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Centralised user database?

mattmatt ✭✭
edited August 2005 in Vanilla 1.0 Help
I've long wanted a centralised server for login details. I can't remember for the life of my all my separate user names and passwords for all the different forums I use. What would be nice would be to have one user name and password for all vanilla boards. Wishful thinking, I know! But you have to at least mention these things.

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    you mean like having the login control validate against a user database that is stored on say this server? ala passport?
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    i remember this being mentioned elsewhere..
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    yeah... i was going to mention that
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    i was dreaming about this yesterday too :) not exactly for vanilla...but i thought about doing this for all my websites that i do have (and thought about chatting to other ppl to use this too when they make a new application)
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    mattmatt ✭✭
    edited July 2005
    I'm not sure how Passport works, but yes that sort of thing. www.ezboard.com already does this. Hmm?
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    lechlech Chicagoland
    DELETE! DELETE! DELETE!
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    isn't ezboard all installed on the same server/site, anyway? not really a good example or comparison. i was thinking about this too, but more in the sense that it would be very neat to have the vanilla "interface" to an entire website - like, for lussumo.com, login once and use the wiki or the forums. for another site, maybe the forums, a journal section, or a personal photographs upload/display app.
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    lechlech Chicagoland
    I don't think many realize the humongous complexity and of such a system in which you speak. Not to mention all the links and associations within to keep track of everything.
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    I would love to be able to use typekey. I'd have to look at the code and see if it can be done. I'm not sure if we can use typekey to "create" a matching user on a forum. That is, you'd log-in to typekey and when you came to a vanilla forum, it would create a corresponding user if it didn't exist.

    I imagine this is hugely more complex than I'm making it sound, and there are all sorts logistical loopholes. No. I would think that a new service would have to be created from scratch with this sort of thing specifically in mind.
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    lechlech Chicagoland
    Yeah, this would have to actually be built into vanilla itself, rather than just being applied. The only kind of centralized DB I can see realisticaly taking off if all the installations of vanilla are all on the same physical server. Cross posting across different servers like you're asking for requires some heavy security in mind not just for the boards, but for the servers themselves.
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    indeed. and a lot of iteroperability between servers. Typekey succeeds because they pass the minimum of information back to the site, and all the access to their servers is extremely controlled.

    I also know that even though it's a simple page for them, they do use a LOT of bandwidth supporting typekey for all the MT installations and now other software packages that use it across the web.

    With mark doing this for free, there is no way I see that he could provide such a service. Now, should you decide to do something and make a patch for vanilla....
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    mattmatt ✭✭
    My question was more of a "could we" rather than "how do we". Just a suggestion into which I had not put much thought!
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    lechlech Chicagoland
    now you know! :D
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    This has infact been raised before (by me :-p ). That discussion can be found here: http://www.lussumo.com/community/comments.php?DiscussionID=335 Not heaps of support for either of these I have to say. But I do see every-ones point.
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    lechlech Chicagoland
    I'm not knocking it, simply pointing out what a possible pain in the ass this would be to impliment no matter how easy it might look. With extension support right now being fairly limited but still great, one can only hope something *could* be figured out in a possible later release of vanilla.
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    I understand. It is possible, and you (and mark) made it clear in MY thread, that it is good idea, just not practical at this current time (for the reasons you just stated), I am going to look into it furhter at a later date.
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    yeah. i agree. i know it's possible. i just don't imagine it's very feasible right now. it would be really interesting if v2 of vanilla supported auth-extentions so we could authenticate against different schemes rather than trying to cobble together some bridge between two methods (the internal vanilla method and whatever we're trying to bridge to)
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    I've been thinking about this as well. I would like to connect a few forums. like a network of forums on the same server but it would be nice to just have one login. wishful thinking.
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    edited August 2005
    a network of forums *on the same server* is not what is being discussed. if all of the forums are on the same server and supported by the same RDMS, you *can* have the same logins on all the same server with a relatively small amount of creativity. what is being discussed is remote, centralized logins. the forums would be hosted on a server entirely seperate and distinct from the login server.
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    It'll take a little bit of work, but totally feasible.
This discussion has been closed.