[pmwiki-users] AuthUser & FAST Membership - future?

[The Editor]

On 11/13/06, Allister Jenks <arj at zkarj.co.nz> wrote:
> Probably a question for PM, but many will be interested.
>
> I'm using AuthUser with the FAST Membership recipe and it has been
> working well.  However, we have just passed 300 users and the admin
> side of things is becoming a bit unwieldy.
>
> I'm looking at ways of improving the situation and also how to
> automatically grant group membership to new users on the basis of some
> script logic.  This would ideally then be powered by the PayPal
> "Instant Payment Notification" (IPN) process.
>
> It strikes me that using a third party shopping cart is perhaps the
> best bet to easily and reliably manager users on the basis of payment,
> but that would then require the automated updating of the PmWiki
> authorities.
>
> So to my question.  There has been mention of a core implementation
> (or at least a PM-authored recipe) that would supersede FAST
> Membership in some or all ways.  What is the future of this area?
>
> Also, does anyone have any firsthand experience of driving PmWiki
> authority from PayPal IPN?


I should add Allister, that from Caveman's perspective FAST Membership
is already superseded on two levels:  1) by ZAP's CMS capabilities
which far exceeds it, and 2) by Htpasswdforms which is what FAST
Membership was hacked off of, but has now been much improved to allow
new member registration and even group capabilities, so there's no
real reason for anyone to use FAST Membership. Unless you just like
the name...

BTW, is there some way to let old recipe's die... ?

As for administrative stuff becoming unwieldy, if you can tell me your
specific problem, I can tell if ZAP can manage it more easily.  It can
sort and list members any way you want to and do any kind of changes
you wan't to their account very easily.  And members can change their
own profile information so far as you let them.

As for PayPal, I haven't looked into it much but would like to at some
point.  I'm sure ZAP could be set up to handle it--and I'd be happy to
set up a ZAP form snippet for you, if you explain the exact format of
the info PayPal's IPN sends you.  A page with a ZAP form could be
setup to automatically retrieve the GET variables, and even
self-submit, effecting whatever profile changes (permissions) you
want.  I'm having fun with ZAPchat right at the moment but could be
distracted momentarily if you were willing to do the PayPal research
for me.

Of course, if you are dealing with anything really valuable you might
want to go with the extra security of a database (ie Crisses
suggestion).  If you want the simplicity of staying all flat files,
ZAP is the way.  Whichever you prefer.

Cheers,
Caveman