share user login between Mediawiki and wordpress

@pnaw10 it should work since the password hashing class was introduced into WordPress 2.5. It should work with any version of WordPress 2.5+

Thanks @jondavis. It worked great. Now I would just like to get the session to be shared so logging into one also logs into the other.

@jondavis – I finally got around to using your solution this weekend, and yes it worked with WP2.5. I had only two little roadbumps, which were easily overcome.

First, the WordPress installation I’m “joining” with MediaWiki isn’t using the default “wp_” as the prefix for its SQL database tables. I had to change accordingly, line 64 of your AuthWordpress.php and the 4rd line (including the comment) you have us pasting into MediaWiki’s LocalSettings.php file. I’m not sure if I had to change it in both places, but it made sense to do so.

The other little problem I had came in the very next four lines of the snippet pasted into LocalSettings.php:

$wgAuth->setAuthWordpressDBServer (DBSERVER); // wordpress host (eg. localhost)
$wgAuth->setAuthWordpressDBName(DBNAME); // wordpress database
$wgAuth->setAuthWordpressUser(DBUSER); // wordpress db username
$wgAuth->setAuthWordpressPassword(DBPASSWORD); // wordpress db password

When you fill in those variables — DBSERVER, DBNAME, DBUSER and DBPASSWORD — they need to have single quotes around them. I guess this is a no-brainer for any veteran programmer… but I’m still learning PHP and I take directions very literally. It took me a few unsuccessful login attempts before I realized this, and added in the quotes. Just like magic, everything worked perfectly.

One other item worth noting: once you make these changes, all access to MediaWiki will be exclusively through WordPress usernames and passwords.

To help avoid any potential naming problems, I installed MediaWiki with a new, unique username that I was not using on WordPress. Obviously, that account has MW sysop privileges by default. But once I got WordPress and MW linked, I could no longer login with that sysop account. Since there’s no password for it in WordPress, I had effectively “locked the keys in the car” so to speak — until I created a WP account with the same username. I then logged into MW with it, and gave “myself” (my WordPress admin account) sysop rights in MediaWiki.

I suppose I could have saved myself this step by making my MediaWiki default username the same as my WordPress username.

Again, I’ll stress none of these issues were major problems — all resolved in a matter of mere minutes. Just wanted to make a note of them in case anyone else runs into the same situation.