Under Construction

Sorry, this page is a work in progess, please check back later for updates.

Drafting Notes: As with some of the other OGF2.0 help articles, some people were confused despite attempting to make the article idiot proof, this time around this article needs a public review to deal with that magnitude of idiocy (then again, we did joke the registration system was just complicated enough to keep out idiots and spam bots)... Article setup should be similar to the OGF2.0 version from the LDAP Portal sub-site - multiple pages for a very short guide, very in-depth guide, and a technical summary for more advanced users (not a guide, just discusses how the global accounts work).

Update: OGF2.0 Article recovered, requires rewrite but is too long to do quickly. This time around the user registration system is not that complicated and mostly documented in the registration forum and welcome email. Here are some tips to help people until a full article is posted:

• All user accounts are stored in a central global directory, on a Light-weight Directory Access Protocol server (OpenLDAP), this is called LDAP for short, just think of it as a special type of database which is well suited to managing user accounts (its standard in most enterprise networks). Only Joomla can write to LDAP, all of the other sub-sites can only read from it, this means registration can only be enabled on the homepage, registration must be disabled everywhere else and on any future OGF hosted sites which make use of LDAP.

• When you register on OGF a local account is created on the homepage (Joomla plus Community Builder) and a global account is created in LDAP. Because your global account is created in LDAP immediately we have to email you a randomly generated password instead of the email confirmation links common with other websites.

• A bug in how the random passwords are stored after they are generated prevents them from being used with LDAP. Because of this new users, and users to use the "forgot password" recovery feature, have to login to the homepage and change their password before they can login to the other sub-sites. That bug has since turned into an added layer of security, no bot is known to login to change its password prior to posting spam, though some are known to be able to make through global account systems like this one.

• Note OGF2.0 had a flawless track record with spam bots, not a single spam bot made it in, the hope is OGF2.5 will do better by making it easier for regular users to register without compromising security (the summit forums do not count, it uses both LDAP and local DB registration, this will probably change...soon....).

• Once you have registered with OGF your account will be retained across all future OGF sites and disasters leading to complete site rebuilds, in most cases you do not have to register again. There are three exceptions: Like any database we can only restore the latest backup, if you registered between the time of the last backup and just before a catastrophic failture then your account will probably be lost (this is true of all sites). If you change your email address and forget your password you may have to register again, but you can request a staff member recover it for you in some circumstances. Finally, if you registered on the OGF1.0 site (or OL site before it) but never activated your account by following the registration confirmation link emailed to you then your account was deleted and you will need to register again - this will probably happen again at some point, make sure you actually use your account after you register.

• As noted earlier, the sub-sites cannot write to your global account, its read only, except for Joomla. This means if you change your password on the forums sub-site it will be ignored and you will have to use your old password the next time you log into the forums, instead you have to change your password on the homepage. Right now the password and in some cases nickname (on some sub-sites) is the only account informations governed globally. As time goes on, and we continue to improve the site, more profile information will be managed globally. So for example, at some point you will have to login to the homepage to change your forum avatar image, changing it in your forum profile would be ignored, but then that avatar will be used on all sub-sites which have avatar support. Same for signature, timezone, etc...