Home » WordPress » Integrating Vanilla Forum and WordPress Themes
by
filosofo
on Sep 08, 2006

Integrating Vanilla Forum and WordPress Themes

The folks at Vanilla have a handy guide to integrating the database tables and cookies of WordPress and Vanilla, but they don’t explain how to use the WordPress themes in Vanilla. It’s pretty simple.

First, you need to include the WordPress files. A good place to do this is at the bottom of the Vanilla


conf/database.php
 
file, where you should put

<?php require_once('../wp-blog-header.php'); ?>
 

(of course make sure that’s the path to wp-blog-header.php–yours may be in a different directory).

Second, you need to re-connect WordPress to the database, because Vanilla will close the connection early. Edit Vanilla’s


library/Framework/Framework.Class.MySQL.php
 
file, adding the two lines in boldface to this section near the top of the file:

class MySQL extends Database {
     function CloseConnection() {
          if ($this->Connection) @mysql_close($this->Connection);
          global $wpdb;
          $wpdb = new wpdb(DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, DB_NAME, DB_HOST);
     }

That’s it! Now you can use WordPress functions, such as get_header(), in the Vanilla theme.

This entry was written by filosofo, posted on September 8, 2006 at 8:56 pm, filed under WordPress. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

18 Comments

  1. boris wrote on September 30, 2006 at 3:29 pm

    hey there,

    thanks for this. shame it doesn’t work for me for some reason. i followed your instruction, but now i get this error:

    Fatal error: Cannot instantiate non-existent class: wpdb in Framework.Class.MySQL.php on line 18

    line 18 being: $wpdb = new wpdb(DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, DB_NAME, DB_HOST);

    i included wp-blog-header.php in conf/database.php, but so far no wp functions are working. i’d really appreciate some help. normaly i’d think it was me doing something wrong, like usual, but this is really starightforward. i think…

  2. filosofo
    wrote on September 30, 2006 at 10:52 pm

    boris, probably '../wp-blog-header.php' is not the right path to wp-blog-header.php. You may need to adjust accordingly.

  3. Enigmatix
    wrote on March 4, 2007 at 9:55 pm

    Filosofo,

    I attempted to follow your directions too, and my site went blank. No source code or anything on the forum page. Then when I restored the original settings, everything was fine.

    Can you further explain the following steps?

    1. “Add to the bottom of your Vanilla conf/database.php file.”

    I changed the file path, but it still didn’t work. This was the part that blanked my site out. Does it matter that there’s already one

  4. filosofo
    wrote on March 4, 2007 at 11:58 pm

    Enigmatix, those directions assume that the PHP tags are closed at the bottom of the file (like ?>). You may need to adjust accordingly.

    Also, try turning on error reporting in PHP to see what errors are being thrown instead of just getting a blank screen.

  5. Mark
    wrote on March 6, 2007 at 11:56 am

    I did as you laid out above and everything works fine, no errors. I used Vanilla 1.1.1 and WP 2.1.2. However once I did your steps above Vanilla started inserting backslashes where ever it saw single or double quotes when posting new entries. Did this happen to you to? Do you have any idea what could be causing this, magic quotes are turned off on my server.

  6. filosofo
    wrote on March 6, 2007 at 1:11 pm

    Mark, which steps caused the backslashes to appear?

  7. Mark
    wrote on March 6, 2007 at 1:20 pm

    Well I did both steps above, but its the require_once(‘../wp-blog-header.php’);

    That causes the backslashes to start coming in. Heres my test forum:

    http://iworkoutnow.com/vanilla/

    login: admin
    pass: admin

    and my php info: http://iworkoutnow.com/vanilla/info.php

    Clean install of Vanilla 1.1.1 and WP 2.1.2, no extensions default theme. You can see how it works in the two test posts I have there.

  8. filosofo
    wrote on March 6, 2007 at 2:22 pm

    Mark,
    The slash problem seems to be caused by the fact that recent versions of WordPress slash everything that gets posted. Unfortunately, Vanilla isn’t expecting this.

    You should keep those slashes from appearing initially by adding, right after require_once(’../wp-blog-header.php’);, the following lines:

    $_GET = stripslashes_deep($_GET );
    $_POST = stripslashes_deep($_POST );
    $_COOKIE = stripslashes_deep($_COOKIE);

  9. Mark
    wrote on March 6, 2007 at 2:45 pm

    Thank you sir!

    Works perfectly!

  10. Kasper wrote on April 10, 2007 at 6:36 am

    Hi,

    this sounds very nifty, but I dont think I get what it actually does..

    I would like vanilla forum to look like my website, smooth and clean, but I’m also very new at both php and the forum stuff.

    My website is http://www.cafe-nightclub.com and the forum is located at http://www.cafe-nightclub.com/forum

    Am I doing something wrong, or is it in fact, working now?

  11. Dirk
    wrote on May 17, 2007 at 3:17 pm

    Same question as above from Kasper and (also?) still searching for an easy solution for this. It appears that this will require playing with some files. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

    Thanks and take care.

  12. claire
    wrote on May 23, 2007 at 12:00 pm

    Thanks very much for these instructions. I tried them and unfortunately got this error;


    Warning: require_once() [function.require-once]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /home/.lock/user/site/messageboard/conf/database.php on line 52

    Warning: require_once(http://www.mysitename.net/wp-blog-header.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found in /home/.lock/user/site/messageboard/conf/database.php on line 52

    Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required 'http://www.mysitename.net/wp-blog-header.php' (include_path='.:/usr/local/php5/lib/php') in /home/.lock/user/site/messageboard/conf/database.php on line 52

  13. AltaGid
    wrote on August 20, 2007 at 6:02 pm

    Hello! Help solve the problem.
    Very often try to enter the site, but says that the password is not correct.
    Regrettably use of remembering. Give like to be?
    Thank you!

  14. Torjus
    wrote on December 25, 2007 at 5:30 pm

    Hi,

    Love the ease of your fix, but how do I uninstall these settings cleanly? Doing it in reverse doesn’t seem to work.

    I need to install the attachments2 extention, which is seemingly incompatible with these settings. Is there anyway I can work around that? If so, that would be even better.

    Thanks

  15. cee
    wrote on January 16, 2008 at 4:48 am

    Hello,
    Thanks for this tutorial. It worked almost totally as-is, except that Ajax broke. This meant that I could not enable/disable extensions, remove posts or check for updates. I changed it from a relative path (../wp-blog-header.php) to an exact path in my server (/var/www/mydomain/wp-blog-header.php) and Ajax works perfectly now.

    Thanks again!

  16. Rob
    wrote on April 11, 2008 at 11:51 am

    Thanks mate
    You rule! :grin:

  17. iLearningGlobal
    wrote on November 11, 2009 at 10:55 am

    I am having trouble getting a script to run on my WordPress blog.

    Here is the error…

    Warning: require_once() [function.require-once]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /home/content/s/s/e/sself0117/html/financial-aid-secrets.com/wp-content/themes/big-blue-01/footer.php on line 7

    Warning: require_once(http://stephen-henderson.com/blog-linking/showlink.php?id=1) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found in /home/content/s/s/e/sself0117/html/financial-aid-secrets.com/wp-content/themes/big-blue-01/footer.php on line 7

    Can you help me at all with this?

    Thank you!

  18. tesisat temizleme ve yikama
    wrote on April 7, 2010 at 10:32 am

    tesisat yikama ve temizleme hizmetleri vermekteyiz.

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