What stage is the WordPress bridge on?

[flatworm]

How far did a development of Word Press bridge go?
I am makeng a website based on WordPress and I want a forum with poll option and plugin for uatomatic start of threads, based on what I write on my WP.

All these options are included  in Enigma 2, which , for some weird reason requires installation of SMF.

Am I on the right track?

[twistedsymphony]

HA... good luck.

I spent a good month looking for a WP integration and it seems the only integration anyone got anywhere with with merging the users... which IMO is pretty useless in the grand scheme of things, more of a nice to have rather then something worth putting all your attention on.

When nothing turned up I started writing my own to use SMF for the comments on articles I write. I've spent the last week on it and I'm nearing completion... hopefully it'll be done this time next week. it's a clean drop in WP plugin. but all it does is use the forums for comments on posts.

as for the polls... good luck, the only worthwhile poll system on WP is the democracy plugin, and giving it a cursory look for integration it struck me as bloated, buggy, and poorly documented....the only option would be to build a completely new poll integration from the ground up... I'm just chalking poll integration up as a lost cause.

I'm not trying to be a jerk but it seems as though there really isn't a solution for those of us who wish to integrate the two systems... I found countless people begging for it but no one really delivering yet.

[flatworm]

Are you talkking about the bridge to WP, or plugin to start threads automatically?

Is WP, really the best thing to use for a blog-like, easily updatable website?
It is popular, but nothing integrates with it.

[twistedsymphony]

I suppose it depends how you define "integrates". I've worked with quite a few content management systems and in my experience Wordpress has the easiest to use and most flexible API of any of them.

For instance trying to have some external system control SMF requires jumping through some pretty complex hoops but getting SMF to control Wordpress would be incredibly simple by comparison.

The WP API has 2 types of functions: Actions and Filters. The Actions are events that trigger some custom code and Filters are custom code applied to data elements whenever they are called. They have filters for every last data element that WP controls and they have actions for nearly everything you can think of. The API even has controls to expand on the base functionality creating entirely new forms of content streamlined seamlessly even right into the back end admin and user controls.

Building my own WP/SMF integration... I was able to get the WP portion up and running spending just an hour a day over the course of a week... I've been working on the much less (functionally) complex SMF portion for weeks now and I've got a list of about 8 different ways it might work but no one knows for sure and it might break with the next update and some things don't work as expected... it all feels rather cobbled together.

To be perfectly honest. Not to discredit the wonderful work done by the SMF team to make this great forum app... but if I had to choose SMF + something other then WP or WP + something other then SMF.. I'd keep WP and find a different forum app, and that decision would be easy.

The Wordpress API: http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API
The API Hooks available: http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks

I feel like I could do anything I wanted with Wordpress because the tools are there to build themes and plugins that will work and not requires changes when Wordpress has upgrades, I feel very limited in my control over SMF. it does things the way it wants to do them and I have to just deal with it. the only way to really customize it is to start playing with the source or hack together my own API which would prevent me from upgrading SMF, or leave me having to rewrite and retest it all every time theres an upgrade.

[flatworm]

Thanks. I would try to find something else.
But it seems that there is not much forums, that I need.