IP.Converge is designed to be an open platform allowing any application to share a common authentication method. This allows sites on different servers, and using different products, to let users access it with a 'global' login.
Unfortunately due to limitations within IP.Converge, only a handful of IPS applications utilised it. However, with the recent introduction of IP.Converge 1.1, functionality has been added to allow 3rd-party applications which use a different password hashing system, to integrate with Converge itself.
Being able to integrate popular products seamlessly was an opportunity we simply could not miss! We have noticed that modifications integrating products such as Joomla and Wordpress with IP.Board were so commonly requested, that we had to do something about it.
Introducing IP.Converge Modules
As many of you will be aware of, we have a team of Community Developers who actively develop and maintain our community-projects; IP.Tracker and IP.Shoutbox. We now have a new project that has been in development for some time, IP.Converge Modules. We are starting off with modules for integrating Joomla, WordPress and WordPress MU with IP.Converge and further modules will follow in the near future. You may have read our community developers talking about the development of these on the forums already.
This new range of community projects should prove a popular addition. Available for beta testing, we currently have IPC.Joomla and IPC.WordPress, a separate module is available for WordPress MU users (IPC.WordPress MU). These Converge-ready applications will integrate your existing Converge applications with these popular products. If you wanted to, you could link up multiple Joomla/WordPress installations with your IP.Board, as Converge supports this very well.
For the first release, the modules will offer simple integration compatible with IP.Converge, however in the near future more extension sets will be available for download. These extension sets will each offer a different level of integration for the products, but for now we are simply focusing on integrating these popular products.
To avoid confusion surrounding the products named 'JIB' and 'WIB' developed by Brandon D, IPC.Joomla, IPC.WordPress and IPC.WordPress MU are in fact the new 'JIB' and 'WIB'. Brandon D has been leading this new community project, and therefore work on his two old projects has been carried over to this community project.
You can download the beta releases of these Converge modules here, and the new forums have now been revealed, please feel free to ask any questions there! The Resource site's community project page has also been updated to reflect this new addition! Finally, a new bug tracker project has been set up to allow you to report bugs in these modules.
These converge modules require the PHP version that the product requires, for example to install IPC.Joomla, you will need a PHP version which is compatible with Joomla itself.
IP.Converge 1.1.0 RC 2
To go alongside this release, the second release-candidate of IP.Converge is now available for download for those with an active IP.Board license. Please continue to report any bugs you find in the IP.Converge bug tracker.
In order to install the Converge modules, you must be using at least IP.Converge 1.1 RC 2.
We hope that these new two projects will go a long way and prove to be a very popular addition.
By Alex