netFORUM on Drupal

The netFORUM Authentication module allows customers in the netFORUM database to log into a Drupal site based on their web login and password. Customers can also be automatically assigned to groups in Drupal according to membership, or with using the provided API customers can be grouped according to any criteria such as committee membership, join date, senority, or even at random. Groups (or Roles) in Drupal are used to assign permissions.

Customer usernames, encrypted passwords, and groups are all stored locally so that if xWeb is unavailable, users will still be able to log in and browse with appropriate permissions. Associations can also customize through a defined API to fetch additional user information which can be re-used throughout the website.

Single Sign On is accomplished with the same technology that eWeb uses for the 'remember me' checkbox on login, although it only persists until a user logs out or closes their browser. Later versions of netFORUM (2.2 and above) have the option of using a more secure encryption method, although it does require PHP's mcrypt library. Customers can be logged into any combination of eWeb sites that exist in netFORUM. Both Drupal and eWeb must share a domain, such as www.example.com and eweb.example.com. If two Drupal sites both have netFORUM Authentication enabled they can be configured or linked to allow users from site B to use site A's single sign on settings, even if they do NOT share a domain. This is most useful for simplifying eWeb configuration and secure certificates between different domains.