I made a plugin Auth_GForum to allow my GForum users to login to GMail with one click from the forum header menu.

I modified the Auth_VBulletin plugin made by Scott Beck to work with GForum. I tried to use Community but could not get it to work correctly (because it is still beta), so I made my own solution (Auth_GForum) instead. This plugin installs in GMail and uses an authentication hook. I added a link in GForum include_header.html to the webmail.cgi

GForum users from selected groups are able to activate their own GMail account just by clicking the webmail link from the forum. The plugin determines the forum users user_id and login state based on their forum login cookie. They are given a sign up page that lets them fill out the mail demographics and activate their account the first time.

Users logged into the forum can access their mail account just by clicking on webmail.cgi link in the forum, it goes right to the inbox. If the user is not logged on the forum and clicks webmail.cgi, they get the forum login page. If a user is logged into the forum, but not in a user group set by the admin, the are redirected to a page (like a join our club page).

I also made a GForum plugin called GMailNewMessages to alert the forum users when they have unread messages in GMail. It requires my other plugin Auth_GForum already be installed. It is a modified version of a plugin made by Michael Coyne of seaturtle.org His script is PHP, mine is a Perl plugin for GForum. If you have unread email, you will be alerted in color red in a message on the forum header menu "PTCC WebMail 1 unread" , the number will be how many unread emails you have. You can click the link to go right to your inbox. If you do not have any unread email the link will just be "PTCC WebMail". If you are a PTCC member and have not activated your email account the link will be "PTCC WebMail New Feature". I will probably remove the new feature part after the forum users have seen it for 30 days or so.


My plugins are installed and working on my production server at www.ptcruiserclub.org/forums

The plugins are now ready and attached to my reply message

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Michael J. Challis - CRUZN8R - PT Cruiser Club - http://www.ptcruiserclub.org

http://www.ptcruiserclub.org/forum

The plugins are attached, be sure to read the help menu while installing for instructions and configuration setting options. If you use it, please let me know, so that I can tell how helpful it was for others. Use these plugins at your own risk. They are offered as freeware on an "as is" basis. You should always back up your database and program files before attempting to install new features. The plugin has an install / uninstall feature, the GMailNewMessages plugin has a small code snippet to put your forum templates, be sure to add it right after installing and remove it after uninstalling. The code is available on the plugin pre-install menu and on the help menu after installing.

The Auth_GForum plugin is designed for first time GMail users signing up from GForum. If you already have users in GMail, this plugin is not advised unless you want to modify it to give your users the option of somehow synchronize the GForum/GMail accounts. It would involve asking the forum user for the mail username/password, then authenticate the login and populate the auth_gforum table in GMail with the gmail_userid, gmail_user, and gforum_user_id, not really hard to do. I had a fresh install of GMail, so I did not need that option for my users. I did not have time to program that feature, sorry. You may want to consider the Gossamer Threads Community instead, it was still in beta, so I made this simple plugin work for my needs instead.

# Plugins::GForum::GMailNewMessages
# Author : Mike Challis - ptcruiserclub.org
# Version : 1.0
# Updated : Fri Jan 30 21:37:44 2004
# Requires: Must have GForum and GMail installed on same domain,
# and have Auth_GForum plugin installed in GMail
# Versions: Made for GForum 1.2.0 and GMail 2.2.0

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Michael J. Challis - CRUZN8R - PT Cruiser Club - http://www.ptcruiserclub.org

http://www.ptcruiserclub.org/forum

I have just replaced both plugin attachments in the post above because I have made two bug fixes:
The GMailNewMessages plugin was making errors in the server logs because of an active db statement handle that did not finish (fixed).
Auth_GForum had a slight change to properly lookup remote_username for users who did not check "use cookies".

If you had downloaded these plugins, please re-download.
Again, if you use these plugins, please report that you are, I would appreciate the feedback.

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Michael J. Challis - CRUZN8R - PT Cruiser Club - http://www.ptcruiserclub.org

http://www.ptcruiserclub.org/forum