I think it is a definition of terms which is causing the most problems for this. I am having trouble myself, and was never able to get this to work several months ago when I first tried it.

I installed Joomla.Very nice. Looks great and tastes pretty darn fine too.

I installed SMF. It also looks and tastes great.

Both of these reside in my public_html on my website. (http://pagesuser.com) You can access the SMF forum from http://iworkabuser.com

However, they both have different databases and different prefixes. One is jos_ and the other is smf_ Neither myself and obviously others know if these are in separate databases. If I go to my Backup Management, kindly set up by my provider I can download them separately. One for joom1 and one for smf1. Does this mean they are in separate databases and, if so, the killer question is how can I merge the two to be able to use the bridge properly.

I know this question probably bothers you a lot considering how many times it shows up here, but with all this automation for how things are installed we (us noobies) do kind of expect things to work automagically. When they don't and it seems to be a misinterpretation of definitions it gets frustrating for all.

If you know of a way to merge the two tables for jos_ and smf_ please do let us know where to read up on it.

Thanks
Gerry.

I finally figured it out, but you don't want to know how many chickens I had to sacrifice to do it.

First of all. make a backup of your entire site. If you are using a server based NetAdmin area to do most of your maintenance, there should be a selection for Website Tools/Backup Management. Do a complete backup, just to be safe.

Second, download all your databases. If you use NetAdmin then it will be under mySQL Databases/Manage Databases. You will need this database for the final merge (the discovery of which took care of the rest of the chickens) Make note of the name of the SMF database especially.

Third. Reinstall SMF manually. If you use Fantastico or any number of similar beasties to do it automatically, it will create a new database with a separate name, and we want to use the current joomla one. if you use NetAdmin you can find it under Website Tools/File Manager to do the creation of a new directory. Go and find the SMF 1.1.rc2 install from http://www.simplemachines.org/download/. Upload the zipped file to this new directory and browse to http://www.yourdomain.com/new_directory/install.php

Take a moment to read the spiffy manual the SMF guys made. It's real pretty. http://docs.simplemachines.org/index.php?topic=4

Things of note for the installation. You will NOT be using smf as a database prefix to install this software. You will be using whatever is your joomla database name. In my case (yes, I seem to be using NetAdmin and pretty much everything was installed using Fantastico or done manually) the Joomla database prefix is (MySQL username)_joom1. If you are unsure of this (and are using NetAdmin) then check the names of your databases using the mySQL Databases/Manage Databases. If you are having issues at this point it will depend on your own setup. I can only relate what worked for me.

For the merging...

As Wolverine said, use phpMyAdmin, found in mySQL Databases/phpMyAdmin. using NetAdmin. Very handy tool, that.

The SMF guys must have thought so, because they recommended it too. http://docs.simplemachines.org/index.php?topic=490

The only thing I would change in their instructions would be indicating that the "Run SQL query" is visible after you click on the SQL icon, just to the right of Structure at the top of the webpage. You will be browsing to the SMF database backup you made earlier in step two. You will see a numbber of changes in the table to the left as it merges the two databases together.

Then go back into your Joomla Administrator and try setting up the component again. If everything went correctly then you should be fine.


Now... I for one am not going to claim to be an expert. That there Wolverine guy is. There may be some steps that you could ignore but I didn't feel safe doing so. For all I know installing the SMF stuff again is overkill. I just don't know what kind of pesky little things get changed in those pesky little files.

Good luck.
Gerry.

Back to the original post ...yes joomla and SMF are using the same database.