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Complicated site structure based on LinksSQL/Vbulletin

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Complicated site structure based on LinksSQL/Vbulletin
I am already using Links SQL on one of my sites - www.meowhoo.com and now I wonder about adding to my main site - www.thecatsite.com. This is a bit long, so please bear with me...

TCS has many sections and I wish to have several of them on database with one central login for all users. I want the user to login with one username/password and then be able to access the following services -

1. Forums - already run by Vbulletin. I understand that can be combined with LSQL.

2. Cat Pages - where users upload pages of their cats + some text and info about the cat and the system creates individual web pages for each cat (I have this feature currently working on another domain, operated by a custom ASP application which I don't like very much).

3. Links Section - I need something simple here a directory like the sort created by Links 2.0.

4. Cat E-cards - I have a script that sends the cards and I currently have several hundreds of cards to choose from. I thought about having them all on a central database rather than having to manually code their html pages.

The main point would be that I'm looking for a central users login for all of those functions as well as for a system that will allow me to create different sub-sections - links, e-cards, cat pages "gallery" and still work with my exisitng forums.

I know that LSQL can do each of the sections seperately - but is it possible to use one copy of LSQL that will hold all of the different sections with one central user login?

If you love cats - visit www.TheCatSite.com

Visit my LinkSQL based Cat Site - www.Meowhoo.com
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Re: [Anat] Complicated site structure based on LinksSQL/Vbulletin In reply to
Hi,

Unfortunately, it is not going to be a trivial matter to tie everything you listed together. Even VBulletin, for which we have an Auth plugin to Links SQL cannot really be tied into Gossamer Community because it pretty much requires a GT product user database to connect to at this point. We'll be building API's for other third party programs to connect to Gossamer Community's central user database, but that is still down the road.

The Cat pages and the Links section would definitely be candidates to be run by Links SQL, but you'd need two different installations as the fields are likely to be very different. Also, one would require Detailed pages while the other would not.

To integrate the ECards script into Community would require some work, depending on how that program stores its user information and how it handles authentication.

As for the forum, unless you switch over to Gossamer Forum, you will have to wait till we come up with a hook into VBulletin's user database for Gossamer Community. Which might not be far off, we have lots of experience with it now.

In short, what you laid out sounds like the best way to move forward, but the technical obstacles and the costs might prove to be quite high.

Jack.
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Re: [Jack] Complicated site structure based on LinksSQL/Vbulletin In reply to
Thanks for the info! I'm putting things on hold right now for those reasons - I'll be focusing on a new design and increasing traffic. I'll make sure to check in when the time comes for me to do the db integration for the whole site.

If you love cats - visit www.TheCatSite.com

Visit my LinkSQL based Cat Site - www.Meowhoo.com