Dear PrestaShopers,

There is a good news for you! I have successfully integrated one of the best forum in the world to PrestaShop. It is a phpBB3 Forum. The main advantage that you can get from this is: You only need single login to PrestaShop, and it will automatically log you in to the phpBB3 Forum. Thus, this will make your PrestaShop’s user/member easy and happy to shape a community forum for your store. This also will make your store become often beeing visited if you provide this forum for them.

If you ask me this question: “Why do you use phpBB3?“, then I will give you an answer: “Because I have been using phpBB since 2.x version (phpBB2) until this last version of phpBB3 and I am familiar with this phpBB“.

I know that some of you have known that this forum has a powerful features, even if you compare to another forum. Besides that, I have some experiences while using and modifying the script itself.

Because of the stable version for PrestaShop is 1.1 (the last version when I implemented this), I also used the last version of phpBB3 Forum. It is 3.0.4 version.

These are the features and advantages that you will get:

1) When user registers an account to PrestaShop, it will also automatically register or add his/her account in phpBB3. In other words: By using one single registration, you will get 2 account at that time; one for PrestaShop, and the other for phpBB3.

2) After registration completed and user automatically logged in to PrestaShop, then this user can access directly to phpBB3 by using his/her account from PrestaShop (user doesn’t need to login manually to phpBB3).

3) When user logout from PrestaShop, then his/her account in phpBB3 will also automatically logged out.

4) If user come to your forum page and register an account in phpBB3 page, then he/she will be redirected to PrestaShop registration page, in order to keep integrity between PrestaShop’s account and phpBB3’s account.

5) You can do the job as Administrator in phpBB3 as usual, such as: Manage forum (add/change/remove forum), Manage forum access such as give specified permission to certain forum/sub forum, Give permission to member’s forum account, Close forum, Close topic, and so on… also by simply login from PrestaShop only!

6) PrestaShop’s tables and phpBB3’s tables were been placed in one database. At least in your PrestaShop database. You don’t have to modify or join your PrestaShop tables into phpBB3 tables and vice versa. You only need to place all of phpBB3 tables to your PrestaShop database. This makes you easy to install your phpBB3 Forum to the existing database that you have been using for PrestaShop.

7) As a member, your user still can use ALL Full-Features of phpBB3 Forum as usual. There is no limitation to use the phpBB3 Forum itself, even after beeing integrated to PrestaShop. Actually, this will depend on Administrator’s setting on this forum. It means, you can use all features in phpBB3 Forum as good as if you use it by using its own database!

8) Now user can change his/her own password simply from PrestaShop’s account, and this will also automatically change the password in phpBB3’s account. (Updated on May 18, 2009)

9) Now the phpBB3 forum has fully integrated to PrestaShop’s window area (default). I also provided a link on the top page of this integrated forum in order to open forum in a new window. You will feel more comfortable while browsing the forum in a new window sometimes. I am sure, some of you will still need this, since the forum area that integrated with PrestaShop page is rather narrow, somehow, even I have changed the theme layout become two column. (Updated on May 22, 2009).

10) Now you can see the Last 15 Topics sent to Forum, via Discussion Forums block in PrestaShop page. (Updated on May 24, 2009).

11) Guarantee works 100% because I have tested it hundred times in my localhost and also in my web hosting server.

LAST UPDATED (May 24, 2009).

These are the screenshots:

- Screenshot Changes on Registration Form in PrestaShop

- Screenshot Link to Forum After Registration in My Account Page

- Screenshot phpBB3 Forum Page Fully Integrated into PrestaShop Page

- Screenshot Forum Page Accessed Directly from PrestaShop without Login Manually to phpBB3

DEMO LINK: PrestaShop with phpBB3

In order to try this demo, please try to register a new account, and follow the instruction as described by green arrow in the screenshots above.

As I worked really hard for more than a week to make this happened, and I am sure this will help you and save lots of your time, I decided to offer this good feature only for US $ 50. You can easily pay me by using PayPal to account me: admin at masinosinaga dot com. After you send the money, I will send the files to your email. I will also provide you online support by using e-mail, YM, or even through this forum to assist you in order you can implement this. Besides that, you will still get the updates from me if available.

Best regards,

Masino Sinaga