(posed this in programming too, but you guys might have an idea :))

Hey, I'm working on a video game website.

One idea we would like to implement is user accounts.

Basically, a user can register for an account on the site, and he/she will be able to access/post on the forums, post comments on news articles, and do other things that interact with the site (ex: send mailbag questions) with that one account.

So is this account log-in type system workable? I know many sites use this stuff.

How can I find something that will allow me to implement this? A CMS? Coding?

Thanks a ton,

Oscar Wang

Plenty of choice out there, try joomla www.joomla.org (http://www.joomla.org) in PHP or DotNetNuke if you prefer .NET.

Joomla isn't built for a gaming website though

Joomla is just an open-source website CMS with some good memebership capability, its got a nice forum "fireboard" etc and can be modified to integrate with almost anyything if you have the know how.

How you integrate it is up to you, its not a "gaming website in a box" no, but what is?

What type of forum are you running? If you're using vBulletin, you could easily integrate the user database for that into the rest of your site. That's what I would base this decision on.

Hmm...how so?

depends on what you're looking for. If you have an existing site, you probably don't want a CMS. Regardless of whether you do or don't use a CMS, you may or may not have a seperate forum software. If you have a forum software and a CMS software, pray that one of them has a 'bridge' plugin, combining both user accounts. Since you'd be using CMS for the non-forum part of the site, that's more or less problem solved. See your CMS support forum for how to use it's code to do whatever else you want - if they don't have a plugin for it already.

If you don't use CMS but do use a forum, you'll want to ask about it (or read about it, as someone's probably asked already) in their support forums. They should have step-by-step instructions. Probably 'all' you need to do is integrate the register/login pages into your main site, ensure the cookie is written for your entire domain (not just the forum subdirectory), then know what the cookie name is so you can use the $COOKIE variables.

Be aware that any custom coding may result in custom database modifications, in turn making your forum updates a lot harder. Course you'll have a custom site, so it'll no doubt be worth it...

Hi,

I would recommend you create your own login system, I normally use php5 and mysql server database to acheive this requirement, but there are many other options.

check this url:http://www.devshed.com/c/a/MySQL/Creating-a-Login-Script-for-a-PHPMySQL-Blogging-System/

regards