.
I went back in and changed phpBB2 back to the original photopost and things work (but of course the two user files are not shared)
The only other setting I changed was the forum main directory:
I changed it from the default of http://www.domain.com/forum to the actual location http://www.mysite.com/phpbb but I do not see an error in what I keyed there.
So I am back to square one.
Any suggestions?
Thank you.

[CEDillard]

The error message I get if I leave the Registration System set to phpBB2 is:

MySQL error reported!

Script: adm-options

Query: SELECT users.user_id,users.username,users.user_email,users.user_password,users.user_level,users.user_timezone,themes.template_name FROM users LEFT JOIN themes ON users.user_style = themes.themes_id WHERE user_id='-1'

Result: Table 'fdralumn_photos.users' doesn't exist

Database handle: Resource id #6

[Chuck S]

You did not set the user database to that of your phpbb database

[CEDillard]

I changed my user database name and user database user to point to the phpbb system. But I continue to get the error message and can no longer access the config screen to change things back.
I can change the Registration System back to photopost by manually updating the settings table but I cannot find the user database name and user database user values in the settings table (nor any other that I looked through) so I cannot get back to my original settings. Where do I find these user database settings?
Thanks

[digitaldingus]

Do you have access to your database via phpmyadmin? I believe the settings are in pp_settings in the tables directory of your phpmyadmin.

[CEDillard]

yes, that is how I am accessing the table to change the setting on Registration System from phpbb2 back to photopost. But I have paged through (and printed off) 164 settings and I don't see one that references the user database.

I also notice that there is a field in the config for the photopost database prefix (pp) and that this shows before every field name. But I do not see a place for the forum database prefix (in my case phpbb) and since my database name (forum) is different from the prefix (phpbb) I am wondering if that is causing any problem.

[digitaldingus]

Yes, it is. I just kept the same database in my situation. As long as you have a "pp_" prefix on the tables, there shouldn't be any problems using the same database. Omegatran knows much more than I do, but unless a forum is absolutely huge (5,000+ members who are active), keeping the same database for both PhotoPost and phpbb2 shouldn't be a problem, and should actually be quicker running since you don't have two different databases continually running.

Of course, I should warn you, this is just my experience, so your particular forums may need a separate database. In my case, I have only 80 members currently, but expect it to grow significantly since the addition of an image gallery and hosting option.

[Chuck S]

CEDillard

You also need to set your forum table prefix setting line 83 in the photopost settings table to phpbb_

[CEDillard]

OK, that looked like the piece I was missing. But when I put in my prefix, phpBB I got the following error message:
Result: Table 'fdralumn_forum.phpbbusers' doesn't exist
That looked like I needed a seperator after the phpbb so I changed my prefix to phpbb. to see what would happen and I get the following:
Result: Access denied for user: 'fdralumn_forum@localhost' to database 'phpbb'
Database handle: Resource id #7

This made me think I had hit the right database but had a authority problem but I am just accessing index.php...

I feel like I am CLOSE. Any other suggestions?

thanks

[Chuck S]

You did not look close enough to what I wrote was the normal prefix above Look again

I wrote phpbb_

[CEDillard]

Thank you. That was it! What a week...but it appears I am there.
Thanks for your feedback.