How about Phorum as ONLY a User Management engine?

This may seem a bit backwards, but I spent 2 hours on a requirements call this morning, where, in defining the specs for how users should be able to register, change & reset passwords, and verify by e-mail, I basically spouted verbatim the way phorum does it.

Which made me start thinking - despite the fact that this system has nothing resembling a forum requirement, what would it take to turn a phorum install into a user management engine?

Obviously, it does the user management just fine, so the question is ... could the rest be completely hidden from the web user?

I'd welcome any thoughts on this - what would it take to turn phorum into a non-visual engine?

We'd obviously start with a stripped-down template, and maybe some clever use of the "redir url" ... would that be enough, or would some module hook overrides be needed?

Have a great weekend!

Sp

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Sean Phelan
Sites By Sequoia - Web Marketing ... The Experts at Building Your Success Online

A stripped down template would be a good start. That could already work for you. To really block users from accessing any other page, you could write a module that hooks into the page_<phorum_page name> hooks for all pages that you want to deny access to and redirect to your main site URL from those hooks. That way users won't be able to access Phorum, even if they know about the fact that it's the user management backend.

A reverse solution could do too: hook into the common hook and check the value of the "phorum_page" define. Only accept access to pages like "login" and "register". For other pages, you can do a redirect from there. This might be an easier route (or at least: more compact code).

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Maurice Makaay
Phorum Development Team
my blog linkedin profile secret sauce

Maurice,

Thanks for the insights:

In other words, this idea:

Quote
Maurice
To really block users from accessing any other page, you could write a module that hooks into the page_<phorum_page name> hooks for all pages that you want to deny access to and redirect to your main site URL from those hooks.

Is ... Block page_1, page_2, ... page_n

While this:

Quote
Maurice
A reverse solution could do too: hook into the common hook and check the value of the "phorum_page" define. Only accept access to pages like "login" and "register". For other pages, you can do a redirect from there. This might be an easier route (or at least: more compact code).

Is ... Block every page except login or register

Looking at it that way, you're right that option 2 is much smarter. It doesn't matter what happens to the other pages, or if names change with new releases - we only have to mind the 2.

I've worked with Joomla a lot, and the lack of an "anything but" feature is very inconvenient, especially with module-to-menu mappings.

Having said all that, stripping the template might be more than adequate.

Thanks!
Sp

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Sean Phelan
Sites By Sequoia - Web Marketing ... The Experts at Building Your Success Online

Spot on and you're welcome.

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Maurice Makaay
Phorum Development Team
my blog linkedin profile secret sauce

More or less what I use it for. The forum bit is there but only really mirrors what our listserv does (no one really posts / reads messages on the website).

[purduerugby.com]