I’m developing an administrator backend system for a website. I would like to incorporate the excellent vB into this system to allow admins to post messages and communicate with each other privately. Now the problem I have is that I already use a table which holds usernames / passwords and the vB has the “user” table which basically does the same thing. I would like to extend the use of the “user” table to cover data storage of my system so that the usernames / passwords are universal.

So I guess what I need to know is?

1) Can I add new fields to the “user” table without causing the vB to screw up!!!

2) Can I simply add and delete records (users) from the “user” table as I like or do I have to add, delete, or alter any linked records in other tables?

If anyone else has done any work along a similar line I would be very interested to here from you. Any help you can provide with this will be greatly appreciated.

You can definitely add fields to the user table; however make sure you give them descriptive names so there's less chance of duplicating a future vB column name.

When deleting a user, you should run the following queries:
DELETE * FROM user WHERE userid='XX';
DELETE * FROM privatemessage WHERE touserid='XX';
DELETE * FROM access WHERE userid='XX';
DELETE * FROM customavatar WHERE userid='XX';
DELETE * FROM calendar WHERE userid='XX' and public='0';
DELETE * FROM moderator WHERE userid='XX';
DELETE * FROM userfield WHERE userid='XX';
DELETE * FROM subscribeforum WHERE userid='XX';
DELETE * FROM subscribethread WHERE userid='XX';

If you want to delete all posts by the user:
DELETE * FROM post WHERE userid='XX';
DELETE * FROM attachment WHERE userid='XX';

If you want to delete all poll votes by the user:
DELETE * FROM pollvote WHERE userid='XX';

If you want to delete all threads started by the user:
DELETE * FROM thread WHERE postuserid='XX';

Thanx tubedogg. Thats of great help.

If I was to simply delete a user from the "user" table without removing their posts / private messages etc, would this cause any problems to the vB?

Well I've played around and so far so good it all seems to be working together nicely...

Just for reference I think it's...

DELETE FROM table WHERE field='XX';

Rather than...

DELETE * FROM table WHERE field='XX';

And calendar = calendar_events