How to Introduce Integrated Authentication with Established Website

[4studios]

Hello -

I'd like to integrate vBulletin with my exiting website so that users only have to register/login once to access both the main website and the forums.

I've found a very nice piece of code (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=217458&highlight=authentication) which looks like what I need to handle the login part, but I'm still left with a couple of questions:

1. How do I handle the registration part? (I've searched high and low and can't find anything for the version of vB I'm running (3.8.2))

2. Once I've sorted the login and registration stuff, new users should be synched up, but... what on Earth do I do about the existing members? Not everyone who has an account with the main website has an account on the forums. I was thinking I could somehow use their usernames to bind the two accounts, but of course, not everyone registered with the same username. :(

I'm desperate to get the two sites integrated with the same login/registration system, but I don't want to have to make my existing users signup yet again.

Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing? If so, would you be willing to share some advice?


Thanks,
Jul

[Dismounted]

1. You can create a plugin to hook in at vBulletin's registration process, and create a user in your other database. You'd have to do likewise in your application, preferably using the vBulletin user data manager (see the manual) to create a user in vBulletin.

2. Using the email address should be "better" than usernames. Both is even better. :)