Nabble Passwords

[Coleen_Astalos]

I want to imbed my Nabble forum into my password protected website (each member has a separate login/password to the site.)  

Is there a way to coordinate password systems (my site uses .htaccess Manager) with Nabble so that my users don't have to have a second login/password for Nabble?

I want them to be able to post/reply and have it show their name/profile with their post.
Thanks,
Coleen

[GregChapman]

There's no need for passwords/logins on a Nabble forum if it is already hidden within a password protected site, so co-ordination need not be an issue. Just make sure the forum is both embedded and the option to Redirect to your site is set and then you could keep the Nabble defaults of allowing "Anyone" to "View", "Create_topic" and "Reply". Your main site will provide the privacy you need.

The only disadvantage is that, with the default settings, each time a user posts they could choose a different name for themselves, so it might be wise to restrict the "Create_topic" and "Reply" permissions to "Registered" users, so their identity would remain constant - however, then it will be possible for someone to change their id details on your main site, without changing their registered address on Nabble. I can see no way of co-ordinating that without compromising the user's security on Nabble or the security of your main site. The best that could be done is a reminder of the need to update their Nabble settings any time a user changes id on your main site.

[Coleen_Astalos]

If I don't require registration, then how will the email subscriptions work?  

I'm trying to move from a Yahoogroup here.  Most of my members prefer to interact completely via email and would just subscribe to the categories they are interested in and then get emails of all the posts and post/reply via email.  Don't they need to register in order to do that?

If so, then I'm back to them needing two passwords - one to get onto my site and one to login to nabble once on my site.   Would love to have only ONE login required.

Thanks,
Coleen

[GregChapman]

Oops! I was in "forum mode" when I wrote that. Yes, people will need to register if they want to subscribe.

This, of course, is no different to what your people are used to with Yahoo - registration there and at your main site.

As I said before as the two systems are fully independent and run on different servers there is no way to integrate them. I believe that the easiest, if not only, way to get what you want will be to run your own mail list software on your own server. It is possible that your web site host could offer such a service. Ask them.

[Coleen_Astalos]

Although with Yahoogroups they can join just the mailing list and never have to set up a YahooID.  But that's not the issue, I just think it looks totally odd to have the forum embedded in my own site - that they've just logged into and then to present them with yet another login for the forum.

It would be nice if there was a way to integrate the password systems for a single login.  It's not a dealbreaker, it's just a convenience factor.

Since 70% of my members never even post (just lurk), I may change the permissions to let anyone view the forum (embedded on my password protected site) and just require registration if they want to post (or subscribe via email).  I could be interesting to see how many of my die hard emailers convert to viewing the forum online instead (especially with it being embedded and them not having to go to another site to view).  

Coleen

[GregChapman]

Coleen_Astalos wrote

Since 70% of my members never even post (just lurk), I may change the permissions to let anyone view the forum (embedded on my password protected site) and just require registration if they want to post (or subscribe via email).

That is exactly the approach I would recommend.

I could be interesting to see how many of my die hard emailers convert to viewing the forum online instead (especially with it being embedded and them not having to go to another site to view).

I was with "OneList" before it was bought by "eGroups" which then sold out to "YahooGroups" and I am a dedicated emailer - the co-ordinator of the team that publish nPOPuk, an open source plain text email program originally developed in Japan for WinCE platform but now available on just about any Windows-based system.

It took me a long time to recognise that more and more people only know the web and write all their mail in whatever browser is installed on their hardware they are sitting in front of or in is their lap or hand - gone are the days when 90% of people used "Outlook Express". I strongly suspect that many of your dedicated emailers will gravitate to the Nabble's web interface, as unlike Yahoo's ponderous and advert saturated screens, it is delivered promptly through a relatively plain interface - and has an effective search system for finding old posts. I recall Yahoo's got broken a long time ago. :-(

[Coleen_Astalos]

That's what I'm testing now and I'm liking what I am seeing.  

I like that a non-registered user selects a "Name" and that name apparently is saved on their computer for future postings (cookie?).  Which allows them also to see all the posts they've made.

I also like that non-registered users can also sign up for email subscription and enter their email address.  The only concern I have is that I'll need to "purge" those subscriptions when a members paid subscription expires - otherwise they'll continue to get the emails (which defeats the purpose of them paying for the service).  I don't this this will be a problem if they use the same email address that they used to pay for the service.  But if they use a different one then it'll be hard to connect up who to remove.   But as long as I can export the list of email addresses for subscribed members, then I can do an access compare with my paid members and remove any subscriber email addresses that don't match.  I did that with Yahoo twice a month as a double check, so I could do the same here.

So the only hurdle I have to get across is letting non-registered users post using HTML - which I see you've already responded to in another thread.

Thanks!
Coleen

[Pedro]

In my opinion, you should opt for 2 logins ( yours and nabble one ), because our login session can last a long time.

[Coleen_Astalos]

Here is an idea I have and I'd like your opinion on it.

For my password protected site, I create a login/password for each member (and I can manually set it, so I can pick something versus having the system automatically generate it).

I could then "Register" the person for Nabble myself and use their email address and the same password.  The user would then get an email from Nabble at their email address to confirm their registration (which they'd need to do)

They would access Nabble as a page within my password protected site.  Once they login to Nabble for the first time, will they remain logged in unless they deliberately log out or clear their cookies?  So they won't have the need to login to Nabble each time they visit the website, they'd already be logged in.

How long will the cookie remain?  Is there an expiration on it, or will it remain and they'll stayed logged in indefinitely?   (This is how our photo site within our password protected site works - they login once and stayed logged in essentially forever unless they log out or clear their cookies).

If Nabble doesn't have an expiration on the cookies, then this may work for me.

In addition, most members may never even have to login.  The only time they'd need to login is if they want to make a post which include an image (or some other HTML formatting) and I figure we can probably adjust some of the wording somewhere to let them know that they need to login first.

What do you think?
Coleen

[Pedro]

Our cookies are set to last 10 years, but each browser has its own configuration to clean up cookies.
I use my test forum every day for more than one year and I don't remember when I had to log in again.
I think it will be comfortable for your users, I can't assure that they will never have to login more than once, but it will be pretty much like this.

[Coleen_Astalos]

Ok, I'm back looking at this again (combined passwords).  My business partner wanted to check to see if you had a way to integrate passwords with Photopost - we use this for our photo gallery and that would reduce the number of logins for our users.
Thanks,
Coleen

[Pedro]

I don't think so. It is not easy to integrate our login system. But you can keep using cookies to save their sessions and post by email to avoid logins.