Topic: Integrating punbb with my own site
I have a website that already has a login system (custom written). This is used for a lot features on the site. There is a forum, but it is not that great. For some time I've been looking for a good forum, but was never able to find one. PunBB looks good so far, the template support is good, I can integrate it into my site easy.
But here's the task. I don't want users to register for the board. As soon as they login on the website, they must be able to use the forum. So I want to be able to use my current user table. But at the same time I want the use the forum's feature such as groups and permissions, so I need PunBB's user table as well.
My current usertable is base as (unique id, non-unique username, unique e-mail), while PunBB's is (unique id, unique username, unique e-mail). Furthermore I saw PunBB stores the username in the cookie, not the userid (something I think is better...). Is this all the same in version 1.2?
How easy/hard would it be to integrate the two? Before I start hacking all the code I want some opinions. Have other people done this, and how easy it? I don't mind coding a lot, but I want to be able to upgrade without doing an awful lot.