Central Registration System

[ManagerJosh]

A central registration system would be most appreciated. This way I can hook several XF forums together to power a small network of forums . Or any future XF products

 

[Sylar]

Personally I see this as being one large time stealer. You run into a lot of problems here and then end up wasting all the time you spent trying to make it. I am not saying this is a horrible idea and people shouldn't support it, I am just saying it sort of defeats the 'registering' purpose. You want people to register on your forum, not just register on one and have access to your forum. Plus I see this as being a bit of a security risk. Anyways, let's see how you manage to make it; it sounds interesting

 

[Forsaken]

Personally I see this as being one large time stealer. You run into a lot of problems here and then end up wasting all the time you spent trying to make it. I am not saying this is a horrible idea and people shouldn't support it, I am just saying it sort of defeats the 'registering' purpose. You want people to register on your forum, not just register on one and have access to your forum. Plus I see this as being a bit of a security risk. Anyways, let's see how you manage to make it; it sounds interesting

If they register on one, it allows them to use a single login over all of your sites making it easier for them to post content.

 

[Sylar]

I still have to say the same thing. I understand if it is still on the same person's site, however I still think they should take the time to register. Let's see how it turns out, eh?

 

[Forsaken]

I still have to say the same thing. I understand if it is still on the same person's site, however I still think they should take the time to register. Let's see how it turns out, eh?

I don't understand the logic.

Most of the time, you want to make registering quick and easy, and as take out as many steps as possible. A central registration system would allow them to register on one site, and it would register them on all the slave forums so they are still registered, they just do not go through the steps x amount of times.

As an example say I wish to register to a network of sites (GameFront) and they have many other sites that are interesting to me, but I do not feel like registering for each specific site. I might register on one other of their sites, but am likely to register on more than that because the process is redundant and a waste of time.

Now, if they had a central registration system (which I think they do), I would only have to register once and gain access to all their sites, and have the same data. They get me registered on every site linked to the main site, and gain extra content because I didn't have to go through the registration process multiple times. I get to avoid a gruelingly annoying registration process, and get to post on all their sites with the minimum of effort .

 

[Sylar]

I completely understand, however I guess I just don't see the use in it as I usually only have one or two sites going at a time, therefore it wouldn't be much of a benefit.

 

[Forsaken]

I completely understand, however I guess I just don't see the use in it as I usually only have one or two sites going at a time, therefore it wouldn't be much of a benefit.

This would only be beneficial to sites that have 2+ forums that are all in a related niche, or as a network of sites. Most people probably wouldn't wish to setup a network or would keep all of the content on a single site.

 

[Onimua]

I completely understand, however I guess I just don't see the use in it as I usually only have one or two sites going at a time, therefore it wouldn't be much of a benefit.

I imagine that when and if such a feature comes to the surface, it would be a separate add-on or feature you have to manually enable. I agree it won't be for most sites, but there are still quite a number that would like to use such a feature.

 

[Deebs]

For SSO why not use SAML and an OpenID Provider library? The technology is already there and used by some of the biggest sites on the net.

 

[ManagerJosh]

For SSO why not use SAML and an OpenID Provider library? The technology is already there and used by some of the biggest sites on the net.

It does not meet the requirement of a user maintaining a single identity across your entire network of forums and sites

 

[Deebs]

It does not meet the requirement of a user maintaining a single identity across your entire network of forums and sites

Why doesn't it? It supports authorisation and the use of a single identity. You would have to perform some user mapping in the background but I believe it would work. A prime example is Google, login once and access any of their services without having to login again. This is based on OpenID.

 

[ManagerJosh]

Why doesn't it? It supports authorisation and the use of a single identity. You would have to perform some user mapping in the background but I believe it would work. A prime example is Google, login once and access any of their services without having to login again. This is based on OpenID.

The requirement states that a username of "UserA" is "UserA" across your entire network. So when you access Website 1, Website 2, Website 3, the username of "Deebs" is reserved for you. Even if Website 4 was to pop up later in a year's time, the username "Deebs" is permanently yours.

Having a centralized registration system would be acting as the control to this.

The loop hole in your suggestion comes over an extended period of time.

Upon initial registration, yes your name "Deebs" is yours, but ONLY at Website 1. If you never visit Website 2, or visit Website 3, the username is never held in reserve for you. You have to visit those sites, and register before it becomes yours.

The same applies if you add a new site. If Website 4 comes online and someone just happens to beat you to the punch in registering a name, its theirs and not yours. Deebs belongs to someone else even though you hold the username.

However with OpenID, OpenID acts as the medium of initial registration to the centralized registration system. It would NOT act as a system to reserve your name. OpenID in fact is very similar to what we have with the Facebook Identity Services currently installed.

 

[The Dark Wizard]

I want something like this so I can make a network.

 

[ManagerJosh]

I want something like this so I can make a network.

I agree! Do contribute to the use case discussion. We're trying to figure out the flow, the requirements, and how to organize it

 

[Reeve of Shinra]

Perhaps I should mention that the ultimate goal (for me) is to be able to share content across sites as well.

- Central registration system to handle the logging in across a network of sites
- Ability to have "forum 1" show up on SiteA.com and SiteB.com.

I wont rehash the methods this could be accomplished by but ideally the central registration system would be one step towards that goal.

 

[Rigel Kentaurus]

Perhaps I should mention that the ultimate goal (for me) is to be able to share content across sites as well.

- Central registration system to handle the logging in across a network of sites
- Ability to have "forum 1" show up on SiteA.com and SiteB.com.

I wont rehash the methods this could be accomplished by but ideally the central registration system would be one step towards that goal.

That for me seems a little like asking too much for this system, though (the title is even Central Registration System). But I see your point. Some of this might even be possible using some simple RSS feed importing, thought that would not help with realtime and certainly if you, for example, want to have a thread appear and follow in two forums and two domains (Google would hate that, I am sure).

Now, if you just want forum 1 showing in Site B, you can just setup a link with a redirect to Site B, and it lands on that other forum. Of course, it would have a different style, and of course, threads do not show in search in Site A, so it is not quite the same, but still some solution.

I would ask for the Devs to have the registration first, and to enhance the APIs slowly to allow some of that to happen. That way modders could step up into creating hacks for sharing information between forums. Once a single replication schema is in place extending it is easier than creating the algorithm itself in the first place.

 

[Korenwolf]

I'm definitely signing! +1k
I'm was searching for this option, too bad it isn't functional yet. This would be a mayor asset for our gaming communities.

Sign up in one place and get acces to all forums in the network... briljant!

 

[J2A]

Bump!

Do you think this will be implemented at some point this year? I would love to be able to manage multiple sites through one central system, it would be the solution to many issues and as i understand i can't currently share one database through different Xenforo installs and still be able to customize and create different local aspects?

Would love this... currently own two licenses and it will become four or five soon.

 

[Reeve of Shinra]

I am willing to donate to the cause for this modification. If any coders are interested in taking on, please send me a PM with a quote.

 

[masterchief]

A central registration system would be most appreciated. This way I can hook several XF forums together to power a small network of forums . Or any future XF products

I would never be interested in anything like that. Networking message posts in designated threads is different all together and I would jump at that for sure.

 

[Rigel Kentaurus]

I thought I would share how I am "trying" to share user logins across 2 different Xenforo installs on completely separate domains

I read this in some other thread, and, I strongly think this is completely not the way to go.

I saw this implemented for vBulletin too and while it might work, it ends up being a cheap hack, the earlier way was creating symbolic links the tables itself, this one creates views. We could as easy have triggers in the database but that does not make it better. An alternative implementation (the first ones) were actually modifying the query calls themselves.

From the architecture perspective, this is not a replication solution, and it is not even a valid master-master scenario (which would be the closest definition for this), it is just two installations actually pointing to the same data. You create a high coupling between the two instances (as they point to the same data), and while mysql has gotten better, multi-writes start becoming a problem after certain amount of traffic.

You are making scalability impossible, as you cannot easily have Forum A running in one server and Forum B running in other server. Some people tried to extend the paradigm with nfs mounts of symbolic links to mysql data.. it just does not work that way. The servers are tied to the same mysql instance most likely forever.

I understand the eagerness to have a working solution, but these kind of hacks create more trouble in the long run that it is worth. It is a quick hack to have something working. Better than nothing, but architecture is not one area that I am willing to compromise for.

A good solution would work .... 1) out of the box 2) without funny setup and tweaking on the server 3) naturally 4) allow all kind of information to be in sync (users, threads, posts, avatars, login, etc), would provide an integrated networking experience for the sites.

I left some ideas here, http://xenforo.com/community/threads/suggestion-central-registration-system.975/page-6#post-214386, and I really think this has to be coded from the core.