Could someone explain the purpose of the SMF plugin that is available with aMember, please? I have a website, part of which is protected by aMember. I want to create a forum, visible to all visitors to the site but only accessible to the aMember subscribers. Is this the function of the plugin, or is there more I should know?
Hello, The SMF plugin allows you add an aMember user that purchases your product and insert that user automatically into the SMF member database and assign them into a membergroup in SMF. You can then assign boards in SMF to membergroups so you can effectively limit what boards the aMember user can see in your forum based on the subscription they purchased. Basically you can control the content of the forums they see based on them having a active subscripton(paid) and what membergroup you assign them. In addition the SMF plugin will automatically log the user into SMF (via cookies) when the user logs into aMember. Consequently you get single sign-on. Single sign-on is the concept that a user has a single username/password that can be used to authenticate into various services. In this case the services are aMember and SMF. Most users don't want to have multiple username/password(s)to access the sevices you provide on your web site. It all depends on how you organize your content and whether aMember is the front-end protection to your content where the user logs into aMember first. If your site is designed around forum software where they log into forum software first then the plugin is not needed because there is no integration from SMF database back to aMember database. Jimmy
Many thanks for the explanation. This plugin will do exactly what I need, especially as the site is built around aMember and not the forum. Regards, Geoff