Question Signature bug CB integration?

NicholasJohn16 wrote:

I've updated the view.php file, but how do I give access to users signature from their Community Builder profile? Do I have to add a specific field to one of the tabs? If so, what should I name it to pull up the required info? Thanks.

Once you do the hack up earlier in this thread it will pull out what ever was already in the CB database. I also did the following in the link here: www.joomlapolis.com/component/option,com...mit,6/limitstart,12/

I suppose my problem is that the Signatures are already in Kunena, but I want to give my users access to change them through there CB profile? Will this help with that?
I already have the forum tab from that link installed and working perfectly.

This is an interesting discussion. It also ties in with other integration issues between Kunena and Community Builder but perhaps, more importantly, it highlights the lack of progress, the lack of acknowledgment at Joomlapolis that this is a significant priority for the developers of Community Builder, to address these issues with a endorsed solution. Each day I visit Joomlapolis in the hope that I will read that the Community Builder development team will, one day, announce that work has commenced on integrating their product with Kunena and of some broad timeframe for a solution. Each day I am disappointed that there has been no further update on work to harness these products together, there's been no further update to the confirmation by CB other than "Kunena is coming!" or that they're having discussions with the people at Kunena to "work through the issues." Each day I'm disappointed that there's not even a preliminary or tentative release schedule for a CB upgrade.

Leaving my personal complaints about CB aside, I have a problem with this discussion topic: Signature bug CB integration? There isn't a bug as such. If there's a problem it's a design feature of Kunena which, in my opinion, has made the old CB simpleboardtab forum plugin obsolete ... or, at any event, rendered useless the ability for users to modify some of their forum preferences within their CB user profiles. If there was a problem, this was caused by changes to Kunena, not CB's inability to play "catch-up".

To address some of the comments made in this discussion, let me start with the workaround developed by carreon ( #8419 ). In effect, the workaround says "use the signature information from the CB user profile when a user looks at forum messages" or, to put it another way, "ignore the signature information stored in the Kunena user profile." What this does answers NicholasJohn's question: it allows his users the means to change their signatures via the CB profile.

But this also has a downside that was mentioned by itgl72 ( #8984 ): you can allow your users to change their signature information, but you're also misleading them into thinking they can modify their personal preference to view last posts first, or change between flat and threaded view. With threaded view functionality disabled in Kunena 1.0.8, it's pointless even offering users whether they want the choice!

We've also discussed "synchronising" data in Kunena user profiles with their CB counterparts: see Signature, ordering and viewtype migration script for CB . In that discussion, fxstein provided website managers with one way of updating the data ... but there's a overhead in doing this. Also, in that discussion, we highlighted the absence of demonstrable effort - especially on the part of Community Builder - to address the divergence in the paths between these two products. Our attempts to bring these matters to the attention of the folks at Joomlapolis have, unfortunately, fallen on deaf ears.

In respect of the divergence between Kunena and Community Builder, people may have overlooked what fxstein wrote early in this discussion ( #4462 ):

We are currently working with the CB team to build a new plugin for Kunena inside off (sic) CB. Going forward, all community solutions will use the Kunena stored configuration data and will not create a separate copy. This has many benefits and will enable all of Kunena's funtionality without the need for custom code for every component. This functionality is also planned to be core with CB in the next service release so no more addons have to be loaded.

We will provide you with a conversion SQL to migrate the CB data back into Kunena. Stay put for an update on this shortly.

Perhaps the SQL conversion script was the (somewhat unsatisfactory) workaround I mentioned earlier?

It's interesting to read that, in the future, "all community solutions will use the Kunena stored configuration data and will not create a separate copy." Just what this means is anyone's guess. Does this statement have an impact on user profile data and could it possibly mean that Community Builder (or JomSocial, or Joomunity, for that matter) would be prepared to abandon their user profile model in favour of the Kunena one?

Lastly, NicholasJohn wrote:

I already have the forum tab from that link installed and working perfectly.

Even if you were able to kludge CB's simpleboardtab plugin, I'm beginning to wonder whether it's that important any more. These days I've pointed my users to the Kunena user profile for forum purposes and I've removed most of the forum features from the CB side of things. Until, or unless, both players get serious (and, this matter is an early wake-up call to the CB development team) then website managers should be aware that they're on their own - to an extent - when if they decide to use Community Builder.

We can continue to develop workarounds or hacks, but they may cause problems down the track when Kunena and/or Community Builder issue new versions. I don't have the interest, enthusiasm or enough hours in the day to be tinkering with the nuts and bolts of my site; I just want to get on with the business of using it.

The fact that this discussion has been quite a vigorous one, that there have been over 1200 views, indicates the interest that CB users have in protecting their investment in that product. I would very much like to see a level of interest at Joomlapolis.

I'm not a programmer and I know diddly squat about databases. I'm just trying to find a solution to this small issue. While I understand your frustration and sympathize, so far the problems with Kunena or CB are small and the work around that I've implemented work much better than the Community Builder, Jfussion, phpBB3 system I had set up previously. As it is now, the only real issue, I have, is to provide a method of changing a user's forum signature in their community builder profile. So far I haven't found a means to do that. Neither of the solutions in the post you mentioned really work for me as I don't have a field in CB for signatures. All I'd like is a simple field where people can type in their sig with how to do it explained in simple people language would be nice too. And this seems to be the place where the majority of that discussion is going on, I'm just hoping someone can point me in the right place.

@NicholasJohn16: read "Extra" information about forum user .

What we're also saying, in effect, is that simplest and most pragmatic approach to update user signatures is to use the Kunena "edit my profile" facility and abandon whatever's provided by CB. If you would like to know more about how to remove the relevant CB tab, please let me know.

That's great, except I do actually like Community Builder integrated.