UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums UBB.threads 6 Version 6 Support What is the best way to setup multiple forums with the same login credentials?

Howdy,

I'm looking to setup multiple forums under the same database...
I want the root to have a listing of multiple forums and then once going into a forum it starts the root from there with it's own listing of sections...much the same way when you start in this support area.

Any insight on this ?

Thanks, Billster2K

Now I can setup the following format:

Forum Categories -> Forum List -> Forum(postings)

I need to go one level higher:

Forum Sections -> Forum Categories -> Forum List -> Forum(postings)

Anyone know how while still using all the same database/userinfo ?

Thanks for any insight.

Cheers, Billster2K

welcome <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />

it has been requested a few times, but I don't think anyone has attempted it yet, and I am pretty sure it's not up for inclusion in the base code soon. If I see anything, I'll post it <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />

---
- Allen <img src="http://www.stand318.com/ubb/graemlins/wavey.gif" alt=" - " />
- Stand318
- UBBâ„¢ Developers Network | UBBThreadsâ„¢ Developers Network

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

Also, I suppose the way to navigate through all the RLC's would be to customize the "Generic Header" to include an entry for each RLC?
This would be the only way I can see it that you can provide the appearance that you are still within the same set of Forums...

The question from this is, would your login cookie retain the appropriate credential information to keep you logged into any RLC, seeing that the passwords would hash correctly?

Thanks again.

Cheers, Bill

OK, I have installed a second installation at the same root level as the first and ran the setup, including setting up the admin account.
After that I did a manual export of the w3t_Users table from the original setup and then did a manual import into the w3t_Users of the new setup.

I took one of my existing accounts and logged right into the new setup <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" />

Now I am going to try to run the same "Generic Header" for both setups with links to each on both...this should create a traverse in seperate DB's without needing to login each time.

The only limitation I can see with this is the time frame I setup on the replication crontab...otherwise a new user setup won't be able to login to an of the other RLC's until the crontab is run to add their user.

I sure would also like to know if anyone can tell me how to get rid of the User Management side in the extra RLC's ?

Cheers, Bill

OK,

I placed the identical "Generic Header" into both with URL's to both from the root level:
/UBB/ubbthreads.php
/UBB2/ubbthreads.php

This show up and works great...except one show stopper <img border="0" title="" alt="[Mad]" src="images/icons/mad.gif" />
The cookie or ??? is not carrying with me when I go from one to the other!
It knows all the userid's now in the new RLC, but it doesn't automatically carry this with me when I go between them.
IE> Login to UBB, then press the url for UBB2 on the generic header and I go to UBB2,but as guest <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="images/icons/frown.gif" />


IF I set both RLC's to use persistant connections and give them the same file above the root, will this work ?

Any help is appreciated, I think I'm actually getting closer to making this work!

Have you tried posting over at threads dev - try http://www.threadsdev.com - they seem to have some good coders that might be able to help.

B

B, thanks, I will try that also, but I will also continue to try here in the meantime.
Is that site part of this company?

Cheers, Bill

OK, so the crontab worked and replicated the w3t_Users table to the second RLC and I can use or see the users right away...

The problem now is that when I try to press the login in the new RLC, I get the following error instead of the login page:
We cannot proceed.
<SNIP>
Username/Password not found.

Please use your back button to return to the previous page.
<END SNIP>

Anyone have any idea why the login.php would be affected by the update of the w3t_Users table?

Thanks. Bill
Still trying <img border="0" title="" alt="[Eek!]" src="images/icons/shocked.gif" />

HOW could you disable the user creation and password changing features ?

hmm instead of replicating, couldnt you just point the second forum to the original mysql database?
i dont really know if that is possible but thought i would throw it out there anyway

Well, I thought of that, but I think that the boards for each category would start to show up on each others listings....?

Something I might try through, just to be sure.

Thanks for the input.

Cheers, Bill

what if you created multiple databases on the same server that replicated to eachother without overwriting
hmm maybe that wouldnt work after all
just a thought

I don't see this as an option, although I appreciate your time in posting.

Cheers, Bill

well why not just write a perl script that displays the info?
or php i guess ahah i always just use perl
i have created a site, with a login that snags the users/passwords out of the ubb database

You are using the UBB DB as the login credentials for your website and then what??? Using session info or cookies to track and use them throughout your site?

Thanks. Bill

The PHP code is encountering tons of errors after the replication occurs...

Havn't been able to work it out yet!

Can anyone provide me with a comparisom as to what the core differences are when someone is logged with these two different modes enabled?

I'm trying to figure out how their state is effected and passed on differently...

Thanks.

Cheers, Bill

From:
Admin->Settings->Edit Config Settings

A quarter of the way down you see the following:
If you are using cookies you can specify a path as well. Leaving this blank will make the cookies only available under the UBB.threads install directory. Setting this to / will make them available to your entire website.


Has anyone used this that they can comment on?

This might need to be enabled for the multiple forum session information to work?

Any insight would be great.

Thanks, Bill

When we originally went live, my config setting was set on "sessions". I am not sure what happen, but users saw pages of error messages. So I changed it to cookies and have not had any problems since.

Did INFOPOP give you any reasoning as to why these errors were occuring?
OR, did you trouble-shoot yourself and then just go with it after the change and the errors stopped?

Cheers, Bill

If you have 2 forums under the same domain then with a replicated user base then you'd need to set the cookie path to "/" so it will be available to the entire domain.

Another option to look at is the category seperation feature. If you don't have a lot of forums this might be an option. One set of forums can be linked to ubbthreads.php?Cat=1,2,3 and the second would be ubbthreads.php?Cat=4,5,6 The numbers would be changed to correspond to your actual category numbers but this only displays forums under those certain categories.

-------------------
Rick Baker
UBBThreads developer

Rick,

Here's the updates on my attempts:

(1) SET BOTH TO USE COOKIES
a) with blank paths -- FAIL
b) with SAME path -- FAIL
*LOCKED ME OUT OF LOGIN*
-I had to go into the master & slave and edit
the config.inc.php file and reset the cookie
path back to "" on both to get access again!
-NO files showed up in the cookie path?

(2) SET BOTH TO USE SESSIONS
a) with SAME path -- FAIL
-Will allow individual logins to master & slave
, but when logged in to one, I'm kicked out of
the login on the other! When attempting to
login to the other, you get "Username/Password
not found" error.

*All the above was done with cookie clearing on my
browser to ensure fresh loading...


SO, now I have these questions:

1) I notice that the U_SessionId changes with logout and login...how is this used? How would this affect the time-lapse of DB replication?

2) What is the U_TempPass used for?

3) Is the information in w3t_Online only used for information polling when someone goes into "Who's Online"?

4) What is U_TempPass used for ? It remains the same with Logout / Login.

Thanks for all your help.

Cheers, Bill

Forgot to address your other question:

I wouldn't mind that, but someone savy/encouragable enough, could simply chop the category numbers off of the url address and they will get a listing of all categories.
Regardless of the fact that they may not have permission to enter, it will still show them the Category title and the fact that it exists.

Also, the main outcome of my labour is to be able to have a ROOT level higher than what is available now in this tool...I see this accomplished by having multiple of your existing root levels, but I need to use the Username/Passwords to traverse these root levels.

Thanks again Rick.

Cheers, Bill

U_SessionId is used for authentication for that individual browser session. When a user logs in, a session id is generated and put into the sql table. This session id is then used for each call to authenticate() to make sure it's a valid user. When a user logs out, the session id is cleared. If they don't specifically log out it still gets reset the next time they login.

U_TempPass is used when a user requests a temporary password. This field gets populated with a temporary password that they can use to login 1 time. This makes it so if someone else requests a temporary password for another user, the user can still login with the original password since they didn't request the temporary themselves.

Yes, w3t_Online only stores data that is used for display when someone visits "Who's online"

-------------------
Rick Baker
UBBThreads developer

If I understand you correctly, it doesn't matter if my Username/Passwords are replicated at login time to the slave AND that my cookie/session matches, because until the DB has replicatd the MAIN to the SLAVE, it won't have the SessionId from the login yet, so it won't work?

If this is correct, can you tell me where/how to place a trigger that will run a script on login?
I can write a script that will replicate JUST the U_SessionId table to the SLAVE DB whenever someone logs in....otherwise, I will have to crontab this to run VERY frequently.

I am going to try this now, by logging into the MAIN and then replicating the DB manually, then trying to get into the SLAVE.

Cheers, Bill

OK...

I logged into MAIN and then went to SLAVE -- FAIL

I then logged out, cleared cookies, logged back into MAIN, went and ran my replicate script, then loaded the SLAVE...........SUCCESS !!!!!

SO, what is the best way to do this WITHOUT cronning the replication?
IE: How/where can I insert a statement to start the replicate script when someone logs in?


Thanks for everything.

Cheers, Bill

I'm not sure what type of script your replicate script is, but you could probably put some code into the do_login function of ubbt.inc.php (If you are running 6.0). There is a section in there that checks to make sure the username/password is valid and then sends the user onto the start_page function. You could probably call system("/path/to/your/replicatescript"); right before that.

-------------------
Rick Baker
UBBThreads developer

Rick,
Thanks for the info.
I will see if I can make that work.

Here is the script which I use to replicate the DB's:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/mysqldump --user=UBB --password=XXXX --opt --tables UBB w3t_Users > /backup/UBB/UBB_Users.sql
/usr/bin/mysql --user=UBB2 --password=XXXX UBB2 < /backup/UBB/UBB_Users.sql
rm -f /backup/UBB/UBB_Users.sql

I will update, after I attempt to add the script.

Thanks.

Cheers, Bill

Doesn't MySQL have builtin replication functionality?

Graeme

Moderator: UBB6 How Do I?

NOTE: Any email requests for support will be ignored.

"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't." --Douglas Adams

Graeme,

Please continue, you have my attention <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />

You have the structure that I'm looking to replicate, please provide info on this if you have it...

Thanks.

Cheers, Bill

I've never used it, but I knew I'd seen it.. You probably need a fairly recent version of the server..

Anyway, the section of the manual is here.

Now that I read things closer though, it looks like things are intended to be used with two separate MySQL servers. Not sure how things would work with two databases on the same server.

Graeme

Moderator: UBB6 How Do I?

NOTE: Any email requests for support will be ignored.

"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't." --Douglas Adams

Graeme,

I will have a look at the info at that URL.

Thanks, Bill

I have now tried the configuration from their site and the one from phpbuilder that is referenced at the bottom.

Either way...it's not doing what I am looking for.

IF I was running a completely mirrored version of the db, this would be very good...

Anyways, I am canning this whole concept, as it is becoming too much of a headache.

Perhaps Infopop will concider releasing their OneCommunity for a non-hosted release sometime in the future, or perhaps concider an update to a future release that offers one more level up in the tree...perhaps they could call it an Enterprise version and as such charge appropriately for it <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" />

Cheers, Bill


------------------------------------------------------------
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves,
or we know where we can find information upon it."

-Samuel Johnson

Howdy,

Just thinking that with the option to create your own table prefix and as such enabling multiple DB's...can anyone comment on how this might be able to accomplish running both DB's with the same user and session tables ? WITHOUT any replicating....

For instance...I create UBB1 and UBB2 DB's.
Tables show up as UBB1_Users & UBB2_Users, etc...
Is it possible to join the _Users tables so that both forums would use the same tables?

OR can anyone think of some way that this new DB naming option would help accomplish this ?

Thanks.

Cheers, Bill


------------------------------------------------------------
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves,
or we know where we can find information upon it."

-Samuel Johnson

Any luck with this?

I would like to do the same, and share the users between two or more copies of threads.

Surely there must be an easy way - perhaps the script can be altered to refer to xxx_members database, as now you can set different prefixes for different installations of threads.

Amy

Amy,

There are SEVERAL things I have tried to get this to work without replication of the DB's.

The problem is that there is more than just userid and password involved in the treads.

<pre> <PRE>
+----------------+------------------+------+-----+-----------+----------------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+----------------+------------------+------+-----+-----------+----------------+
| U_LoginName | varchar(64) | | MUL | | |
| U_Username | varchar(64) | | MUL | | |
| U_Password | varchar(32) | | | | |
| U_Email | varchar(50) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Fakeemail | varchar(50) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Name | varchar(100) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Totalposts | int(9) unsigned | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Laston | int(11) unsigned | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Signature | text | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Homepage | varchar(150) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Occupation | varchar(150) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Hobbies | varchar(200) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Location | varchar(200) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Bio | text | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Status | varchar(15) | | MUL | User | |
| U_Sort | int(4) unsigned | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Display | varchar(10) | | | | |
| U_View | varchar(10) | | | | |
| U_PostsPer | int(11) unsigned | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Number | int(9) unsigned | | PRI | NULL | auto_increment |
| U_EReplies | char(3) | | | | |
| U_Notify | char(3) | | | | |
| U_TextCols | char(3) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_TextRows | char(3) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Extra1 | varchar(200) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Extra2 | varchar(200) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Extra3 | varchar(200) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Extra4 | varchar(200) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Extra5 | varchar(200) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Post_Format | varchar(5) | | | | |
| U_Registered | int(11) unsigned | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Preview | varchar(5) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Picture | varchar(150) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_PictureView | char(3) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Visible | char(3) | YES | | yes | |
| U_PicturePosts | char(3) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_AcceptPriv | char(3) | YES | | yes | |
| U_RegEmail | varchar(50) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_RegIP | varchar(15) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Groups | varchar(250) | YES | | -1- | |
| U_Language | varchar(20) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Title | varchar(100) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_FlatPosts | char(2) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_TempPass | varchar(32) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Color | varchar(15) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_TempRead | text | YES | | NULL | |
| U_StyleSheet | varchar(50) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_TimeOffset | varchar(10) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Privates | int(4) unsigned | YES | | 0 | |
| U_FrontPage | varchar(20) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_ActiveThread | int(4) unsigned | YES | | NULL | |
| U_StartPage | char(2) | YES | | cp | |
| U_Favorites | varchar(250) | YES | | - | |
| U_ShowSigs | char(3) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_OnlineFormat | char(3) | YES | | NULL | |
| U_Rating | varchar(5) | YES | | 0 | |
| U_Rates | int(4) unsigned | YES | | 0 | |
| U_RealRating | int(1) unsigned | YES | | NULL | |
| U_PicWidth | int(4) unsigned | YES | | NULL | |
| U_PicHeight | int(4) unsigned | YES | | NULL | |
| U_SessionId | varchar(64) | | MUL | 0 | |
| U_Approved | char(3) | | MUL | | |
| U_Palprofile | int(11) unsigned | YES | | NULL | |
| U_AdminEmails | char(3) | YES | | On | |
| U_EmailFormat | varchar(10) | YES | | plaintext | |
+----------------+------------------+------+-----+-----------+----------------+
</PRE></pre>

There are other things that keep track of the users, what they've done, where they've been, etc...

This is what makes it more difficult than just using the Username & Password.

If you have any specific ideas, I'm open to listen...I'm still trying to make this work when I get spare time.

Cheers, Bill


------------------------------------------------------------
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves,
or we know where we can find information upon it."

-Samuel Johnson

It seems to me that you can accomplish this my manipulating the group settings of your users.

Forum Topic -> Forum Categories ->
Forum Boards -> Posts

As your users change topics, you change their group settings.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="">quote:</font><hr /><font size="" face="">Originally posted by Billster2K:
Now I can setup the following format:

Forum Categories -> Forum List -> Forum(postings)

I need to go one level higher:

Forum Sections -> Forum Categories -> Forum List -> Forum(postings)

Anyone know how while still using all the same database/userinfo ?

Thanks for any insight.

Cheers, Billster2K</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="" face="">