Best way to integrate two registration systems?

hi all,

What would be the best way to integrate two registration systems?

The case is:
I have an arcade script with a registration system and I have phpBB with his own registration system. I want the user to register just once.

I came up with the following possibilities:

A Put all the user table fields from the arcade script and phpBB in one big user table.

B With a register form register in both user tables. (I think I need to create a sub page for this which calls both registration files)

C Another much simpler solution.

Any thoughts??? I need a starting point

 

I would combine the databases and use one script to register for the entire site.

 

So that would be option A, right?

I notice the a couple of user-table fields overlap. And as the user table of phpBB has more field I think I must use theirs and add the aracade user tablefields.

But still, then I have to change all the arcade src scripts

So best way to do this???

btw: I already have both script tables in one database.

 

If you didn't code the registration script for the arcade yourself it might be hard to alter this.

You need to see exactly how the arcade script tracks user sessions and see if you can just alter it to use the user sessions from phpBB instead.

 

I would go with Option B IMHO
If you are going with option a, consider this...when upgrade the forum or your arcade script, you'll have to redo all the changes in both scripts.

Here are the steps I would take if I am doing Option B,
1. Combine both registration screen
2. Find the insert statement in both system, this is where you hope both of the system have function where you can just pass in param, so you can just copy and paste their code.
3. This step is optional depends on if you want to verify new user email(account activation); If you are planning to do email activation, you'll need to make your script to get both activation code from arcade script and forum script, then you can generate your own activation script to active both system at the same time.
4. Very optional on this, profile changes in the system, this is probably just for name and email, you can always run a cron job to sync up common information such as email, first name, last name, address and etc. This cron job can compare your registration record with the two systems. Let say, if user "x" with email "x@hotmail" change their email address, you can have the cron job run and compare, if your registration email record is different than one of the app, than use the app that have the different email as the new email.

This way, you are separating the responsibility of each system. With you new registration front end, you can make changes to it without breaking the other systems. Even if the registration in the forum script or arcade script changes, all you have to do is apply those changes into you registration interface. From my experience, it is always better to change you own code than modifying someone else. You can also add more registration options if you plan to expand you site with a different script.