Forum Login NOT using Serial Number

Peter House · May 31, 2010, 12:15:40 PM

Is there any way to login to this forum using a password I select other than my registration serial number

?

I cannot seem to memorize this number and have to look it up every time

. Sometimes this is from my phone since I am at a customer site and cannot copy and paste from Outlook. Maybe I could carry a USB drive and use that or I could post it on my personal web page with a link or I could put it on Facebook or I could . . . NUTS

!

It would be really nice to use my own password

.

Paul Squires · May 31, 2010, 01:52:17 PM

Sorry Peter - serial number it is for now. Everything on this site is automated so when a FF order is processed the customer is automatically set up in this forum software. If only this forum software was involved then I would say yes it would be no problem to have user configurable passwords....but, the user data is shared between two other applications as well that the user can not access. Hard to describe in a post but suffice to say that it would be a nightmare for me trying to keep all three application's data in sync if users could change their own data.

Peter House · May 31, 2010, 02:04:19 PM

I probably understand most of your issues and here is a suggestion for your "spare" time.

Maybe instead of linking by password, you could link by user name and require the user name to be the users registered email address which should have a 1:1 with your registration number database.

This would allow the user to define their own passwords.

Why are you working on a Holiday? Not enough "Spare" time

?

José Roca · May 31, 2010, 07:55:22 PM

Quote
Why are you working on a Holiday?

I don't think it's holiday in Canada.

Paul Squires · May 31, 2010, 10:56:03 PM

No - not a holiday in Canada. However, I just finished two weeks of personal holidays... was able to get a week of very nice warm weather down south around Grand Cayman and Cozumel. I could certainly get used to living that life.

Peter House · May 31, 2010, 11:08:26 PM

I forgot all about the Newfoundland thing.

Paul, don't get too used to that life unless you can work remotely. We need you!

Roger Garstang · June 01, 2010, 01:15:19 PM

I've gotten in the habit of keeping my FF Reg txt file on the desktop and opening it and just copy/pasting the value. XP and XP 64bit work nice and I can double click the key and it highlights it and I can copy/paste quick. Vista/Win7 changed Notepad's click to make it include spaces so it isn't as quick, and without the file I can't remember it, so only login on certain machines. Not the safest solution for multi-user environments, but works for me.

Rolf Brandt · June 01, 2010, 02:10:01 PM

Sounds like you took one of those cruises with Royal Carribean or so, Paul. That can be very relaxing...

Paul Squires · June 01, 2010, 02:40:58 PM

Royal Carribean.... you are exactly right. 5 nights. I ate so much that I thought that I would explode. I had an additional week at home afterwards...that's a good things because I needed it in order to lose the 5 pounds gained!

Rolf Brandt · June 01, 2010, 02:48:36 PM

Yeah - I know what you mean. I like their cruises too. I am right now thinking about taking the one to Cozumel in October. Did a short 4 nights one to the Bahamas last year as finale of an East Coast trip (I-95 from top to bottom).

John Thompson · June 04, 2010, 06:34:56 AM

I've been hesitant to connect when using public wifi as it appears HTTPS isn't an option. This doesn't come up frequently, but I'd like to be able to.

Paul, is HTTPS or anything secure available to protect my serial number when signing in? If not, would you mind connections over public wifi? If you'd prefer not, that's really not a problem--just wanted to check first though.

Thanks!

-John

Paul Squires · June 04, 2010, 08:32:27 AM

Hi John,

i do not have SSL installed on the planetsquires site. I have accepted the risk that there is a remote possibility that a serial number may get sniffed. Granted, given the number FF users and the amount of times one would access the forums via an unsecured public terminal, I doubt that it is of any major concern. Also, the software that I use that controls access to the smf forum has IP tracking so if too many different IP's try to access the forum/download pages then it will disable that user's account and notify me by email to investigate.

Peter House · June 07, 2010, 11:41:58 AM

I just found I can take the link from the emailed forum notice and it logs me in directly. No fuss - no muss.

This link is now a shortcut in my browser.

Roger Garstang · June 07, 2010, 03:58:25 PM

Link in my email was http://www.planetsquires.com/test/member_login.htm Which no longer works. I think this may have been an early system and even the final link sent later gave the same results, so I just go right to http://www.planetsquires.com/protect/forum/index.php . You may be seeing it caching your login. On mine even when I click Logout it still has me signed in until I close all browser windows. Unless your link has GET parameters with ? built in to the link it is caching the login. That it remembers me even when logging out would indicate that the session cookies aren't being cleared, so it would remember you if logged in once.

Roger Garstang · June 07, 2010, 04:13:44 PM

Hmm, playing further with this, it looks like the PHP for this BB isn't very secure and doesn't process only POST commands like it should (must be old PHP code that doesn't distinguish between them). So, you can create a GET URL that logs you in like:

http://www.planetsquires.com/members/plugins/protect/new_rewrite/login.php?amember_login=Firstname%20Lastname&amember_pass=xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx&v=-1&url=/protect/forum/index.php

Don't use this in public, otherwise anyone can login as you...hence why not secure. (Get URLs can be saved in History and Favorites)