Authentication, Registration and user integration

General discussion of development ideas and the approaches taken in the 3.x branch of phpBB. The current feature release of phpBB 3 is 3.3/Proteus.
Forum rules
Please do not post support questions regarding installing, updating, or upgrading phpBB 3.3.x. If you need support for phpBB 3.3.x please visit the 3.3.x Support Forum on phpbb.com.

If you have questions regarding writing extensions please post in Extension Writers Discussion to receive proper guidance from our staff and community.
bobtheman
Registered User
Posts: 63
Joined: Sat Dec 19, 2009 4:00 pm

Authentication, Registration and user integration

Post by bobtheman »

for authentication and registration i was hoping we could discuss some ideas and thoughts

Authentication
i was pondering support for openID, Facebook connect authentication and other social networking sites. Of course in the acp you could chose to use these or not

i remember hearing talk about a phpbb authentication process where in the acp the admin could chose to allow phpbb.com registered members to login with the same credentials. The site would send the request to phpbb.com for auth .... any ideas on this?

Registration
In the UCP, one could elect to receive updates/messages/notifications in ways other than just email. If someone authenticates for the first time during a registration process with a fb/myspace/twitter/etc it would ask to import information for default profile values etc etc making registration easier. And i think it would be nice to have some form of invitation method to invite others to a webpage.


User integration and interaction
Revamp the friends and foes list into a functioning friends list with purpose. Allow users to set privacy settings for content on there homepage/profile. On a users profile page they should have a wall they can post to and that friends can reply to. extend forum themes to profile pages. the possibilities here are endless. When users post to a thread it could display on their wall, allowing their friends to follow up or at least acknowledge their activity instead of having to sift through posts on the index.

As of now users profile pages dont serve their purpose, assuming there is one. Example: and this is totally random : memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=5

User avatar
EXreaction
Registered User
Posts: 1555
Joined: Sat Sep 10, 2005 2:15 am

Re: Authentication, Registration and user integration

Post by EXreaction »

phpBB building a separate authentication system for phpBB forums seems a waste to me, plenty of other systems that will do it and are already well established. All of a sudden we are in control of user information from all over and need to take appropriate security measures.

It would be nice to support a few different common systems:
OpenID, Windows Live, Google, Yahoo are probably the biggest and would be great.

Just the other day I ran into a nice site using an application to handle other systems:
https://rpxnow.com/features

Obviously that's not going to work for us, but using that to sign in to some other site I had never used to ask a question about some application I was trying out saved some time and was much preferable to creating a new account on another site for 1 question. Maybe there are some other open source projects building something like that or perhaps we could try to build something ourselves.

bobtheman
Registered User
Posts: 63
Joined: Sat Dec 19, 2009 4:00 pm

Re: Authentication, Registration and user integration

Post by bobtheman »

When incorporating things like FB connect, i forse problems. FB has a tendency to change their API with little notice which would put constraints on development or worse. This same scenario is universal and could be applied to other social networking sites. Not to mention, if we discussed this topic two years ago (which it probably was) we would probably be referencing the top dog of social networking of that time .. Myspace. To keep it short the likelihood of FB staying top dog for an while IMO is unlikely and would pose as an inconsistency of phpbb software if this ever was included in core. So with these ideas, i think specific authentication methods should be left to the plugin/addon realm. This isnt to say that the phpbb dev team couldnt develop and maintain a plugin/addon for this purpose.


I am convinced that we need to revamp our UCP, profile, groups, etc ... making it easier for users to personalize there profiles and interact with the forums.

User avatar
EXreaction
Registered User
Posts: 1555
Joined: Sat Sep 10, 2005 2:15 am

Re: Authentication, Registration and user integration

Post by EXreaction »

Indeed, which is why it may be good just to stick with the big guns, OpenID, Windows Live, Google, Yahoo (if possible). Anyone on Facebook is likely to have an account with at least one of those anyways.

bobtheman
Registered User
Posts: 63
Joined: Sat Dec 19, 2009 4:00 pm

Re: Authentication, Registration and user integration

Post by bobtheman »

what is your opinion on user profiles?

User avatar
EXreaction
Registered User
Posts: 1555
Joined: Sat Sep 10, 2005 2:15 am

Re: Authentication, Registration and user integration

Post by EXreaction »

Not really sure, either way wouldn't bother me, but I suppose some people would really like it.

I am not sure it would be best to have it setup with all that extra profile stuff by default though. Many of the more business/professional sites would probably rather not have that stuff. But as long as it's all optional it would be nice.

User avatar
Highway of Life
Registered User
Posts: 1399
Joined: Tue Feb 08, 2005 10:18 pm
Location: I'd love to change the World, but they won't give me the Source Code
Contact:

Re: Authentication, Registration and user integration

Post by Highway of Life »

As the popularity of social networking sites continues to rise, I agree that it is extremely important to create a plug-and-play authentication system that allows developers to create authentication plugins for sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google and others. This kind of system should be able to handle a wide range of API's and should be able to automatically create user accounts, populated with data and carry over the login information or be used as a bridge to be able to allow the person to login. For example, Facebook's API allows sites to create login via Facebook, the site itself does not copy over the login credentials, but uses the data coming in from the FB API.
Image

User avatar
MichaelC
Development Team
Development Team
Posts: 889
Joined: Thu Jan 28, 2010 6:29 pm

Re: Authentication, Registration and user integration

Post by MichaelC »

I think it would be a good idea to extend the phpBB system to include things like facebook, google, yahoo ect., as well as OpenID.
Formerly known as Unknown Bliss
psoTFX wrote: I went with Olympus because as I said to the teams ... "It's been one hell of a hill to climb"
No unsolicited PMs please except for quotes.

ameisez
Registered User
Posts: 26
Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2007 8:11 am

Re: Authentication, Registration and user integration

Post by ameisez »

EXreaction wrote:Indeed, which is why it may be good just to stick with the big guns, OpenID, Windows Live, Google, Yahoo (if possible). Anyone on Facebook is likely to have an account with at least one of those anyways.
Great idea

ecwpa
Registered User
Posts: 181
Joined: Mon Jan 24, 2005 2:10 am
Contact:

Re: Authentication, Registration and user integration

Post by ecwpa »

Hey guys,

Are you considering this for phpBB4? Knowing the phpBB team I guess not but, maybe as a hook.

Now, as you guys already mention, the big ones would be OpenID, Windows Live, Google, Yahoo and now Twitter.

I've seen sites that do this from external services like IntenseDebate or Disqus or made specifically for them like Gawker or Digg.

Digg specifically, when you "integrate" Facebook, you can create a new account based in your Facebook account or if you already have a digg account you can link it to your Facebook account to keep you logged in in both. You can even unlink you account from Facebook. So I guess, it has a complete different table for linked users but also a default phpBB user for every external user and I think thats the best approach.
Slightly better English than it was in 2005, still improving :D

Post Reply