IPS + WordPress - is there a demand?

[Pandemixx]

Hey everyone,

After years of running IP.Board 3.4.x I've finally upgraded my forums to the latest 4.3.x. Apart from bringing my community to the cutting-edge of forum software, I was most looking forward to using the REST API.

And WOW am I impressed! Great job IPS team.

Anyways, one of the first things I'm doing is building a simple plugin that pulls the latest posts/topics and display them in a widget for use on the sidebar of my WordPress website's blog. The REST API gives me more than enough information to make a nice widget with member info, profile photo, timestamps, and other good stuff.

I have ideas for use outside of that as I'm looking to shift the discussions from my blog to my forums, and think I can use this data to add some convincing features around my site.

My questions for you guys:

1) Does anything like what I'm explaining exist in any form already?

2) How many of you use WordPress and IPS and see value in a feature like this?

3) What ideas do you have of "bridging" your forums to your website?

By the way, I'm talking about the self-hosted WordPress version, not the hosted .com version. I'm curious for your feedback because this is something that could be useful to release as a free plugin on WP.org.

 

[Joel R]

Talk to IPBWI.com Mathias Reuter.

His entire business model as a third-party developer centers around a bridge between IPS and Wordpress.

Also, you need to ask on InvisionCommunity.com.

 

[Matt M]

Glad you're enjoying 4.3 too! It comes with a built in Wordpress OAuth log in module too, so it's trivial to create a single sign on that covers both Wordpress and your Invision Community.

 

[Matt M]

It's also worth mentioning, that with Pages - you can create external blocks for use on another site.

We have a guide on this here: https://invisioncommunity.com/4guid...tips-tricks_361/using-blocks-externally-r271/

But the basic outline is to create a block in Pages for whatever you need, say most recent topics.
Create an external block from that, which gives you some HTML to paste into your site (or a sidebar widget in Wordpress).
Once pasted into Wordpress, it runs and updates regularly.

 

[Matt M]

I created a little video to show you how:

 

[Pandemixx]

Excellent! I appreciate the links and the quick video. The style of that feed is exactly what I was going for; simple with none of the clunky styling I usually expect from these kinds of embeds. I'll have to pick up the Pages app which looks like a big time saver. Thanks!

 

[Matt M]

No problem! You can edit the template that the block uses too if you wanted to fine tune it.

 

[Pandemixx]

I'm sure I'll be tweaking some part of it, really impressed with how thorough this feature is. So much that I'd be willing to overlook the JS file needed to load it (not a big issue anyway).

Well, guess I'm back to the drawing board to find some uses for this REST API.

 

[Pandemixx]

To update this: in a redesign of my main WordPress business I wanted to show a simple feed of the latest posts from my forum in the footer of my site. I came back to this thread to revisit Matt M's solution only to realize that I didn't want to purchase the Pages addon just to use the Blocks embed. Perfect time to try out the REST API!

Using some WordPress APIs I spun up a quick connection from my WordPress site to my IPS forums that would check once a day and pull the 5 latest posts. This is a basic as possible but all I needed for now. Here's how the posts look on my WP site with a little bit of styling:


Overall I'm happy with the structure of the REST API and was giddy about how much data is available for use. I have plans to further develop an IPS to WP integration and build out some more specific features for an eCommerce system I'm running.

I've attached the source code of the tiny plugin I made in case anybody else wanted to experiment with this on their own sites. Either upload the ipstowp.php file as a plugin or copy the function to your WP child theme functions file, then print the array from ipstowp() to see the data that's returned. The script updates every 24 hours, which you can also change from the function file.

I'll keep this thread updated with any more developments on this side project!

 

[Morrigan]

That certainly is amazing. I personally stopped using Wordpress completely when IPS 4 came out as the functionality of Pages overshadowed that of Wordpress and all of the pay for premium items it had on it as it felt like I was paying just to create something that was functionally equal to using IPS Pages.

I think, overall, you need to use the software that works for you however I exclusively use IPS and its apps to have a streamlined site. I'm always updating and improving my site as time goes on and I don't feel I have to sacrifice time to go back over things by going back and forth between another software and IPS.

I'm excited to see your final outcome. You should totally link it here.