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INTEGRATING MEMBERS
Existing Member Database
If you are just starting a website and have NO pre-existing member database, Review Foundry can be used to build such a database of members. In that case, users will register as members and Review Foundry will provide the necessary member management. Each new member will be set up with a member profile page and cookies will be issued to handle automatic and transparent authentication. Submitted reviews will be tagged with the appropriate member identity and the popularity of these reviews will be monitored so that a Top Reviewers page can be constructed from the overall statistics.
On the other hand, it is very often the case that a webmaster will already have a member database in place. Typically this is because they run a forum application of some kind. Here we suppose that Luke has been running vBulletin, which is probably the most popular of the forum applications, and he wants to couple his member database to Review Foundry so that his members can be authenticated transparently and need not do anything in particular to start submitting reviews. Although we are assuming vBulletin as the forum application currently in place, the following discussion applies to every forum application for which a Review Foundry module has been written to handle authentication. There are quite a few such coupling modules, so check out the Auth Coupling page of the Configure control panel to see which are supported (see the Authentication type menu below for the list of supported applications at the time of writing). If you use a well-known forum application it is very likely supported.
To activate the relevant authentication module, Luke makes his way to the Auth Coupling configuration page and selects vBulletin from the drop down menu, then loads the vBulletin coupling page. The form presented for coupling to vBulletin will look something like this (shown in its filled out state ready for submission):
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As can be seen by inspecting the form, the essential quantity to be supplied when enabling a forum member database coupling is the path to the directory in which the vBulletin configuration file is to be found. It is possible to have members be authenticated on a supplied email address, but logins that require a supplied username are more common and that is the recommended way to set up the coupling. Once Luke has enabled the vBulletin coupling, all member authentication is based on passwords stored in the vBulletin members table. Additionally, each time a member logs into Review Foundry--whether explicitly via a login page, or transparently via cookies--Review Foundry will check whether the member has a record in the Review Foundry Member table. If not, a record is auto-created and the associated vBulletin user identity is stored along with the record. Review Foundry will keep the records synchronized by doing a check on the validity of the record each time an authentication is performed.
Populating Teams
As a general rule, you will want to leave the task of populating your member teams to the members themselves. Review Foundry allows you to have "sign up" links placed on the page so that members can enroll in those teams that appeal to them. The configuration options associated with enrollment are found on the Submit / Join configuration page. In this case Luke enables enrollments, specifying that each member (i.e. artist) can enroll themselves in up to 3 separate teams. Had he not elected to allow sign ups the enrollment link would not appear on the page. Whenever an enrollment link does appear, a de-enrollment link will appear next to it, so that members can opt out when they wish to do so. Luke also has the option of specifying a by invitation only rule that can be applied to specific teams in cases where, for one reason or another, he wants to restrict entry into those teams.
Next Section: ADDING EXTRA FIELDS
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