If I setup each "Root-Level Category"(RLC) as it's own installation.
Then setup a crontab to run every ?? minutes which runs a script to replicate the w3t_Users table accross all RLC's...something like this

<START PRETEND REPLICATION SCRIPT>
#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/mysqldump --user=DBUser --password=DBpw --opt --tables UBBDBName w3t_Users > /backup/UBB/Users_Temp.sql
mysql --user=DBUser --password=DBpw RLC1 < /backup/UBB/Users_Temp.sql
mysql --user=DBUser --password=DBpw RLC2 < /backup/UBB/Users_Temp.sql
mysql --user=DBUser --password=DBpw RLC3 < /backup/UBB/Users_Temp.sql
mysql --user=DBUser --password=DBpw RLC4 < /backup/UBB/Users_Temp.sql
mysql --user=DBUser --password=DBpw RLC5 < /backup/UBB/Users_Temp.sql
mysql --user=DBUser --password=DBpw RLC6 < /backup/UBB/Users_Temp.sql
rm -f /backup/UBB/Users_Temp.sql
<END PRETEND REPLICATION SCRIPT>

*HOW could you disable the user creation and password changing features in all the RLC's so they would have to use the main Forum?

What do you think ?
Will this work?

Thanks, Bill