Is it possible to replace the login page?

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: custom login page.

toolsmythe

I too would like to replace the login page with my own.

I use Vanilla for a private forum I maintain for friends; we use it to coordinate an annual trip to Las Vegas. I have a fun, cool looking login page that I want to use instead of the (no pun or insult intended) rather vanilla-looking one.

In reading about jsConnect, this sounds like it is more for integration of Vanilla into an existing site. That's not really the scenario for me; I just want to present a different login page and send the credentials off to the forum and let it take control from there.

Could it be as simple as just finding the login view and integrating my HTML & JavaScript into it? I think I tried that a long time ago and the problem (as I recall) is that the login is embedded into a template that renders the header and the footer and for my login page I want neither.

Can you point me in the right direction here? I have decades of software development experience and have done my fair share of PHP and MySQL development so you can be technical with me. I just need an educated approach in how best to do this.

Any help would be much appreciated; thanks in advance.