Integrated authentication/login for general website & forum

I plan to have a website with original content and a vBulletin forum. I will have an opt-in list for email marketing and visitor retention. Perhaps a few months from now, I may have content that would make visitor login beneficial on the general website. On my vBulletin forum, people will be able to view without logging in, but will have to register and authenticate to post.

Question: How important is it to integrate the login/registration for the general website with the opt-in list. i.e. do you think people will be irritated at signing up for and authenticating for the opt-in list and then having to sign up and authenticate to post on the message boards?

Also - I am planning to place an opt-in checkbox for the email newsletter on the registration page for the vBulletin forum (i.e. people that sign up for the forums may be interested in getting the email newsletter and updates). Since I will be managing my opt-in through vBulletin, the end-user will get two authentication emails, and I assume this may be confusing and/or annoying to them.

Am I splitting hairs here? Or do you think it would be worth the work to go ahead and set up athentication up front for the entire website and make the username and password for the site work for the forum automatically with a cookie.

 

The simpler you make things for visitors, the more likely they are to return. I would do the extra work and make a site-wide login. If users have to register twice, it may very well annoy them.

 

Thanks FruitMedly - I think you are right. Its going to be some more work, but I might as well do it now rather than go down separate paths... it will probably be more work to do it in the future.

 

I dealt with this issue myself - have not installed onto the live server my single login because it involves needing every forum user to update their registration - have been trying instead to modify my forum software login scripts to be adaptable to my wider site. In this case the forum software is a lesser known package instead of a more commercially viable package like vB or phpBB - the crux of the matter being that you should be sure to investigate what forum software you select if you have not done so already to see if it will be an easy melding or not.

 

Good advice edr... after a few more days of searching, I think I found a good solution as a starting point. It appears that the vbDrupal integration is a good way to get started with integrated login, user-sessions, etc.

http://www.vbdrupal.org/