Integrating Coppermine with SMF and Mambo / Joomla
We have made several integrations of Coppermine and Mambo using the Bridge Manager of Coppermine, but the results were not really satisfactory, since there were cases when the integration just crashed the Gallery.
So, we now offer you an ever better option - Integrating Coppermine with SMF and Mambo / Joomla. This way you will have one of the most powerfull CMS, one of the most popular discussion boards and one of the best picture galleries all working together, sharing one username and database, so you don't have to log into each application one by one,
Step 1: Integrating Coppermine with SMF (note that you have to use SMF 1-1RC1 which you can download from the following address http://www.simplemachines.org/download.php/smf_1-1-rc1_install.tar.gz).
It is OBLIGATORY that you install SMF in the Mambo/Joomla database otherwise the Mambo/Joomla-SMF bridge would not work. If Mambo/Joomla is already installed, you can collect the MySQL database information from its configuration file, it is located in the Mambo/Joomla root folder and is named configuration.php. After you have installed SMF, proceed with bridging it with the Coppermine Gallery as described earlier in this tutorial.
Step 2: Integrating SMF with Mambo/Joomla - for this purpose you are going to need a SMF-Mambo/Joomla component which you can download from http://www.joomlahacks.com/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,41/func,fileinfo/id,231/
Log in as administrator in your Mambo/Joomla and install the component and proceed to configuring it.
By default Mambo does not recognize whether SMF is installed in the same database. You'd have to edit the path where SMF is installed (in our case it is installed in /home/user/public_html/smf)
and the database prefix used for the SMF installation (the default one smf_). Once you have filled in that information, please click Save. Mambo/Joomla should now recognize that SMF is installed in the same database.
Proceed with patching the Mambo/Joomla and SMF index.php files and click ot verify that Mambo/Joomla and SMF users are synchronized
The SMF bridge Component automatically adds a Forum link on your front-page, so we can add a Gallery link as well. Log in as administrator on your Mambo/Joomla, click on Menu-mainmenu
Once inside the mainmenu, please select New - Wrapper and click Next. Select a name for the link (e.g. Gallery) and input the URL that has to be wrapped by Mambo/Joomla. When you are done click Save. Now you have a link for both your Forum and your Gallery on your Mambo/Joomla's frontpage.