PHP Forum

Does anyone know of a php based forum that is easily customizable to work with an existing user base so that members don't have to register or sign in a second time when they access the forum? I heard that this is possible with phpbb3 but I haven't seen anything in their documentation that covers this.

you heard right, but that is the user's choice. If the user TICKS THE REMEMBER ME CHECK BOX, then it remembers the user provided that the user do not clean his/her cookies or cache for that matter. phbb3 is a powerful one with a lot of features and to know more u might wanna give it a test.

It don't sound too bad. So my user's will not have to register to use the forum as long as I set it up correctly? That is kind of important to me.

PHPBB doesn't allow an existing userbase to be automatically migrated to its user database. You'd probably have to write a connector yourself for that.
What kekkaishi was talking about is whether a user is logged into the board once the user logs in the first time, not user migration as you want.

jomanlk is correct. Sorry i couldnt focus on ur full qstn and I dunno any open source forum that allows user migration.

That's what I was afraid of, it's not a problem. It doesn't have to be fancy and I can live without all the bells and whistles, so for a plain jane type forum I suppose I can code it myself I was just hoping to avoid having to do that since for the time being the forum will only be temporary.

I think it's easier to write a migration script than to code your own forum. You should probably use something lightweight like Vanilla Forum and then write a script to migrate all the users from your database.

I think you may be right. I had a look at minibb and it looks like I can pull off what I want with a minimum amount of tweaking.

I know with phpBB you can create a login form for the forum, so you could use the same tables as phpBB but I'm not sure about the other way around.

I know you can extend phpBB and use it's members tables and cookies etc. but I think it would be a bit far fetched to do it the other way around.

That would be the best course. At any rate, writing your own forum from scratch would be a more involved process.

Close if you're done with this thread.

I agree, creating your own forum (really isn't as difficult as most think) would give your site a more inclusive feel as not matter the style you at to an opensource forum it still feels like everyone else's forum.

Check this you tube
It have good teaching on integrating PHPBB and your site. I hope it will give you an idea to start with :)
http://www.youtube.com/user/phpacademy

Thanks everyone for all your input. Like I said, this is just a temporary forum. Somewhere down the road I'll be coding my own, there is just so many other things that have to be done between now and then and there is a (somewhat) immediate need for the forum. I'd much rather code my own in any case. I really dislike being limited to what you can and cannot do with codes that are not your own, the options are limitless when you do it yourself. How much more custom could you get? Thanks again for the replies!