Challenge for Dolphin!...

does anyone know the best approach for the following...

is it possible with Dolphin, to link the body into another script running on the same server (magento)

Im thinking, using magento as a base script, with Dolphin taking care of the social elements of the site.

On the Dolphin section, have the pages display magento header and footer, 

idealy also the main nav manu and not Dolphins... as this could be replicated easily with links.

have tried the 'easy' way using variations of iframes, but the results are not ideal.

I've seen this done between magento and wordpress before... challenge is to do it with Magento and Dolphin if possible!

Where would you start?

anyone?

What you are wanting to do is known as integration; having two different platforms communicate with each other.  Integration can be easy or it can be difficult depending on the two platforms and the amount of integration you wish to have.  You will need to hire a programmer and it will probably be expensive and you may end up with iffy results.  If you do decide to hire a programmer, hire one that lives in your country so you can have easier litigation routes than if you are in Canada and the programmer is in India.  You need to spell out very specifics of what you want and set points at which you are satisfied before paying out more money.  My advice is to forget about trying to integrate Magneto and just set up two separate applications, one Dolphin, one Magneto.

There are certain jquery function such as load function can and grab part of a page and stick it into a div container. There is also a dom parser such as the PHP Simple HTML DOM Parser that can also allow you to grab things like that.

The the results are worse than a iframe because most of the links do not work, and unlike a iframe the links do not reload the div, they reload the entire page.

So the only answer i can give you is a big fat no.

problem with 2 installations (which I've done) is you then end up with 2 logins. With e-commerce in particular you lose customers if they have to register twice...

I could have 1 login just for the shop section (mag) and allow un-registered users to post in forums (main part of Dolphin use) but then would have no collection of forum users emails which is important for the setup. 

More people would most likely register to post on the forum, than they would to purchase in the store so Dolphin needs to be the 'root' registrar for members...

Im fine with using iframes, and can set MAg to not display menu or header etc so the iframe pages actually look like one site within the D framework. 

Just the Registration process causing a pain!

I wander if facebook connect then gather the emails for dolphin users? Deano? 

that may be a solution if it does as both platforms have FB connect...

is it really that big an integration when its just looking at the registration and nothing else?

 re:

 I want to merge two large companies together. Let's say Microsoft and Walmart. All I need to do is put them in the same building, and give everyone their own office, then the two companies are integrated and work as one.... right?

 not really. Just collecting the stripped down registration info from one and linking it to the other. 

Msoft and Wmart still stay in separate buildings with no further communication other that sharing the names of the customers :-)

Magento can strip login info down to even just an email, with automated password being sent out. Or, just email+password etc... would only be a few select fields would need linking up. the rest stays separate.

It would not be a difficult task to collected info from dolphin during the join process. But it does become more difficult due to the multiple ways to signup. For example. The join form has it's own user create process. So does every connect module. What all do have in common is the join alert it creates.

You can tap into that join alert by adding additional code to the existing function _processProfileJoin in inc\classes\BxDolAlertsResponseProfile.php which can collect the info and do what you want with it.

If you know exactly how accounts are created in magento you can even have that code go as far as creating the account for you.

 I tried iframes too. I would like to just make it so magento appears in my boonex site as if it is part of the boonex site without the iframe lines. It seems like it would be possible by changing the template. I want this too.

 Thanks Deano, this is along the right lines for me :-)

Mayfieldz, depending on what Magento theme you use, you are able to set category views to 'blank' within the individual cat settings. This removes the header, menu and formatting so the page then shows just the content full screen.

You then have to set the iframe to the correct height plus 100% width.

Further to that, you have to tweak all the additional pages, such as cart, CMS pages etc...

Unless you just remove the call for the header and nav menu, then use manual links from the Dolphin 'host' menu.

You still have 2 registrations though this way but it does look like one site.