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drupalcontent-management-systemblogsforum

SMF and Drupal single account for users

I'm trying to make a website with a blog(and some more website features) and forum in it. And I have decided to use Drupal for the blog and SMF for the forum(for I have no confidence on Drupal7's forum yet).

My question is, can I use the same user account that I created in SMF with Drupal? Say I created an account in the forum(SMF) then I will automatically get an account in the blog(drupal). Is it possible? I'm thinking of using a single table for the user, but I would have to choose between the two databases, which I think is very difficult.

Thanks.

Solution

  • Yes, you can do this, but it requires a modification of either the SMF or Drupal code. I'm sure you guessed this, and are looking for an easier way -- but there isn't one afaik.

    You do NOT want to have two tables of user credentials. Better to use either SMF's table of user credentials or Drupal's table of user credentials, and modify the other to reference that table. That way you have ONE table of user credentials. The other tables can be respective to SMF and Drupal.

    So, to make the mod, you switch one to using the authentication system of the other. Then on every update of SMF or Drupal, you'll need to re-insert your patch. Fortunately, SMF has hardly changed in the last couple years, other than security fixes. So, maybe it is the best point of change. Other portions of the code may require changing, but I doubt much will need done. You just need to 'link up' that one table of user credentials with both products.

    I suppose, alternatively, you could write some code to maybe replicate the user credential table, but this would be more difficult and potentially infeasible given different password hashes (nobody in their right mind stores passwords verbatim).

    For a programmer, it isn't particularly difficult. Many sites build an online community around the forum by linking their CMS to the Forum user logins. For a non-programmer, it will be above your head, though doable if you were to invest enough time and energy. By the time you are done, you'd have gained considerable knowledge.