Auto-login/register on site that has existing login/registration system?

[redefinery]

I'm trying to integrate vBulletin as the forums for a restricted area of my site. The site already has its own login and registration system (php/mysql), so I'm trying to find a solution so that when a user registers on my site, he/she also gets registered as a user in vBulletin. Then, when the user logs in to my site and then accesses the vBulletin forums, he/she gets automatically logged in.

Is there a hack or some code that will allow me to do this?

If not, what are the minimum required fields to register a new user? And, if the user is already logged in (i.e., a username and password is available), what do I need to set (cookies, session data) or call in the vBulletin code to mimic a logged-in user?

Thanks,
Jeff

[rpratt]

I asked for a simular hack not to long ago. Maybe your request will help peak some interest in what I believe would be a very popular add on to VB.

It would great if someone could develop a password protected members area that is outside of VB but uses it's functionality.

A seperate authentication system would need to be created that uses VB's database. It would require it's own registration process (just the required fields of current registration in VB) and login. Also would need to use sessions once members were logged in.

This add on would allow members to use their same username and password to access the members area as well as the forums.

I think I'll post this on elance. Will probably get some bites there.

Ryan

[ixian]

I have this implimented in several areas of my new site. I don't have it in "hack" form though. For example, I have a perl-based news/review/article system going up and I use vb's authentication system for it.

The easiest way to do this is just to use the vb registration system for everyting - just link to it - and have the other areas of your site read IT for authentication. If you already have a lot of users registered under a different system I can't really help you, as I did it the opposite way. I have the perl dbm::mysql pm installed so I can use code in perl to do lookups against vb's user tables. Cookie and sessionhash authentication work exactly the same inside or outside of vb, they didn't do anything special with it.

Easiest thing to do is take a look at, say, vbportals (www.phpportals.com) and see how wajones' implimented user authentication on non-vb pages in his hack.