How difficult would it be to create a website which allows a user to register with multiple websites at the same time? e.g. Say I have five websites which need my users would want to sign up to in one go.

The obvious barriers that I can see are how to communicate with another website without being seen as 'spam'. How to pass through the spam deterrants, i.e. 'type the following letters'

One reason I want to do this is that I am involved in some 'pay per lead' affiliate programs and usually my visitors will only sign up to the very first program on the list because of the effort in signing up to more than one. It would benefit both myself and my customer if they could select which programs they wanted to register from a list and then do so in one form completion.

Any help would be very much appreciated!

The only way i can see it being done is by having ONE database that hold sthe user details.

On each site, they just query and update that one DB.

Depends on the other sites, they will need to have some mechanism (API) to allow your site backend system to communicate with their site backend system.

Originally Posted by lynxus

The only way i can see it being done is by having ONE database that hold sthe user details.

On each site, they just query and update that one DB.

Thanks.

I don't think I'd be able to get these sites to query my database as they are huge sites and my site is fairly new. Still useful to consider though.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Depends on the other sites, they will need to have some mechanism (API) to allow your site backend system to communicate with their site backend system.

So similar to the above post by Lynxus where they would query a database which was populated at my end?

Is there no way to pass form information from one site to another or is it just the spam deterrant software which would be a problem?

Thanks for the reply.

So similar to the above post by Lynxus where they would query a database which was populated at my end

No. That would work for several sites that are in YOUR control.
I read your post the same way first time through.

Is there no way to pass form information from one site to another or is it just the spam deterrant software which would be a problem?

You can use a POST or GET from a server side script but as you surmise it would be blocked by anti spam measures, because it's exactly the thing they are intended to block.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

No. That would work for several sites that are in YOUR control.
I read your post the same way first time through.

You can use a POST or GET from a server side script but as you surmise it would be blocked by anti spam measures, because it's exactly the thing they are intended to block.

Sorry to be dense but am i understanding this correctly..

As I understand what you are saying, it is possible to transfer information from one form to another even between different websites however I would somehow have to get their permission to 'allow my site in' past the spam protection/not show the 'type these letters'..

My confusion is because I though it were only possible to use post/get when you control the whole site.

I would have thought the spam protection was there to prevent robots from registering with these sites. As my site would still be registering real users who are interested in using their site I don't see how it can be considered as spam.

Your site sending an automated query to the page IS a bot!

My confusion is because I though it were only possible to use post/get when you control the whole site.

Nope how do you think things such as payment gateways work?
The site send a POST query to the processing merchant with all the data in it.

Provided you have a way of communicating with the third parties (such as an API) a single form on your site could send data to several remote systems in the form they understand.

It's how sites that query several search engines work, they don't go and physically fill the search form in, they send a HTTP Request to a URL and then read the HTTP response to return the data.

This link for instance http://www.google.com/search?hl=en-GB&q=Yahoo sends a GET query to Google, and returns the response to the browser.

Server side queries are EXACTLY the same, and when the response comes back the server code has to decide what it means.

For the most part you only have to deal with the VISIBLE part of the Internet and have no need to understand how HTTP communication works. So it remains the Developers "black art"

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Your site sending an automated query to the page IS a bot!


Nope how do you think things such as payment gateways work?
The site send a POST query to the processing merchant with all the data in it.

Provided you have a way of communicating with the third parties (such as an API) a single form on your site could send data to several remote systems in the form they understand.

It's how sites that query several search engines work, they don't go and physically fill the search form in, they send a HTTP Request to a URL and then read the HTTP response to return the data.

This link for instance http://www.google.com/search?hl=en-GB&q=Yahoo sends a GET query to Google, and returns the response to the browser.

Server side queries are EXACTLY the same, and when the response comes back the server code has to decide what it means.

For the most part you only have to deal with the VISIBLE part of the Internet and have no need to understand how HTTP communication works. So it remains the Developers "black art"

Thanks for the explanation. I didn't think of it like that. Will have to look further into how that code would work.

I suppose I could approach some of these sites and ask them about it but they probably wouldn't be interested as I currently have a small site. I still don't think it's spam if I'd just be aiding them with the sign up of new users which is what they survive on.

CAPTCHA (the anti spam measure) stands for

Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.

A script sending a request is a computer not a human so it fails the test, because it is meant to. It does NOT matter whether it is a legitimate request or a spam request, it is a computer making the request not a human.
Forms are made for humans to use, APIs are meant for scripts to use. Bot serve the same purpose but for different agents.
An API request could also have a KEY associated with it to identify the sender as being legitimate.