I went with vBB and wrote an MW authenticator by extending AuthPlugin. AuthPlugin works as advertised, and you can do it if you are familiar with the security part of your forum's database schema. I was able to create the following features:
1) AuthPlugin validates vBB username/password combos and creates them in MW if they don't exist 2) AuthPlugin integrates into vBB "5 strikes and you're locked out for 15 minutes" security feature 3) AuthPlugin gets the user's vBB email address and assigns it to their MW account 4) MW rejects users if they are in vBB "Banned" groups, or custom "WikiBanned" groups.
I did have one tiny problem that might or might not happen to you... for odd reasons that nobody was ever able to figure, on my MW 1.4.3 I had to edit one line of MW code to get it to work. This is not specific to your forum or external authenticator... it seemed to be something in my environment that nobody else could reproduce. If you get it to a point where usernames/passwords validate in AuthPlugin but you still can't get logged in, consider trying this:
amend line 264 of SpecialUserlogin.php from this: $u =& $this->initUser( $u ); to this: $u = $this->initUser( $u );
I blame it on PHP4's shoddy implementation of OO and references.
Good luck.
-----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org]On Behalf Of Muzaffer Ozakca Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2005 12:27 AM To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: [Mediawiki-l] forums/phpBB again...
Hi,
Has anybody figured a way to integrate authentication with a forum tool like phpBB? I know Auth plugin is for this job, I'd be glad if somebody wants to share their implementation with me/us. Is it possible to make someone log in to one (mw or the forum) and automatically be logged in to the other?
Another question would be which forum s/w is better? I would prefer if the forum is directly integrated or at least would look similar to Monobook. Has anyone found a good solution?
Thanks.
Muzaffer _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l