User Forums?

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   Has anyone found a decent forum package that can easily integrate with PC?  
I'd really like my customers to be able to login once at the PC side, then if they visit the forums they're already logged in.
Thanks!

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AndrewG Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 07-March-2008 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 0	Post Options Post Reply Quote AndrewG Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: User Forums? Posted: 19-March-2008 at 4:19pm
	Has anyone found a decent forum package that can easily integrate with PC? I'd really like my customers to be able to login once at the PC side, then if they visit the forums they're already logged in. Thanks!

Greg Dinger Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Certified ProductCart Developers Joined: 23-September-2006 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 238	Post Options Post Reply Quote Greg Dinger Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 19-March-2008 at 5:05pm
	I doubt that any such forum exists. Boards such as Snitz, PHPBB or the many other options out there are developed independently. They all use their own login system and member database. I did integrate the login for a Snitz message board and a "members only" section of an association web site, but it was a fair effort. What will have to happen to accomplish your goal is to first identify the board you wish to use, then examine the login system to identify what cookies and session variables are in use, then alter PC or the board to match the other's login feature. Essentially, you won't be changing the way one of those causes a "logged in" status to be detected - you will actually need to extend the code that performs the login to also reflect the logged in status for the other application. Additionally, when a customer record is created in the store, a member records needs to be written to the forum. This is by no means a simple effort. As I say, I have been down this path previously and it was a big deal to pull off that implementation.

AndrewG Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 07-March-2008 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 0	Post Options Post Reply Quote AndrewG Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 19-March-2008 at 7:59pm
	I need to read up more on this, but a client suggested taking a look at DotNetNuke. After a little reading, it turns out I can get DotNetNuke (CMS Structure + forums, blogs, events, pictures..etc..etc..) plus I can have it integrated with AspDotNetStorefront. I think the end result is around $1295 for the full license. Both suites will share the SQL. Granted PC is cleaner and has a higher quality of support, but continuing to rely on the baked in CMS while rolling out PC solutions is falling a little weak on those who are aware of things like Joomla, Drupal, DotNetNuke...etc..etc. I'm going to get some quotes on what it would take to tie in DotNetNuke with ProductCart. AspDotNetstorefront is a strong contender in this space, so it makes sense that PC should be in there as well.

Greg Dinger Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Certified ProductCart Developers Joined: 23-September-2006 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 238	Post Options Post Reply Quote Greg Dinger Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 20-March-2008 at 8:35pm
	I just received a mailing from Chris at CJWSoft. He has built this forum based on his ASPProtect user login system: http://www.xperienceforums.com/ I have worked on ASPProtect in the past and his code is clean. The fact that this new forum offering is coded in ASP will allow an easier integration to ProductCart's login system than the alternative of (for example) trying to integrate to one of the PHP-based forums. BTW, folks might also want to be aware of http://www.expressionengine.com/. This is an excellent Content Management tool that is integrated with optional features such as a forum, a photo gallery, a Wiki and more. I have built a couple sites using the basic CMS but not used any of the optional features. Knowing how well EE is coded, I predict the rest of the tools are excellent.

AndrewG Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 07-March-2008 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 0	Post Options Post Reply Quote AndrewG Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 29-March-2008 at 6:39pm
	Thanks Greg. I'll take a look. Things over at DotNetNuke are insane. There is no way I can ramp up to get that running in addition to running PC. There seems to be a bit of tug of war in the social networking space, develop for the Web 2.0 stuff or keep the eCommerce tightly integrated. I think their attmepts (Drupal, DotNetNuke and Joomla) to wrap everything together are not going to work long term, so its best to just bolt on the forum and get the programming done to integrate with PC.

geoff Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 15-January-2006 Status: Offline Points: 2	Post Options Post Reply Quote geoff Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 02-April-2008 at 10:42am
	Greg - thanks for the link. AndrewG/Greg DO you have ideas for integration that go deeper than single login via shared tables for UID, password? For example for product reviews or ...... Just wondering what creative ideas you might have thought of that leverage PC as the core. I have long wanted to do this and (as Greg said) found integrating single login between disparate systems to be very tricky. My objective at that time was a MUWordpress project. Geoff