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1030

answers:

8

In my host, I currently have installed 2 wordpress applications, 1 phpBB forum and one MediaWiki.

Is there a way to merge the login so that all applications share the same credentials?

For instance, I want to register only in my phpBB and then I want to access all other applications with the given username and password.

Even if you don't know a unified way, what other login integration do you know of? Pros and cons of each?

+3  A: 

I don't know how to share the session cookies, but you can easily share the same login. i.e. People will need to log separately into both sites, but will be able to use the same username and password.

In the mediawiki file "LocalSettings.PHP", you can tell it to use a different (wordpress) database for authentication:

e.g.

require_once('includes/AuthPlugin.php');
require_once('extensions/AuthPress.php');

$wgAuth = new AuthPress();
$wgAuth->setAuthPressTablePrefix('evo_');
# Only include the following if you aren't using the same db as  MediaWiki
$wgAuth->setAuthPressDBServer ('localhost');
$wgAuth->setAuthPressDBName('yourWordPressDB');
$wgAuth->setAuthPressUser('mySQL user for same');
$wgAuth->setAuthPressPassword('The password');

See http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/mediawiki-bbpress-and-wordpress-integration

seanyboy
That's great. I will definitely check it out!
amartin
A: 

Having tried to do this some years ago I remember it not being very easy.

The way I did it was to create totally new table to user/pass and then replace these columns in the respective software with foreign keys to your new table - this required a lot of custom tweaking of core files in each application - mainly making sure all SQL requests to this data have the extra join needed for your new table. If I find the time I will maybe try and provide a step by step of the changes needed.

There are some pretty big drawbacks to this approach though. The main one being from now on your gonna have to hand update any patches

If you have no content or users yet look at http://bbpress.org/documentation/integration-with-wordpress/ which will make things a lot simpler for you.

I can't quite remember but I believe that I big problem I had was that MediaWiki requires usernames formatted a certain that conflicted with phpBB.


Of course, a totally different approach would be to mod each piece of software to use OpenID _ I believe plugins/extensions are readily available for all the applications you mentioned.

Binarytales
A: 

I once did a phpBB/MediaWiki login integration from the phpBB end.

Check it out.

Dmitry Shechtman
+1  A: 

If you're integrating a bunch of different apps, and you really just want a bridge, I've had good success with the bridge from Single-Signon.com. You can see there supported apps here: http://www.single-signon.com/en/applications.html

I've also used a MediaWiki extension for phpBB integration: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:PHPBB/Users_Integration

jgreenawalt
A: 

I personally think that integration login systems is one of, if not the, hardest job when utilizing multiple prebuilt applications. As a fan of reuse and modularity, I find this disappointing. If anyone knows of any easy ways to handle this problem between random app X and random app Y, I would love to know.

Thomas Owens
+4  A: 

when you integrate the system. Just remember 2 things:

  1. Login to system
    Check username/password with both systems.

  2. Change of Password
    Update the password on both systems.

Niko Gunadi
A: 

You can write a custom login hook for mediaWiki. I've done it for LibraryThing so that login credentials from our main site are carried over to our mediaWiki installation. The authentication hook extends mediaWiki's AuthPlugin.

There are several small issues:

  1. mediaWiki usernames must start with initial caps (so if you allow case sensitive user names it could be a problem if two users have colliding wiki names)
  2. underscores in usernames are converted to spaces in mediaWiki

But if you can deal with those then it is certainly possible to use your own user/password data with mediaWiki.

Advantages:

  1. The user doesn't have to login to each area separately. Once they login to the main site they are logged into the wiki also.
  2. You know that usernames are the same across the systems and can leverage that in links, etc.
conceptDawg
+1  A: 

One option is OpenID, which you can integrate into phpBB, WordPress, and MediaWiki.

A second option is to set up an LDAP server, which you can also integrate into phpBB, WordPress, and MediaWiki.

If the sites are all on the same root domain, a third option is to modify the registration, login, and logout code so that these actions are replicated on every site at the same time. This gets messy, but it may be the easiest short-term solution if you're in a hurry. Once you track down the account code in each site, it's just a matter of copying and pasting and changing a few cookie parameters.

Scott Reynen