Linking into another website's restricted Area

[NewBoyToyMatt]

Hi!

I've got two sites and both are membership sites. What I want to do is offer members of one site access to the other's member area. I want to be able to have a link from the one site into the other's member area (sort of like you link into a plugin site).

How can I do this? Currently, I post a username/password and tell all members to use the same username/password to log into the other site, but I want to make it seamless without un/pw. Is there a way to grant access if the user is coming from a specific URL (my member area)?

[Chilihost]

you can do this using an htaccess file that uses referral info to allow/deny the surfer in, but this does not work if the surfer has a firewall or is running thru a proxy as these block referrer info. Plus referrer info is not the most secure way of allowing access.

You can also use cookies, I explained how to use cookies to protect videos in members areas in another post, you can use the same type of approach where you set a cookie and allow access to your 2nd site based on the cookie. Once again, this is not perfect as it won't work if your surfers have cookie blocking on.

Another way, prolly the easiest too, is to go out and get a 3rd domain name and use it exclusively for the members areas of both sites and use a single htpasswd file so that if your members get into one site they get into both.

Any other suggestions from others?

cheers,
luke

[Soonnow]

Any other suggestions from others?

Still easier would be to simply duplicate the content in each site to the other.

[Chilihost]

I just read that strongbox has a unique method of doing this with their software running to secure both sites:

If you have more than one Strongbox protected site you can use the Strongbox handoff function to link the members area of one site to the members area of another in a cryptographically secure fashion.

Ray (the owner of strongbox) is a great guy and I would highly recommend strongbox to protect your members areas from hackers and password traders anyway!

cheers,
Luke