new to codeigniter - want try ci integrate with smf

[eluser]Aleksi[/eluser]
Hi there. I should probably have introduced myself more formally elsewhere, but this topic addresses an immediate need, so I'll do a brief introduction here.

I've been coding for many years, specializing in computer graphics. I'm only recently learning web technology. I looked at a variety of frameworks and codeigniter is a masterpiece in my opinion: it's elegant, efficient, and intuitive. I'm picking up php and web tech very quickly with it, so kudos to all involved for developing such a great framework.

Forums will comprise an important part of the website I'm developing. I looked at a variety of them, and SMF is by far the best one I've come across. I see I'm not the first to wonder how to integrate the two. Most of my questions about integrating them have been answered in a variety of places (sharing databases, sessions, users, etc), but I haven't been able to figure something out, hence this post.

I'm using the layout approach discussed by Josh Highland to build up my pages in sections, and it's been working quite nicely. However, I want to wrap the SMF forum within a CI view. SMF has an "above" and "below" layout structure, so using Josh's strategy it's conceptually easy to imagine how to solve this. But if SMF exists outside the CI directory structure (as recommended above), how do I load my SMF index.template.php theme inside my CI view?

I want to be able to do something like the following in my forum controller:

Code:

$data["title"] = "My Little Pony"
$layout["layout_css"] = asset_url().'/css/base.css';
$layout["layout_header"] = $this->load->view('header', $data, True);
$layout["layout_footer"] = $this->load->view('footer', $data, True);
$layout["layout_contents"] = $this->load->view('forum', $data, True);
$this->load->view('final_page', $layout);

But the SMF forum "pages" are not a view in CI; instead, they're in SMF, far far away... Do I bring them to CI? How? Do I use ugly relative paths? I feel like there's a simple solution I'm just not seeing for lack of experience.

I will greatly appreciate any insights into how to solve this. Thank you.