[Alvaro Degives-Mas]

richcon: mah plezure.

chrishajer stated:

I still can’t figure out why people want integrated logins, why they have users that both post to a blog and post in a forum.

I’ll give you a real-life example. When WordPress is not used as a blog, but as a CMS, and its support for registered members serves to allow restricted reading access (so, not even posting!) to certain pages / posts (or portions thereof), those members need to log in, so as to be able to read those parts that are off-limits to guests. Now, let’s imagine such a blog-turned-CMS has a forum as well. And that said members were put through the hassle of logging in again on exactly the same site – just to be able to access a forum, where they “really” participate and exchange posts. No explanation on technicalities like “cookie synchronization” could undo their irritation, and frankly, I’ve joined their chorus. If only because the customer is king.

So, allow me to invert the perspective here: why on Earth would anyone even want to justify a klutzy non-unified login system that doesn’t recognize users who logged in on one part to access another of the same site, that is driven by software that, ordinarily, ought to be considered siblings?

Don’t get me wrong – I very well understand and accept the premise of technical difficulty. I have no problem in assessing it as merely the way it is, and patiently awaiting (and appreciating) the effort underway to address this issue. But I see no merit whatsoever in attempts to belittle the annoyance and inconvenience to users – remember: they make the site worthwhile – by way of questioning the validity of expecting a unified login. Human logic and behavior isn’t necessarily always linear in its expression, but it is what one has to deal with, in order to lead a practical and profitable (as in: rewarding) life.

And this inconvenient thing called real life is what made me, in the end, opt for a non-bbPress forum solution for a professional association: because I’m totally, utterly, radically done with dealing with complaints from non-technically oriented member users about “not being able to access” the site that they in essence (through membership of the association) paid for.

Is this a majority scenario? No, of course not. But it is very real. Hopefully now you understand why there’s interest in a unified login system, shared among WordPress and bbPress.

(Added afterwards: if you’re looking for the forum, you won’t see it until you logged in – it appears in the navigation menu only after you logged in as a member. And for the really curious: I opted for the SPF route to solve the login issue, while still remaining in the WP family.)

[Alvaro Degives-Mas]

_ck_ the “why” clause is addressed in Paragraphs One, Parenthetical Statement One, which spoke thusly:

Older versions aren’t an option because keeping them up-to-date with security releases is much harder.

A parenthetical statement that I have come to abide by as well.

Security is not a hobby, namely.

[Alvaro Degives-Mas]

The sole (arguably flimsy) reason I cleaned-out the register.php file is pure paranoia: to avoid directly injected calls that somehow (mysteriously) don’t get caught by Apache (htaccess).

Let’s say I’m not too confident in my mad php skillz to write such a plugin… I’ll try it with a redirect instead.

[Alvaro Degives-Mas]

Sorry for the tangent _ck_ but… you really recommend redirecting all logins to WP, too? As in, this silly thing I just posted about “unifying” registration on the WP side?

[Alvaro Degives-Mas]

Impersonation might be a cause for concern. Plus, there’s ye olde sockpuppet issue, which some forums expressly forbid.