Login site integration trick

If your site already has login capability and uses cookies, here's an easy fix to integrate the phorum with the rest of the site with a minimal amount of modding.
STEP 1:
When someone first signs up on your site, add this to your existing signup code:
$forumpasswd=md5($passwd);//only if you don't crypt your password already
$sql="insert into forums_auth(id, username, password, name, email) values
($id,'$user','$forumpasswd','$first_name','email')";
$result=mysql_query($sql);
This will put the user in the phorum auth db. Don't worry about the other variables, as users can add those in later if they click on edit profile.
This is fine and dandy if you are just starting a site, but if you already have users, you should put some code in your site login section that checks if the user is in forum_auth(or whatever you named the table) and if they aren't to add them using something like the code above.
STEP 2:
Set the auth cookie during site login.
Example if your login function takes user and pass as parameters:
$sessionID="$user:".md5($pass);
SetCookie("phorum_cookieauth", "$sessionID", time()+86400*365);
Make sure you do this at the top level so the path is "/" and it's available to the phorum in your forum directory.
STEP 3
In header.php which should contain the top of your site page, you will check for user login in whatever fashion you do on the rest of your site.
For example if you're using classes:
$logged=$user->checklog();
If the user isn't logged in, you don't let them view the forum. Maybe something like this:
if(!$logged){ echo "You must be logged in before you can use the phorum!!!";
include phorum_get_file_name('footer'); exit;}
STEP 4
Lastly since the only time a user will view the forum is when he is logged in, you don't want him to log out from the forum, only from your main site. You don't have to do anything extra in your logout since it isn't neccessary to delete the forum auth cookie. You'll need to comment out one line of code from your main phorum files. ie
list.php, read.php, post.php, profile.php, and register.php. Here's the line:
addnav($menu2, $lLogOut, "login.$ext?logout=1$GetVars");
Now the logout option won't show up. You should have a main logoff somewhere on your site.

The security setting should be on need login to post.
However, as you can see your mods prevent anyone who is logged in from access to the forum.

Cheers
[:]DRINK[/:]

Oh, you might want to move the login and signup pages out of the forum directory since they won't be used. It will also prevent someone from trying to access them directly.

great tip.. i think i just might do that.. thanks.

anyone know if this will work the same with phorum 5? i am thinking of upgrading right away too..

r.

phorum5 is really different, in many ways.

You said in the header.php file, yes? I only see that in Admin, so is that the one I must change?

Just want to thank Scott for the tip, and let others know that it does the trick. This was exactly what I was looking for. I guess it spared me a great deal of hacking myself :)

Cheers mate!

Superb!

You've just saved me hours of coding.

Thanks very much.

I don't suppose this would work with phpnuke would it?

I've looked at the files but it's a little complicated to locate the auth login cookie etc..
can you offer any help?

ta

Richard

For some reason I had a lot of problems getting my site to accept the above changes.
What I found is that if I added the 'setcookie' line with my user and md5 pass to the include/header.php of phorum, everything worked again. I have phorum in a subdirectory so it might have had something to do with the cookie path.
This might be useful for the nuke people too.
Ross.

(Don't forget to duplicate the user and md5 pass into phorum_auth)

Er..
could you do a point by point instruction guide as i don't follow :)
ta

Hi,

nice trick but what about a server side solution? it sucks to relate on cookies. isn't there a way to set the username and login in a session variable at site login time and use that values from these session variables when the user opens a phorum page?`

speci