I have also used both bridges in the past, however I did initially start up using the official SMF bridge before switching over to Wolverines bridge. It is true that Orstio's bridge does have several features this bridge does not, such as an advanced group sync feature, dual database options and the lack of any need to patch J! and SMF source files. However this does not mean these features are not going to come to our quaint little bridge in the future.

Wolverines bridge certainly does have the upper hand with integration for community based features - as Brat has pointed out. This is further enhanced by the many versatile modules and plugins designed specifically for this bridge, that help to bring more and more SMF features to your Joomla frontpage.

The help and support here on the forum is also top notch, with the ratio of feature requests to feature implementations blowing away Ortsio's bridge - which, to my knowledge, has barely changed or improved in months. You'll also find that the developers here are capable of translating their help and advice into lamens terms for the vast majority of those new to Joomla, which means you wont need a PHP and MYSQL degree to follow the solutions!


Dear lord, its an essay...

Your best bet is to just upgrade the bridge to the new 2.0 beta:

http://www.joomlahacks.com/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,94/topic,2291.0

It doesn't really matter much.

Just change the numbers to something different, like SMF773 for example.

First of all I recommend you upgrade your bridge to JSMF v2.0 right away. Make sure you un-patch the bridge before you remove it. You should also install the JSMF Login Module v2.0.

Also, once you have installed the bridge, configure it to use SMF login instead of Joomla, and also change the name of your SMF cookies in your SMF admin.

Solves about a billion and one problems.

I had a similar problem once. This is however Joomla's fault, not JSMF's.

Joomla and SMF have different rules when it comes to allowed characters and field lengths in usernames/real names. So if Joomla doesn't like the SMF username, the sync fails.

I got round the problem by editing usernames directly in the database. You could try that, or the more extreme solution of modifying Joomla files, as some users have done.

Personally, I'd just tell the specific users to change their usernames.

The last I heard was that the 2.0 beta release was pencilled in for today. Obviously the decision to release is Wolverines alone, so the date could change.

In the meantime, if your problem is an emergency, have you attempted a clean install of the bridge with fresh Joomla and SMF files?

Sounds about right

You would be much better off hanging on for the next release of the bridge.

Great work wolverine, been looking forward to this fix.

Any ideas on the max number of users that will be shown on the list? Could get scary on a busy site.

Yep, you wont have any problems.

The work around is already included with version 1.1.3, in previous versions SMF activation was a bit of a pain.

That's what I did with my template Scott, the only way possible to register, login or logout on my site is via the main login module. It will be less confusing to your site members if you were to modify the template the same way.

By the way I actually was slightly off with my instructions earlier. You dont have to specifically be using the mod_smf_login module, but obviously you found that and downloaded it.

Apologies for confusing you.

Sure you have published and are both using the correct login module? (mod_smf_login)

Scott the only way I can see to login on your site is on the forum. That wont work unless you have syncronised the users. Leigh your site was down when I tried to look.

As far as I know this is how the sync works.

Sync users via the back end and the bridge will sync your existing SMF users into J!/Mambo (and possibly vice versa)

OR

Login via the correct bridge login module and that will sync that particular user account from SMF to J!/Mambo for you.

After you have used either method to sync, the users can then login via the forum or the bridge login since their account now exists in J!/Mambo and SMF

Does that make sense?

For a start I'd upgrade to J! 1.0.9 and JSMF 1.1.3 to be on the safe side.

Assuming your J! and SMF sessions are both set to 3600 seconds I'd suggest you read the following topic which sets out the ideal setup to use for the bridge to work correctly.

http://www.joomlahacks.com/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,94/topic,1509.0

No joy mate unfortunately, users still get sync'd as Registered.

I'm thinking of actually finding a way to remove the Author group entirely and just give registered users the same level of access that it had.