March 16, 2006

Authentication system plug-in for vBulletin

Task
Avoid two sets of usernames and passwords as well as having to login twice. Design syncronization process of the accounts. Force automatic invisible login to bulletin board upon first login into staff area.

More Info
- Beta-tested and permanently implemented on production version of vBulletin ver. 3.0.7.

- Download vB force login code. Please be sure that you will be using it at your own risk!

- View code in user-friendly viewer.

- Official beta release at vBulletin.org.

This plug-in was written to solve a problem of having two sets of usernames and passwords. One set of credentials was required to login to Intranet/Staff Area of an institution. Another set of credentials was required to login to vBulletin. This was a very redundant and unnecessary process for users. Additionally and more importantly, this discouraged users from using bulletin board system (vBulletin)

Thus, this plug-in was built with idea of vBulletin for our website, and not our website for vBulletin simply because we use our own multi-level authentication system.

This problem was solved in two steps:
1. One way syncronize user data from our own authentication system into vBulletin.
2. During the process of login into our authentication system, force seamless login into vBulletin.