Integration with external / forum user database

Q: Do you support integration with existing user database? I already have a lot of users in my database.

A: Yes we do. First of all, our software uses Forms Authentication, so it is very easy to achieve Single-Sign-On for your entire site, including the forum.

Let's look at the the following 3 scenarios for user db integration, all through the standard ASP.NET Membership Provider model:

1. I have my own members database + membership provider
2. I have a membership database and management system, but I don't have a membership provider ready.
3. I don't have a membership database, and wish to use our forum's database for storing membership information for my entire site.

 

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_Scenario 1: You already have your own membership database + membership provider, and wish to integrate it with our software.

Our software has built-in support for interacting with external ASP.NET Membership Provider. All you have to do is configure the forum's web.config to interact with your membership provider, and that's it.
 
With this option, you don't have to import your existing users to the forum's database. Our built-in support for membership provider takes care of importing and authenticating through your membership provider, and you do not need to modify any code (other than the configuration section in web.config).
 
This is the best way to integrate your own user database with our software, as we can manage user passwords through your membership provider as well.

For example, if you are already using the SqlMembershipProvider that ASP.NET provides to manage your users, you can plug it right into our software without any issue.

To integrate with your membership provider, do the following:

1. Put the membership provider information into forum's web.config file (both the membership section and its associated connectionString)
2. In the forum's web.config file (same file as above), set the EnableMembershipIntegration key under appSettings to true

Once the above is set up correctly, to achieve single sign on (SSO), refer to this SSO guide.
 
Note: if your own membership provider does not store user name in the forms authentication cookie (e.g. your store email instead), you will need an alternative method to do SSO. See this custom forms authentication technique for guidance.
 

_Scenario 2: You already have a membership database, but you don't have a membership provider built.

 
If you don't want to do this additional programming, we have our own membership provider for the forum user database. You can use our forum membership provider in your own registration code to import users to the forum user db.

For example, with our membership provider installed, you can use the standard provider method, Membership.CreateUser(), in your registration routine to insert new users directly into our forum db, OR you can call this method repeatedly to import existing users into our software.

You can also call the MembershipUser.ChangePassword() method on your password changing form to submit the new password to our forum database (this may not be necessary because you can use Forms Authentication cookie to achieve single sign on).

Please refer to the scenario 3 below for more info on our own membership provider.
 
Alternatively, you can also import users from your member db to our forum using the Fast Member Import feature available in the Admin control panel. You will supply a list of users (name, email, password) and the software will batch import them for you.
 

_Scenario 3: You don't have a membership database, and wish to use our forum's database for storing membership information for your entire site.

In this case, you can use the free Membership Provider we provide with our software (through the Site Integration Package, the SIP). In other words, you can

1. Build a login page on your site and once a user is logged in, he is logged in to the forum as well - Single Sign On, and vice versa.
2. Build a registration page for your site and have users inserted into our database.
3. In addition, with our membership provider, you can
   1. Delete users from your site
   2. Allows Users to change / reset password
   3. Update Users' Email
   4. Approve users / Unlock (un-ban) users
   5. Build member list
   6. Look for users using email / login with wildcard character (%) support
   7. Get number of online users

A sample application is provided to show you the above functions, so you won't have any issue using this provider.
Our membership provider inherits the Web.Security.MembershipProvider without adding any additional functionalities. However, our membership provider does not support Password Retrieval and Password Q & A. Passwords are stored strictly using the Hash format in our DB.
 

Clarification about the membership provider we provide (the SIP)

To use our membership provider, you do not need to enable membership integration for the forum (on pg 8, point 7 in the full install manual). This setting is only necessary when you want the forum to talk to an external membership provider (e.g. the standard ASP.NET one as in Scenario 1 above), but in this case, there is not a membership provider the forum need to work with. The forum is already talking to its own database, and we just want our site to use the forum db through a membership provider interface that we provide (the SIP). So, no extra configuration is needed on the forum's own web.config file in this case.

ASPPlayground.NET
~ see our Version 4 plans here

Example Scenario:

We have an asp.net based system with a login/password setup for our members to access various areas of the system.

We also have committees that people can be members of.

And we want each committee to have a private forum area just for members of that committee.

Authentication for committee access is currently done by checking a member ship table for the various committees.

How can I use your software for this specific purpose?

Answer:

The forum software along with the membership provider discussed above can help with this scenario.

You can first refer to scenario 2 above to see how to use our membership provider for authentication / importing users into our db.

What we also have in the Site Integration Package (SIP) is a Role provider (in addition to the Membership provider), and one of the features of the Role provider allows you to assign members to certain user groups (in your case, committees).

The following is a step-by-step guide for setting up the desired environment:

1. Set up various forums, and some of which are marked "private" (no one can see other than committee members) for your committees.
2. Set up various user groups, one for each committee
3. Mark these user groups as the "Private User" for the private forums
4. Use our Membership provider and Role provider to
   1. Import your users into our system (Membership.CreateUser);
   2. Then, assign these users to the desired user group (committee) set up in step 2 (Roles.AddUserToRole)
5. Done.

ASPPlayground.NET
~ see our Version 4 plans here