Can my board's registration form work across platforms & be used for my main site too

[newdude]

My site has 2 parts: the main site side and the forum/discussion board side (i.e. VBulletin board side). My main site has a registration form along w/password recovery separate from that used for Vbulletin. But, since installing Vbulletin, a username & password created in the forum is not valid in the main side of the site, and vice versa. If one registers a username & password from VBulletin, that username and p/w are useless in the main side of the site. So, in order to participate in both parts of the site, users must complete 2 separate registrations. And, if they forget their p/word or username from the main part of the site, there's no way for users to recover them. I cannot link into Vbulletin's p/word recovery script to help users recover the lost p/words used in the main part of the site.

Also, my site originally used PHPBB for the forum. When using PHPBB the registrations and the p/word recovery worked across both platforms, and p/word recovery was handled by PHPBB's p/w recovery script. In fact, the members list in PHPBB would even include members who only participated in the main site and never participated in the forum. The member list in phpbb was working in conjunction with the memberlist in my main part of my site too.

How can I get VBulletin to work the same way? I can't require users to perform 2 separate registrations on each part of the site. Can someone please help?

I had contacted VBulletin immediately after installation about this, and they directed me to VBadvanced as the only way to do this. So, I purchased VBadvanced, installed it, and then VBadvanced support said VBadvanced is not setup to do this. My site is www.robeprobe.com

[Dismounted]

First thing's first, vBulletin would never officially point you to a third-party script. Now, how did you do it with phpBB originally? Could you outline the processes the code goes through?

[newdude]

Originally Posted by Dismounted

First thing's first, vBulletin would never officially point you to a third-party script. Now, how did you do it with phpBB originally? Could you outline the processes the code goes through?

I didn't think VBadvanced was a 3rd party script. But, anyway that doesn't matter, the program's free. I just paid someone to install it for me, that's all.

How I did it w/PHPBB? I don't know. The guy who designed the site originally did it. And I think he farmed that part out to a friend too. I'm not a coder, I'm just a site owner with no knowledge of this technical stuff. I wouldn't know how to tell you anything about the processes the code goes through. I'm sorry. I appreciate the effort though.

However, I do find it unusual that VBulletin would not automatically be setup to work this way by default, since usually a forum is not a complete site, but just an add-on to most already existing sites. So, I figured that (as an add-on) to my site it would be simple to just have it work as the default registration and p/word recovery script. Tanx.

[Calash]

Actually, a forum being an add-on is the minority of forum sites. Most are just forums with other stuff tacked on to it.

As for your question, it really depends on how your current setup works. For my setup I have all my additional site areas pull there information from the vBulletin database. This way I only have one user member area to manage for the entire site. Not sure if your site could be setup to work the same way, but it is something to think about.

[newdude]

Hello, I saw your Necrotania site. It looks like your site is ALL VBulletin without a separate site attached, like mine. I wouldn't mind having users click on the "register here" link on my site, and then they can be redirected to VBulletin's registration & p/word recovery form, and then they would be registered users. BUT, BUT, once they register in VBulletin, their user name won't likely appear in the location where it says: "rated by"in the main part of the site. That is, the name of the user submitting the ratings in the main part of the site, appears in certain areas of the main site in association with their submitted rating, and all of the other things the main part of the site controls--like limiting a user to one rating for the same judge, etc.. If they submit another rating for the same judge w/in 5 minutes of submitting the first one, the script erases the previous one, and so on... This prevents the same username from stacking ratings over and over.

Thanks for your reply, I think I'm half way there if I keep getting ideas from others.