Tell WordPress where your Vanilla Forum is located - PROBLEM

julest

Hello,

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1. I can't get access to the WP Vanilla widgets as I keep getting the alert message:
"Forum url could not be validated. Are you sure you entered the correct web address of your forum?" on the Vanilla Forum Administration page.

I've tried all possible URLs but no luck... but I think I might have done the set-up in the wrong order.

I have got the forum showing correctly on the page I want, ie. http://mysite.com/discussions/

For some reason on the WP 'Plugins' > ' Vanilla' page, the forum location textfield always reverts to: http://mysite.com/discussions-2/

Any thoughts on how I can get the form url to validate?

NB I noticed a comment on another thread that said that you couldn't have a pre-existing page and that the Vanilla plugin creates the page for you...

I'm now totally confused.

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2. Do i need to install to get the full functioanlity out of the wordpress plugin (such as new home page and category features)?

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3. Can anyone explain "Configure an Authenticator"?

Thanks for any assistance.

dudieboy

I've run into these same problems with the WordPress Vanilla Forums plugin. I want to be able to use the WP widgets, but they redirect to a page that doesn't exist. The reason is that because on the Embed Vanilla wp-admin page, Forum Location in WordPress is messed up. First off, the form doesn't display correctly on the page (viewing in Chrome). Second, whatever I change the "Forum Location in WordPress" to is automatically renamed with a "-2" at the end, such as "forum-2", "test-2", whatever. I tried disabling the Embed Vanilla plugin within Vanilla itself to see if this was the cause of the conflict, but the problem persists in WordPress anyhow.

In answer to #2 above, yes, you must install the WordPress plugin in order to use the WP widgets.

yu_tang

me too.
fresh installed WP 3.1 on local XAMPP for testing purpose.
I suspect vf_get_link_url() or callers are caused, but I'm getting tired of debugging.
g'night and no more earthquake.

dudieboy

Amen, no more earthquake. Thanks for that function. Can Mark the plugin creator or someone check to see if it's causing the problem and fix the WordPress plugin?

dudieboy

Okay, I continued playing with this as I'm trying to get my forum live, and here's the gist:

1. You cannot set the forum to an existing page. If you have, you must TRASH THAT PAGE.
2. Create the page THROUGH THE Vanilla Forum > Embed Vanilla Page by editing the "Forum Location in WordPress" and click Save Changes at the bottom. NOW it should work without renaming your link.
3. I am not sure how or why, but this creates a page titled Discussion at the URL you specified on the Embed Vanilla page.
4. YOU MUST edit this page by clicking the "here" in "You can further customize the page that contains your forum here." DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP.
5. Change the title, set SEO, change the template to one column or full width, set the page order, disable comments and trackbacks. Then click Update.
6. Your page now appears with the rest of your Pages. It will not appear until this.
7. NOW you can add WordPress Vanilla widgets. NOW you can also add the page to your custom menus.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that instructions like these really should be added to the ReadMe.

yu_tang

＠dudieboy
What a great guide. Thanks!
Next time I'm stuck with NY times crossword puzzle, I call you.

Ok, here is an another solution.
Quick and dirty hack but it seems to be working.

See:
/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/vanilla-forums/functions.php

replace:

function vf_get_link_url($options) {
	$embed_widgets = vf_get_value('embed-widgets', $options);
	if ($embed_widgets == '1') {
		$post_id = vf_get_option('embed-post-id');
		$post = get_post($post_id);
		$url = $post->post_name.'#';

with:

function vf_get_link_url($options) {
	$embed_widgets = vf_get_value('embed-widgets', $options);
	if ($embed_widgets == '1') {
		$post_id = vf_get_option('embed-post-id');
//$post = get_post($post_id);
		//$url = $post->post_name.'#';
		$url = basename(get_permalink($post_id)).'#';

Before changing, discussion widget shows hyperlink like this and 404 error.

http://www.yourhost.com/wordpress/discussions-2#/discussion/1/test

Then like this and 200 OK.

http://www.yourhost.com/wordpress/?p=5#/discussion/1/test

I don't think this is a proper way. Just temporarily fix.

@Mark WDYT?

yu_tang

Some additional info.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Permalinks_SubPanel

If I select "Default" option from [Dashboard]→[Settings]→[Permalinks]→[Common settings], widget hyperlinks are broken.
If I select others, widget hyperlinks are working.
So, This is Permalinks settings dependent.
If you don't wanna get trouble with widget, don't select "Default" option at this moment.
I don't know about custom structure. Maybe some ones are working. Some don't.

My previous post solution is only working with "Default" option. Not general solution.

ldchris

I am not the expert that you all are, but I had problems getting my forum url accepted into the vanilla forum, forum administration page under wordpress as well. This is how I got it working:

www.mysite.com/forum (this would not work/failed validation)

www.mysite.com/forum/ (with the slash at the end it was accepted)

I was able to verify that this was indeed the difference between successful validation and unsuccessful validation by repeating this several times. It will be listed on the same page without the final slash after validation. It is annoying that the example location also does not show the last slash mark.

Incidentally, this automatically creates a page called 'Discussions,' which, for using the vanilla forum location convention above, is located at:
http://www.mysite.com/discussions/

If you do the above validation process more than once, successfully, you will get new discussions at:
http://www.mysite.com/discussions-1/
or similar. To get back to the url without the tacked on numbers, you need to delete all these discussion pages and move or delete them from any trash dir where they might be able to be restored from. Then you should be able to validate your vanilla forum url and create again a discussions page at the original, clean url.

TalhaAltinozek

I entered this as my forum URL and it worked.
http://mysite.com/vanilla/index.php?p=/discussions

before that i created the discussions page from the forum admin panel.