Logging users in using verify_authentication

[hsomel]

Hi

I am trying to log a user in to the forums installed on my site using a login page from my own site. Basically I want user to be able to sign in to my site using my own sign in mechanism and at the same time log them into the forums. I have included the following code in my signIn.php script:

define('VB_AREA','Forum');
require(ROOT_ADDRESS . '/forums/includes/functions_login.php');
	
define('CWD','/usr/local/apache/htdocs/forums'); 
require(ROOT_ADDRESS . '/forums/includes/init.php');

		
echo verify_authentication($formValues['alias'], $formValues['password'], "", "", true, true);

The above code results in an error :

VB_AREA or THIS_SCRIPT must be defined to continue
Fatal error: Call to undefined function verify_authentication() in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/signIn.php on line 83

My signIn.php script is not located within the VBulletin forums (forums) directory does it need to be?

Is there anything else that i am doing wrong or should know?

Thanks