Same forum DB, different URL/Skins possible?

[Berek]

I was hoping someone here might know how to establish separate IPB URL/forum skin websites but keep the overall DB/login system the same. We're adding multiple game sites to our studio's network and I don't want to split the community, yet I want each site to have it's own skin that matches the website itself.

Is this even realistically possible? I've been searching the Internet from top to bottom focusing on IPB and even vBulletin as a reference on how it can be accomplished. As far as I can tell, it's possible, if you hack the system on your own. You risk running into several issues that way though if it's not done right I'd imagine.

 

[Davros]

Since this is a company funded thing hire someone

 

[digitalwanderer]

Yup, hire a good web master. They're honestly worth their weight in gold.

 

[Berek]

We may do that at some point, but it would be nice to know if this is possible or generally how it can/is done before we do so. Currently I'm the web master.

 

[Zaphod]

Yes, you can do this. At least there is code to handle such things in IPB. Googling some function names I vaguely remember pointed at publicOutput.php. You'll probably have to mess with it a bit so as to have it work properly without annoying your users with unexpected skin overrides or whatnot.

 

[Berek]

Thanks! I did a search for that though and it didn't seem to come up with anything useful .

I did, however, discover a forum skin option for per-category use in IPB. So if I link to that category, it'll use whatever skin I chose. The problem, clicking on your profile, gallery, or anything else that would take you out of that category, also reverts the skin.

Another interesting option, SOE somehow got forums into actual categories in the file system: http://forums.station.sony.com/strategygames/forums/list.m?category_id=23

If I could lock the skin once you enter that forum... though that presents its own problems. SOE seemed to overcome that though.

 

[Davros]

well this forum has different skins when the user selects a different skin find out what function its calling and you could add the function to each page

seems to be this


<form action="index.php" method="get" style="clear:left">

<table cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="100%" class="page" align="center">
<tr>

<td class="tfoot">
<select name="styleid" onchange="switch_id(this, 'style')">
<optgroup label="Quick Style Chooser">
<option value="10" class="" >-- vB3D</option>
<option value="1" class="" selected="selected">-- vBulletin Default Style</option>

</optgroup>
</select>
</td>

 

[Malo]

Sounds fairly simple to do kinda what Davros is suggesting. Just detect the URL requested and override the users skin.

 

[Zaphod]

Thanks! I did a search for that though and it didn't seem to come up with anything useful .

Sorry for being vague. Its been a while.

I think a somewhat modified version of this functionality (with retention of user selected skins) is what I've seen implemented along with virtual hosts and server side URI rewriting to get forum.mysite1.com and forum.mysite2.com to map to differently skinned subsections of the same forum.

Here's a header snippet from the file I mentioned when googling:

/**
* Fetch a skin based on user's incoming data (user-agent, URL) or via other params
*
* The priority chain goes like this:
* Incoming Gateway file (index.php / xml.php / rss.php, etc) filters out some skins, then:
* - User Agent
* - URL Remap
* - App Specific
* - Member specific
* - Default skin
*/
protected function _fetchUserSkin() ...

Having a look at that code might nudge you further in the right direction.

 

[Berek]

I sent this to our technical director to look into further. Not sure yet, but I think this might do the trick. The URL mapping feature I just noticed in the IPB admin menu as well.