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WordPress + Vanilla Accounts

timsilvatimsilva New
in Vanilla 2.0 - 2.8

Hi there, I am currently locally developing a website that uses a fresh wordpress install in the root directory and an existing vanilla forum located at /forum.

First, I will be porting over an existing forum database (from SMF, not that it matters -- many thanks too the importing tool team, I was super happy to see SMF 2 support added a while ago). Then, I would like to have the Vanilla Forums WP Plugin setup with the default WP comments in blog posts replaced with the Vanilla comments. Lastly, I want to setup the Vanilla jsConnect plugin by @Todd for a seamless SSO process for my existing users and new users moving forward.

I have been able to successfully set this all up locally in MAMP, but the user accounts that already existed in Vanilla don't appear to be auto-created in the WordPress database. So if I had an existing username called "ForumUserFrom2008" in my Vanilla db, then I installed this Vanilla Forums WP Plugin + Vanilla jsConnect, I would hope to see "ForumUserFrom2008" appear in my WordPress users list - but I don't. Even if I try to login to WordPress with the Vanilla account's credentials (usr/em + pass), nothing happens. Maybe I did something wrong, or maybe these plugins are only meant to work for fresh installs of both WordPress and Vanilla.

What does work as I had hoped is when I create a new user in WordPress. It seems to auto-create a mirrored Vanilla user (same username, email, etc.) a few minutes later, or when I either click the "Sign In with Forum" link on the Forum index or add a comment into a WordPress post. Not sure if its automatic, or if the user needs to do something first since in phpMyAdmin, I can see that the newly created WordPress account was created a few minutes before the matching Vanilla account was even though I don't remember doing anything.

Please correct me if what I described happening sounds broken in any way. Maybe there are some limitations to working locally that I am not taking into consideration.

Here is the ideal flow that I am looking for:

1.) My existing forum members login to the newly installed Vanilla forums (imported from the existing SMF db). As soon as they login, they would also now have a matching WordPress account. SSO works from then on... If they sign into either the blog or the forum, they will be signed into both.

2.) New users would register an account through WordPress (minor note: they also shouldn't be able to try creating an account on Vanilla). As soon as they login, they would also now have a matching Vanilla account. SSO works from then on... If they sign into either the blog or the forum, they will be signed into both.

In both scenarios, they end up with one account in Vanilla and one account in WordPress - but as far as they know, they only had the experience of creating and login into one account (thanks to the illusion from SSO/jsConnect). Both accounts are nearly identical (username, email, password, etc) in the database and it should feel like one account.

Is this possible? If so, how? If not, would this be a significant amount of custom work? I would be happy to fund the development of a existing-vanilla-users-to-wordpress-users porter. :) I'm still fairly new to editing dbs directly, otherwise I'd try to do this manually.

Thanks!

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