Integration with external DB and Session management

my current database doesnt have a userid, only username which is a primary key

- No it won't work. Having integer unique ID is a main condition.

my password field is stored as clear text..not encrypted. Can it still work?

- Yes it can. You just need to modify bb_cookie.php's function writePwd() - and probably some few other things.

my regdate is defined as VARCHAR storing only the date without time. Can it still work?

- Yes it can.

Thanks for the lightning fast reply! ....one more questions..as mention, i already have a username which is a primary key....when i try to add another auto increment id field it fails...so i guess i cant get it to integrate..is there any workaround?

All I could say that you must have a numerical auto increment field for ID. Since database handles it automatically, I don't know why it would be not possible just add this field. This is the only workaround ;-)

alter table users add user_id integer(10) not null auto_increment primary key;

oh because my username is already a primary key and hence i couldn't add user_id as another primary key...unless of course i drop the primary key that belongs to username...let me go and see if dropping it will affect any part of my code...thanks alot..really appreciate it...=D

ok..i managed to get it to work..didn't expect it to be that simple...I have tried other forums and its almost impossible to integrate any exisiting member database...Thanks minibb team for making this so easy!

These are gold words which I've been even put under our "People Says" section on the first page. Thank you - we're glad our software's worth for you!

Got a quick question here I have 2 cookies from my script
1 is the user name the other is the id
it does not store the password cookie

So is it possible to drop the password side of the log in so that
it will work with the username cookie only

or as in if cookie 'username' login

It is possible, in bb_cookie.php there is a function user_logged_in() which should you need to modify to compare by the received ID and the username.

Hello,
I just discovered miniBB and have been looking for software like this for a long time, for the fact that you can integrate it with your existing site and make it use the exisitng User's table.

So I went through all the instructions, and have been able to work perfectly with a test members table that mimics my main site's members table. And I have made the forum fit the graphic setup of my main site.

So afte testing the synchronization, it seems to work great in IE, Safari, and Navigator.
But when I tested it today in Firefox, it didn't work.

Has anyone else encountered this issue?
I tried to search for the answer in the forum, but didn't find anything, so hopefully someone can help me out...

Thanks!
Drkphnx7

I am myself using Firefox heavily as the primary tool when integrating miniBB. If integrated correctly, miniBB should definitely work in all browsers. The browser actually is not the reason of investigation here, it's up to your own mistake in customization.

You can also try Flock browser which uses about the same engine like Firefox; if it doesn't work there it must be your customization problem indeed, like in 99.5% of all cases ;).

Hi Guys,
I figured out what the problem was...

My website could be accessed by either typing in "domain.com" or "www.domain.com"...
Which I found out is not good for a member's site because.....

When logging into the members section of the site, if I logged in to just "domain.com", and then went to "domain.com/forum", it would work fine. The cookie would work and I could use the forum as that logged in member. But if I logged into "domain.com" and then went to "www.domain.com/forum", it wouldn't recognize me as logged into the forum. So I realized that the domain name has to either be with or without www on all pages.

So the workaround I found for this, which I'm glad this happened so I now I know, is to create an htaccess file that does a 301 redirect to automatically resolve the domain name to "www.domain.com", so if any user tries to put in domain.com it automatically goes to www.domain.com. Which also is more useful for search engine optimization. So traffic stats aren't split up.

So what was happening to me was when I tried the forum at home on IE, Nav and Safari, I was always using just domain.com for my resolution and therefore everything looked good. But at the office, I ended up logging in to www.domain.com url but then going to domain.com/forum and so I thought the programming was messed up but it was just the url issue.

Hope that is clear enough and explaination, incase anyone has this problem in the future.

BTW, I LOVE MINIBB, IT'S EXACTLY WHAT I HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR.

Thanks.
Drkphnx7

Drkphnx7
That's absolutely correct, I didn't even think about such case, because I thought every programmer integrating with miniBB should know about it by default ;-) If you read the integration guide carefully, it says:

...the domain name which cookie should be recognized from; for example it may be www.cookiedomain.com (meaning it will work only for 'www' domain) or .cookiedomain.com (meaning it will work from any sub-domain as well). Cookie may be read only from the same domain it is set.

Well I also put there a note that domains without 'www' and with 'www' are different things. Your solution with 301 redirect is also correct in that case.

Hi. This thread is still alive:)

How is it to install plugins after this integration? Are plugins affected by doing this?

I would like to have avatars in my forum.

Plug-ins are possible to install of course. Just follow their instructions and instead of minibb_users table apply modifications to your own users table, if needed. Many add-ons are not even tied with user profiles at all.