Duplicate [Suggestion] XenForo Connect

[Onimua]

Sort of sprung up from when I was going to reply to this thread, but I decided to make it a new thread since this would be different from the approach brought up there.

Similar to Facebook Connect, it would allow administrators to build sites on other domains and by including a file/provide a login and password, you can plug into an XF installation and pull information as needed via API calls.

For example, I can have DomainA be my XenForo installation and DomainB would another site that does not have an XF installation on it. If I want to build a customized experience, I could simply include a file from DomainA and include it on DomainB.

Once that's done, the user could simply log into the site on DomainB and all their information (username, avatar, email, usergroup permissions) get passed to it. If I want to get any other information, I can use a simple call to get posts or threads by them, but mainly I can then know who a user is on DomainB and handle it how I want.

 

[Ville]

Something of your interest:
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/using-xenforo-permission-outside-of-xenforo.7585/

Perfect! Thanks!

 

[TNCclubman]

Lets say in the future, people dont want to go to Facebook for all their social interaction since its running away with people's privacy and turning it into an advertising billboard over there and instead little niche sites like our xenforo sites with the same abilities for interaction with their friends.

What if we as board owners could 'connect' with other xenforo sites on a case by case basis to allow our members to 'jump' from one forum to another. ie complete user interaction between boards. So you take your account from 1 xF site, and it allows you to post on another, follow people receive notifications etc. As admins we can prevent users from 'entering' our individual sites so the admin powers will be imposed on the 'guests' from other xF sites.

This would make being a member of an xF site very valuable and would also help push xenforo to other webmasters looking to start a community knowing that there is a several million strong user base out there ready to interact on your forum.

What do you guys think and what else can we do that is not being done anywhere right now.

 

[Simon]

I really do like the idea of this and no doubt that sometime in the future there will be mods that can enable this. I guess though for this to really work there will have to be some kind of central system that stores the user data just in the same way we allow Facebook users to log into xenforo sites.

 

[James]

I had a discussion about creating something like this with someone a couple of years ago.

It's a complicated process really, and it could potentially expose a lot of data. You'd need authentication schemes and such like (too many things to name really).

 

[TNCclubman]

Is there nothing that has arised in the past several months in terms of calls or software that can bring this to reality? I mean xF is eons ahead of vB's antiquated technology...

maybe a string gets generated and attached to every user when its created that will be recognized with all our xF's and is instantly a new user is created on the new forum? Kind of a quick user signup and it grabs all the basic info for your user account. Also in order to have your posts and followers travel with you, maybe have a table that stores the original location (website) where the user followed you so if you click the user on your list it links back to that original site?

 

[James]

Is there nothing that has arised in the past several months in terms of calls or software that can bring this to reality? I mean xF is eons ahead of vB's antiquated technology...

maybe a string gets generated and attached to every user when its created that will be recognized with all our xF's and is instantly a new user is created on the new forum? Kind of a quick user signup and it grabs all the basic info for your user account. Also in order to have your posts and followers travel with you, maybe have a table that stores the original location (website) where the user followed you so if you click the user on your list it links back to that original site?

Well there's only really 3 options... none of which are feasible (IMO).
Option 1: Allow other XF sites to access your database to grab the information required.
Option 2: Send the information, on request of an authentication key, to the site that requests it.
Option 3: A centralised server that distributes information to each site in that network.

Is it really feasible to allow other sites to have access to your user content at its own will?

 

[TNCclubman]

No. definitely dont want to go that route. Was thinking more along the lines as either

a) a new user account gets generated on the other site but copies the essential info from the original account and fills in the appropriate info for you automatically (like facebook connect)

or

b) a kind of 'guest' account, but with info already displaying. So a new type of user is built in. Guest, Registered, and existing xF member from another site. So if you follow them, it links to the home site for that user.

 

[Kier]

Don't Facebook, Twitter and OpenID already provide a mechnism to achieve this kind of thing?

 

[Paul B]

I'm fairly sure this has previously been suggested.

 

[a legacy reborn]

I'm fairly sure this has previously been suggested.

I think so too is this similar? http://xenforo.com/community/threads/suggestion-xenforo-connect.2327/#post-43551

 

[anotheralias]

Well no matter how often it's been suggested or what the problems would be in doing it - I'D LOVE IT. I think that's one of the reasons why Facebook was a runaway train: you sign up once and voila, you're in Facebook World.

This might give small forums a chance in hell against Facebook and the Big Boards.

 

[dvsDave]

Don't Facebook, Twitter and OpenID already provide a mechnism to achieve this kind of thing?

http://productblog.37signals.com/pr...-retiring-our-support-of-openid-on-may-1.html

OpenID never really lived up to it's potential. I don't think that a centralized system is the way to go, though. I think that the owners/webmasters of different sites need to contact one another to join groups of sites that have a shared key (randomly generated by the site that creates the group) and that members are free to move about the different sites of the group. Upon first visit to another site in the same group, it will say, "we see you have a membership at www.xyzcommunity.com would you like to login using the same username and password?" (the second site scans for cookies of the member sites and id's the primary cookie, thus getting the url for the secondary authentication that takes place to ensure the user's consent).

To ensure continuity, I think that when groups get over x size, a secondary or tertiary master backup must be assigned to a group member site.

Make sense?

 

[TNCclubman]

What about an iframe that is just above the quick reply box that checks for a xenforo cookie and uses that info somehow to display the avatar etc.... kind of like how the Facebook iframe comment boxes work around the net? Is that a possible avenue to pursue?

 

[James]

Definitely not a v1 feature IMO. The question I find myself asking myself repeatedly is "Do the majority of forums really need this?" As much as I love the concept of it, it just might not, realistically, be useful to the majority.

 

[anotheralias]

Definitely not a v1 feature IMO. The question I find myself asking myself repeatedly is "Do the majority of forums really need this?" As much as I love the concept of it, it just might not, realistically, be useful to the majority.

I think that depends on whether you're asking, a majority of BIG forums, or a majority of small or starter forums.

 

[James]

I think that depends on whether you're asking, a majority of BIG forums, or a majority of small or starter forums.

Even some of the big forums won't require linking, really. But yeah, all-in-all it does seem a feature for the big forums as opposed to the small ones. I know of a couple of small ones that could link though.

 

[EQnoble]

Would there be some kind of way to pull whole posts as feeds and allow affiliated sites to add each others domains and a generate a key ( stored in individuals acp ) to share with each other ( entering the key in the ACP to validate syndication rights) ...so that posts don't get truncated at all.

I have been playing with the feeds and have added one from here, the actual username from xf shows up as the the poster so it kind of has the potential already. A secondary system could be incorporated that would allow permissions based full syndication of full threads and forums and the updated posts as they get posted for forums/threads that have checked in the acp for "allow full syndication". This would allow for data sharing without syncing databases which should eliminate the inherent security issues of cross domain login procedures and such.

Just thinking aloud here...

 

[James]

Would there be some kind of way to pull whole posts as feeds and allow affiliated sites to add each others domains and a generate a key ( stored in individuals acp ) to share with each other ( entering the key in the ACP to validate syndication rights) ...so that posts don't get truncated at all.

That would probably be the best way to go about it. What would you do about permissions? Would permissions be stored (as usergroups) to allow users to access what you want them to access? What about their permissions for different usergroups? You wouldn't want their registered users accessing your staff area, but you might want their staff accessing your staff area... etc.

I have been playing with the feeds and have added one from here, the actual username from xf shows up as the the poster so it kind of has the potential already. A secondary system could be incorporated that would allow permissions based full syndication of full threads and forums and the updated posts as they get posted for forums/threads that have checked in the acp for "allow full syndication". This would allow for data sharing without syncing databases which should eliminate the inherent security issues of cross domain login procedures and such.

I'm wondering what username clashes would do - would you prefix it with your site's name? XF_James as opposed to James. etc.

 

[EQnoble]

That would probably be the best way to go about it. What would you do about permissions? Would permissions be stored (as usergroups) to allow users to access what you want them to access? What about their permissions for different usergroups? You wouldn't want their registered users accessing your staff area, but you might want their staff accessing your staff area... etc.

Well I know the way I worded things was a mess so I'll try redeeming myself here...

I think generally speaking xf should include a syndication feature specifically for allowing xf boards to share posts...

The enable and generate key option (options in ACP) would turn the system on and give you a random key which you can change or leave default and share with your prospective allied boards. They in turn give you theirs and now you are authorized.

Once authorized one would need to select the forums that can be shared, to do that one would navigate to the Applications section of the acp and go to a new section underneath node permissions named "XF Affiliate permissions" or something along those lines, selecting the forums that should be allowed to be shared and also having a field in the acp as well that a user could paste the address of a thread into and select ok to add that as an individual post.

When the post is created by rss from another xf site, it shows a username but they are a guest with information populated from the feed source. This would work the same with the exception that; if a user were to sign up on your board that already had a posting from them via feed it would not effect it because they don't actually exist in your db yet. They would still have to sign up which would give them the security of generating a unique password for the two different sites and not effect the posts coming from rss as they are essentially guests with some markup in the member information. To actually make the forums look synced one would just have to register the feed to post in a forum that is titled exactly the same and wait for feeds....

Which should help answer this...

I'm wondering what username clashes would do - would you prefix it with your site's name? XF_James as opposed to James. etc.

/\ my site
|
So I would say no there shouldn't be a need for prefixed names though I may be wrong. I have a hunch it is just text and not internally in the system as a user when posting from feeds xf.


So in the end all is the same for the users...they will have to register to a new site if they want to post there but the site owners can share the posts seamlessly without ever effecting their community or sacrificing security. I think


This has been on my mind , but until I saw this thread I thought I was a lunatic.

 

[dvsDave]

username conflicts are easy. Just run a check when you go to do a handshake with the site with the other xenforo cookie, and if there's a conflict, ask the user to select a new username. There's no smooth way to handle it, but allowing the user to select an alternate is a much more user-friendly option than appending a prefix or suffix to the username (the user would never remember the username)