Has anyone worked on integrating a "membership database" to Threads? I'm looking at something that could be used for online updating of member data for approximately 8,000 members. Initially only looking for simple reports and mailing labels.

Is there an off-the-shelf package that gets good ratings for doing this? And is there a hosting company that anyone recommends? Lastly are any developers here engaged in this type of support already?

Hosting I push on vps' for larger sites; and generally recommend:
www.webintellects.com
www.powervps.com

As for integration, ian just published an addon which allows admins to code scripts to read the cookies and member data.

So, I've already hosted my Threads site at webintellects. What I'm looking for now is information on any "turn key packages" that might be available.... or anyone who does this for a living (full or part time).

My needs are to add a "membership" database for online access of limited member data in order to produce mailing labels and reports.

Ideally I'd like to also link this to the Threads database in order to manage the two user accounts together.

hmm.. so basically you are wanting to make mailing labels off the threads member data. The location info would need to be worked out and people would need to use their real names in one of the fields unless you would be ok with mailing "Gizmo" or "drkknight"

I like mail :nod:

I sat here thinking about this; what you COULD do...

Enforce users to set 3 of the custom profile boxes:
Box1: Real Name
Box2: Address
Box3: City, State, Zip

Then hack those boxes out of the showprofile screen so random users can't view them...

Now you have your mailing list data merged with threads, whammo! :x

What if you had a second MySQL db running and loaded it with the real users names and addresses, and then included a field which matched the USER NUMBER to the one in the Threads db. That would "link" the records together.

But actually I want it to work in reverse, where I add a flag (eg. Paid up member="yes") to the user db, and then when they logged into Threads, it would authorized them depending upon the state of the paid-up member status.

So.. would two databases be a good way to go?

UBB 7.2 will include "some sort of" a paid membership option utilizing PayPal (iirc from rick's stating at ubbcentral); but if you're wanting to go the route i'd go with a seperate table indicating new information (no real reason to utilize a second database) then you could just link/join things; however it'd be integrating those options into UBB.T which would be your hurtle, pulling data from the UBB.T databases to a 3rd party script would be easy.

Thanks. I appreciate your comments.

I'm baaaack!!! :-)

We have the second database (membership) up and running now. All of these 8,000 accounts are valid members. After they log in to the membership database (MySQL) and establish a session variable, how can I easily redirect them to my UBB Threads forum so that they are already logged in?

To complicate this a bit more, they are in two different domains.