I am interested in something like this. I want users to be able to have two identities for one account -- one that they can use to freely give their opinion in the community and another that they can use to conduct business with one another (tansactions between parties).

okey, I'm too lazy to read this all, you said Ezboard just got this?? damn, where have you've been?? Ezboard had it for a vary long time (it's called a global account ;)) and it's free, but to get more options to use, you'll need to pay....Ezboard is not like the board that you need to upload onto your site and set it up, it works on there own networks, meaning they can let the users sign up for a global account (meaning they only sign up once and gain access to all the boards that's on the Ezboard networks) or just for the local account (meaning they only sign up for that board)....Ezboard has alot of databases and 1 (maybe more) main database where all the global users are stored...if the user just want to sign up for that one board that s/he's at, then that username well only be stored on that database but if the user wants to gain access to all the board that s/he happen to go to that's by Ezboard, then s/he can sign up for a global account so that s/he doesn't have to sign up more then 1 time.......

now, what your wondering about doing is kind of hard to do, unless you know lots and lots of codes....if you have 2 different boards on 2 different sites (maybe the same site) then maybe you can do something that lets the user sign up locally (only going to that database) or globally (go to a main users database).....but then that well mean you need to put in codes that needs to check if the user is on your database, and if so, it well only update that, but if the users on the global account, then you need to put in codes that puts the user in their and update it there and also makes it look in their to make sure it's a global or local user.....basicly it'll take about 3 databases (1 main user account for global users and 2 board ones that puts the user in there if s/he wants to be a local user and for the boards information) or more (depends how many are wanting to link with you)....you basicly well have to edit every PHP files (plus you need to make a main User info place where you can choose to edit either global or local users).....that's just kind of hard to do :eek:

Obviously. Did you have a look at the date for the first post? And for your own information, this option has not been free on ezboard for around 3 months, maybe 4 now.

lol, when I last saw (sometime this mornning), it was free for signing up for a global account, you just need to pay for extra featers, but I could be wrong, cuz I signed up for the global account 2-3 years ago, way back when I started out with Ezboard for a gameing clan....I didn't see anything about paying for a global account, only about extra featers.