Is there an easy way to incorporate a site-wide login?

Question

I have a website that has a wiki and a forum that you can log into. I would like to be able to have a single site-wide user system, so I don't have to have separate users for both. If it helps, I am using MediaWiki 1.16.4 for my wiki, phpBB 3.0.8 for the forum, PHP version 5.3.5 and MySQL version 5.1.54.

Answer 1

You might want to look into rolling or integrating with a separate "single-sign-on service" which would provide some kind of immutable token which both the wiki and the forum could use. (This idea is sometimes called a "federated" identity -- various end user services can share a common authentication platform, and so provide seamless user experience, or nearly.)

Update: I see now your question is actually a little more subtle, and is asking after a straightforward way to share a user across multiple already existing applications. As far as I know this would not be trivial. I might consider looking at solutions that already offer a lot of the features you are after in a single package, or of course writing your own. I might also mention that it's not really that much to ask to have users remember different passwords for different applications, at least in certain situations. I might ask what is going on with this requirement, and am now wondering whether I have misunderstood, as it does seem kind of strange to ask to link together the user databases of a bunch of different applications, which may have vastly differing authentication schemes.

(I think what I'm saying is that, as far as I know, it would not be simple to setup a federated identity scheme for a bunch of applications that don't already support it. If those applications provide extensibility you may find or be able to write a plug-in that talks to an authentication provider.)

Answer 2

From what I remember, phpBB's authentication is abstract and you can write your own layer.

Go from http://wiki.phpbb.com/Authentication_plugins for more information.

Answer 3

Um, cookies? (set in the same domain, of course)

Answer 4

Doing an include of some PhpBB files allows you to have a single sign on and use its authentication in other pages of the site, outside the forum. I did it in http://www.shertonenglish.com/. But, it's not an easy job and, I don't know how easy could be altering the wiki script.

Here is a tutorial for PhpBB integration: http://www.startrekguide.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=4576&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=integrate