Thanks Jason. That helped straighten some things out for me. I'm still trying to work out the hook thing, for some reason it makes my head hurt. How can you tell which bits of code can be hooked into? I believe I can get what I want to work if I can hook into and replace the authenticate sub in GForum.pm. That way I can take care of several different issues at one time with one hook instead of several different hooks into Authenticate.pm. I started working on a plugin, but it's not working the same way that my direct hack of the subroutine did. Is that subroutine even hookable?

thanks again,
Michael Coyne
seaturtle.org