Multiple websites + Buddypress integration

I have two wordpress websites. One is a standard blog and the other has buddypress installed.

My goal is to sell a membership on the buddypress site and a product on the wordpress site. I have 2 products I’m selling and each time a product is sold I want the user to have access to a private forum specific to that product on the buddypress site.

I basically need to synchronize the databases from both sites and was told I could do this by using a ‘create user’ hook on this forum: http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/multiple-websites-buddypress-integration/

In the case of an upsell it would be more of an update to an existing user.

I’ve been talking to developers and they said it could possibly be done easier with a plugin like: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/external-database-authentication/

This would mean the user would only register on one site (buddypress) and I was wondering if you have any experience with this plugin or if there are any known issues with trying to integrate the sites with this method?

Thanks!

Hi Jorge,

I don’t have any experience with those other plugins, but I can say that it would make more sense to authenticate against one database instead of having multiple copies of the account. Multiple copies of the account would require syncing changes to things like email addresses and passwords.

That said, s2Member uses the WordPress authentication system, so all of what you’re doing would take place at the WordPress level, not the s2Member level.

s2Member cannot currently restrict content on other WordPress sites, as s2Member is a WordPress plugin and its reach is limited to the WordPress installation where it’s installed.

I think I’ll just have to move everything to the new site… long term it will probably be the better choice…