Simple Machine Forum Integration

This feature allows you to integrate registration and login with your SMF installation. With this, all the users registering on Crowd Vox database will automatically get registered on your forum database. Similarly, when they log into the Crowd Vox they will automatically get logged in to forum. Please note: Users who will login and register on Crowd Vox will automatically get logged in to SMF but it won't work vice versa. So, any user who registers at SMF or is logged in to SMF won't become a user of CrowdVox. Therefore we strongly recommend you to remove all "Registration" and "Login" links from your SMF installation.

How to use the feature

Downloading and Installing SMF

1. Download latest version of SMF from here- [1]

2. If you want forum to be installed in a sub-directory like www.yourwebsite.com/forum/ then upload SMF files into the root directory for the script i.e. where /app exists

3. The following files and folders should be have permissions set to 0777:

   attachments
   avatars
   Packages
   Packages/installed.list
   Smileys
   Themes
   Themes/default/languages/Install.english.php
   agreement.txt
   Settings.php
   Settings_bak.php
   install.php

These changes should also be done in .htaccess file present in the root directory :

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
#RewriteBase /
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(forum)($|/) - [L,NC]
RewriteRule ^$ app/webroot/ [L]
RewriteRule (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

4. Open up your web browser and browse to http://www.yourdomain.com/forum/install.php

5.Provided you set the permissions correctly for Settings.php and Setting_bak.php, you should see a form asking for various settings. Fill these as follows:

Forum Name: This will be the name of your forum. It starts as "My Community" but you should probably change it.

Forum URL: This is the URL your forum will be located at, for example: http://www.yourdomain.com/forum

Often you will have to set up the following in your web host's control panel. In case of doubt, consult your hosting provider.

Database type: Select from a list of supported database schemes you are able to use. Select MYSQL.

Server name: This is where we specify the location of the database.. 99% of the time this will be localhost.

Username: This is the username associated with your database.

Password: This is the password to access your database.

Database name: This is the name of your database.

Database prefix: This is a prefix to the table names in your database. It enables you to run more than one application on a single database. You should generally leave it as smf_, unless you are installing a second copy of SMF on the same database.

Once you have filled in all of the settings, click on proceed, and you will now be asked for details of your admin account; this will create your username on the forum.

6. Your forum is now installed. Since Crowd Vox provides one way login integration with SMF, we suggest you to delete all "Login" and "Register" links from your SMF as this will create a confusion for your visitors.

Configuring Crowd Vox for Simple Machines Forum Integration

On your Crowd Vox website's admin panel navigate to "Settings" > "Simple Machine Forum" and provide the required information :

Here "Forum Path" would be the exact path where the files related to forum have been kept , for example /home/<user>/public_html/forum , and "Forum URL" would be the URL you would like your forum to be accessed through like http://<your-website-url>/forum.