Integration with VB or not?

oldengine · November 25th, 2006, 04:29 PM

I'm seeking opinions on whether to run my classifieds with stand-alone user registration or to co-mingle it with my vBulletin forum user base. I'm sure that there are many pros and cons to this and I have been trying to weigh these for a couple of weeks now while testing the classifieds.

My vBulletin forum is on a separate domain name (same server) with a common interest user base of about 7,000. I realize that the users would have two different sets of cookies because of the separate domain names. On the other hand, I would need to maintain their user information file only once. My current classifieds has a separate (rudimentary) registration system.

What are other Classifieds site operators doing about integrating with a forum, or are there lots of stand-alone classifieds sites out there? Has anyone dealt with a dual domain installation before?

Truthfully, I lean toward keeping them separate. Backups are much less complex and if one system craps out, whether from error or while upgrading, the other is still rolling.

Feel free to drop me an email for discussion or comment.

Thanks!

Edit: It occurs to me that the registering Captcha and the ability to ban by email address or IP number might be prime motivators to use the VB registration system.

thezcr · November 26th, 2006, 06:03 PM

I too am trying to decide what to do and am in the same situation as you - two different domain names. I think that I will try to use the same user database at first and if that isn't working I will have to split the two and have people re-register.

Chris

Chuck S · November 26th, 2006, 10:11 PM

If they are on different domains and not the same server as long as you have external connections allowed to the other mysql database for the forum you can integrate the user login. The users would need to login to each domain but there login will work. You can not use the enhanced vb3 stuff though.

thezcr · November 27th, 2006, 07:07 PM

As I want to have a larger audience than just my forum users for my classifieds it made sense for me to use the built in registration system.

Are there any plans to add a captcha for the registration system?
Is there a way for people to modify the profile fields after they have registered? I searched and couldn't find anything relevant - not that it doesn't exist - just that I couldn't find it. ;-)

Chuck S · November 27th, 2006, 08:27 PM

A user can edit his profile when viewing it after he registers and is logged in. Currently we use email verification system to ensure a user is as user and not a computer so it stops most bots.