Vanilla Forums and phpBB registration/login bridge?
n33k
New
Hi, I manage a reasonably large phpBB-based community and we're looking to expand into a second community based on Vanilla Forums. The two communities are similar but different enough that we want to share only registrations and logins, meaning registering and logging in on one forum will automatically register and login on the other forum and vice versa.
Has this been done or attempted yet?
Best Answer
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businessdad
MVP
@n33k
As pointed out by @x00, there are a few solutions to implement Single Sign On with Vanilla. However, keep in mind that you will have to designate a central site to handle the registration and configure Vanilla to talk to it to authenticate the Users.In your post, you wrote
[...] we want to share only registrations and logins, meaning registering and logging in on one forum will automatically register and login on the other forum and vice versa.
I would interpret it as follows:
- Users can register on phpBB and automatically get an account on Vanilla.
- Users can register on Vanilla and automatically get an account on phpBB.
Please note that this is not how the SSO mechanism will work, as phpBB would be the central site and, therefore, the only place where Users can register. Making both sites authoritative and configuring them to also check credentials on the counterpart may become messy, and would definitely require a significant amount of coding.
Alternative solution
An alternative solution would be using a 3rd party authentication service, such as OpenID, and redirect Users to it whenever they want to register. This way, the 3rd party service would become the central site, and both phpBB and Vanilla would talk to it to authenticate the Users.
This approach might not be viable if you already have established communities with registered Users, but I thought it was worth mentioning it in case anyone else is about to start a set of forums.5
Answers
Well I have been working on the same thing but have not quite been able to test it right, you can see the bridge I constructed here and see if it works for you . This is for a gallery app made by simple machines. They have a ton of bridges but not for vanilla, however they seem doable. I think it's a matter of sharing user data base.
http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/comment/174744/#Comment_174744
❌ ✊ ♥. ¸. ••. ¸♥¸. ••. ¸♥ ✊ ❌
You are talking about single sign on solution like JsConnect or ProxyConnect.
Check it out in the addon section, it would require some development on the other end.
grep is your friend.
@n33k
As pointed out by @x00, there are a few solutions to implement Single Sign On with Vanilla. However, keep in mind that you will have to designate a central site to handle the registration and configure Vanilla to talk to it to authenticate the Users.
In your post, you wrote
I would interpret it as follows:
Please note that this is not how the SSO mechanism will work, as phpBB would be the central site and, therefore, the only place where Users can register. Making both sites authoritative and configuring them to also check credentials on the counterpart may become messy, and would definitely require a significant amount of coding.
Alternative solution
An alternative solution would be using a 3rd party authentication service, such as OpenID, and redirect Users to it whenever they want to register. This way, the 3rd party service would become the central site, and both phpBB and Vanilla would talk to it to authenticate the Users.
This approach might not be viable if you already have established communities with registered Users, but I thought it was worth mentioning it in case anyone else is about to start a set of forums.
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It's fine if users must register on the central site instead of Vanilla. I just want their login sessions to automatically sync if they login to or logout from either site.
It sounds like JsConnect is what I need since Vanilla will be accessible from a separate domain, although it will also be accessible from a sub-domain of the central site's domain and both sites will be hosted on the same server and share the same root dir. Or will ProxyConnect work for me?
Example:
domain1.com (phpBB, central site)
vanilla.domain1.com (Vanilla)
domain2.com (Vanilla)
It's not clear to me what needs to be updated on the phpBB end. A little more direction would be greatly appreciated!
Cross domain you have to use jsConnect.
grep is your friend.