My website uses phpList for a subscription based e-mail list manager (http://tincan.co.uk/phplist) and uses phpBB for a bulletin board service similar to the bulletin board you are now reading (http://www.phpbb.com/) and also has some sections of the website that are password protected (at the moment using CHMOD settings).

Is there a way I can have users register as members of the site and give them the option on the single registration form to also join the bulletin board and also sign up for the mailing lists? ie. have them enter a username and password once and put that into the membership database of the mailing lists and the bulletin board, so they have one "all inclusive" membership?

thanks in advance

Patrick

Ottawa, Canada
webmaster for
http://TheWestVillage.ca

The "easiest" way would be to amend/add a new table to the phpBB db ... I say "easiest" in the widest sense possible as playing with the phpBB db is a bit tricky and can cause ALOT of problems but seeing as that is the biggest, it would be a pain to recreate it anywhere else.

so you mean I would basically add the "columns" from the phplist db, into the phpbb database? so that the information stored about each user in the list becomes part of the information stored about the users for the BB? (essentially merge everything into the user db of the phbBB systerm?)

(this is, of course, presuming I first reconcile the users who already exist between the 2 db's).

is that what you mean?

thanks

Yes. Thats basicaly it.

There is another way, not that I know how to do it, but there is.

Bridging. Create a php or other server side script that can read, write and execute (CHMOD 755) to the various db and when each db is accessed, the information firstly passes through the script, then into the database, whilst checking the other db to find matches to the input and / or output query.

That is possible, but as we know PHP/MySQL are server side and therefore, the least amount of code parsing and SQL queries that we can use, the better.

1) Less load on the server
2) Quicker query time
3) Bridging queries and db's can become complicated, keeping the code together and simple make for less stress