Blog log-in for sitewide profile

FewFew

Hi,

So I'm embarking on a mission to create a website with user profiles. That bit doesn't hugely bother me as it's a pretty common task these days (tutorials ahoy!) and I've some experience doing it.

What I'm wondering about is using those same profiles on the site's blog for commenting etc.

I was planning to use Wordpress for the blog, but I've never tried using Wordpress with any database that Wordpress didn't first create.

So, can I edit the wordpress generated database to contain more info, or can I get the blog to reference the site database?

I guess, to boil it all down, I'm just wondering how handy Wordpress is to integrate into a bigger database setup. Or maybe there's a better CMS than Wordpress for this?

KonFusion

Fewcifur wrote: »

So, can I edit the wordpress generated database to contain more info, or can I get the blog to reference the site database?

Both!

As for whether wordpress is the best solution, I've no idea.

Best of luck

FewFew

KonFusion wrote: »

Both!

As for whether wordpress is the best solution, I've no idea.

Best of luck

Both are doable? Ah sure that's grand. Wasn't sure if Wordpress was a bit annoying about the sanctity of its database.

brimal

I'm not entirely sure what type of website you want to create, but if you are looking for a website run on Wordpress that offers more than the basic user profiles that comes with it, I suggest trying out Buddypress.

oeb

Fewcifur wrote: »

Both are doable? Ah sure that's grand. Wasn't sure if Wordpress was a bit annoying about the sanctity of its database.

You can authenticate on an external (non wordpress db) by using something like this - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/external-database-authentication/

I would probably let my custom code authenticate with the wordpress authentication system though. It's just a matter of hasing the supplied password and comparing it.

Take a look at the wp_authenticate function if you wanted to leverage wordpress directly, if you wanted to do it manually, you would need to hash your password and check it, wordpress (I believe) uses phpass for this.

FewFew

oeb wrote: »

You can authenticate on an external (non wordpress db) by using something like this - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/external-database-authentication/

I would probably let my custom code authenticate with the wordpress authentication system though. It's just a matter of hasing the supplied password and comparing it.

Take a look at the wp_authenticate function if you wanted to leverage wordpress directly, if you wanted to do it manually, you would need to hash your password and check it, wordpress (I believe) uses phpass for this.

Thanks! Quite a bit to look into there, and it sounds like exactly what I need and would have eventually found after hours of stumbling around.

That's what I dislike about Stackoverflow and such, it's very hard to ask stupidly basic open questions because you don't know what bread crumbs to follow.


As for the type of site, it's going to be a content driven entertainment site where users will have something similar to an achievements list on their profile. Want to allow them to post comments on the blog as well as use the same name for the forum etc.
Yes, I know it's a massive undertaking and I'm clearly currently out of my depth, but I've a few months to get to grips with it.

oeb

Fewcifur wrote: »

Thanks! Quite a bit to look into there, and it sounds like exactly what I need and would have eventually found after hours of stumbling around.

That's what I dislike about Stackoverflow and such, it's very hard to ask stupidly basic open questions because you don't know what bread crumbs to follow.


As for the type of site, it's going to be a content driven entertainment site where users will have something similar to an achievements list on their profile. Want to allow them to post comments on the blog as well as use the same name for the forum etc.
Yes, I know it's a massive undertaking and I'm clearly currently out of my depth, but I've a few months to get to grips with it.

Why not build the entire site from wordpress? It's perfectly capable of doing everything except the achievement list out of the box (Content driven site (pages), blog(posts), forum(bbpress)) and you could handle the achievements with a wordpress plugin.

I personally found that learning how to write wordpress plugins dramatically helped with my career, once you get used to all the hooks and custom function calls, it's no more difficult that writing code within any framework.

FewFew

oeb wrote: »

Why not build the entire site from wordpress? It's perfectly capable of doing everything except the achievement list out of the box (Content driven site (pages), blog(posts), forum(bbpress)) and you could handle the achievements with a wordpress plugin.

I personally found that learning how to write wordpress plugins dramatically helped with my career, once you get used to all the hooks and custom function calls, it's no more difficult that writing code within any framework.

Innnnnteresting...

Getting deeper into Wordpress is on my to-do list, so may work nicely. It's a weird modular type site, with a few mini-sites with completely different aesthetics, so I'll need to dig into how easy it is to apply a different theme with a click. Ooooh so much to look at!

Thanks for the advice, always good to get another option to look at

oeb

Fewcifur wrote: »

Innnnnteresting...

Getting deeper into Wordpress is on my to-do list, so may work nicely. It's a weird modular type site, with a few mini-sites with completely different aesthetics, so I'll need to dig into how easy it is to apply a different theme with a click. Ooooh so much to look at!

Thanks for the advice, always good to get another option to look at

If you wanted different sections of the sites to have completely different looks and feels, that's easy enought too. Wordpress has a feature called wordpress networks (formally multisite) which allows you to run multiple sites off one single wordpress install. You can use this in a couple of ways, the easiest way out of the box is to have independant sites running off sub folders (domain.com/site1 domain.com/site2 etc) which might be suitable for your needs. With a bit of DNS muckary you can change that to site1.domain.com and site2.domain.com or even domain1.com and domain2.com.

But either way, you would be able to assign some pages to subsite1, other pages to subsite2 and another group of pages to subsite2. All are accessible through a single admin panel if you are a superuser, but you can also provide individual access to sub site editors etc.

Each site can use a seperate theme, plugins can be installed on one site, and not another, etc.

FewFew

I think what I'm going to do, well what I'm looking at at the moment, is having the blog and forum running off a Wordpress install, and then using the Wordpress to authenticate the rest of the site (as mentioned by one of gang above) and then that should hopefully be it sorted in terms of basic log in and so on. Now, the interactive experience and high scores lark is another dragon to slay, but, sure it's all about chipping away.