If you use WordPress to publish your blog or as your website CMS, you can create a Single Sign-On (SSO) connection to your Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) community.
The SSO connection makes it possible for your WordPress-registered users, who are also members of your Vanilla community, to log in to your WordPress website or blog and log in to your Vanilla community without having to go through a separate log-in process.
Notes
- SSO is available only on the Advanced plan and greater.
- You must enable the jsConnect plugin before you continue.
- The free WordPress plugin makes it easy to integrate your WordPress website and your Vanilla community. The following is a guide on how to get started.
Install the WordPress plugin
Follow these steps to install the plugin:
- Upload the
vanilla-forums folder to /wp-content/plugins/ - Enable the plugin through the Plugins menu in WordPress
📝 NOTE: You can also search for the plugin from the backend of your WordPress via the "add new" option in the plugin menu. Look for "Vanilla Forums" plugin created by Todd Burry.
Once you have installed the Vanilla Forums plugin, you will see the following added to your WordPress admin menu:
Connect WordPress to your Vanilla community
To prepare Vanilla for SSO with your WordPress website, enter the URL for your Vanilla community and click Save:
📝 NOTE: The domain can be at myforum.vanillaforums.com or it can be the custom domain that you create (e.g., community.mysite.com).
If you run into validation issues or get the following error: "Couldn't find a Vanilla Forum at this url :/", the issue is related to where you host your WordPress install. The following checklist should help with the most common issues that cause this error and how to address them:
- Your Vanilla community is not at the URL you entered. Check the URL and try again.
- The DNS isn't updated. If you created a custom domain, give the server some time to propagate.
- Does PHP have cURL enabled? Just having cURL isn't enough; it must be in the copy of PHP actually running web requests. If you're not sure whether you have cURL, contact the host of your WordPress site to enable this.
- There may be an issue to recognize the Vanilla URL if the admin has been locked down with an .htaccess file. Check the file to make sure it is not.
Configure SSO
To set up SSO, click the Single Sign-On menu item to get to the page shown below. You have to copy the values in these fields to the SSO settings on your Vanilla jsConnect configuration page.
Let's take a look at these options, as well as the steps that follow:
- Enable: If you check this, users to your Vanilla community will sign in through your WordPress login page.
- Client ID: This can be any numeric value or text value you set. Make sure it has no spaces or non-alphanumeric characters. You can use dashes (-) to separate words.
- Secret: Click Generate to create a secret key.
- Other Information for Vanilla: These are values generated by your WordPress automatically; you must copy them to your Vanilla installation. This information lets Vanilla know how to process your users.
The following is an example of how the Client ID you created and a Secret key generated in WordPress will look before you proceed:
Keep your WordPress open and, in another tab or window, log in into your Vanilla community Dashboard.
jsConnect in Vanilla
1. Log in into your Vanilla community backend, and click the Dashboard menu item "jsConnect" located in the User menu group.
2. On the jsConnect page, enter the ClientID and Secret into the appropriate fields that you created in your WordPress install.
3. Copy the URL values from the backend of your WordPress install: Authenticate Url, Sign In Url, and Register Url.
4. Paste these URLs into your Vanilla Forum jsConnect configuration form as shown below. (Sign Out Url is optional and can be left blank.)
📝 NOTE: In order for Vanilla to return users to the page where they clicked Sign In, you must append Registration URL with &Target={target} or?Target={target}. For example, if a user is on /discussion/16/any-suggestions, Vanilla will string-replace {target} with %2Fdiscussion%2F16%2Fany-suggestions and pass it along to your authentication server as &Target=%2Fdiscussion%2F16%2Fany-suggestions. When the user is authenticated and sent back to the community with that Target parameter still intact, Vanilla redirect them to where they were.
Additional sections information
- This is trusted connection and can sync roles & permissions - Toggle this on to sync Roles and permissions between the two systems. To work properly, make sure the WordPress and Vanilla username groups are the same. For example, if you have have Author and Subscriber roles in WordPress, you have to create these same user groups in Vanilla. You can do this in the Vanilla Dashboard, on the Roles & Permissions page. See Roles & Permissions to learn more.
📝 NOTE: Any user created in your Vanilla community prior to jsConnect will not be synced.
- Make this connection your default signin method - Toggle this on to force users signing in to your Vanilla community to go through your WordPress login screen. This must be enabled for SSO through your WordPress login page to work as intended.
- Advanced section: You can control the hash method and test the connection to ensure it's working.
Change Registration Type
The final step is to change the way users register with the site. To do so:
- Access the Dashboard in your Vanilla community.
- Navigate to Settings > Membership > Registration.
- Select the Connect option.
- Click Save.
Additional information
If you're using WordPress, there are other ways to enjoy a connection between WordPress and Vanilla. Learn more in these articles:
If you're having trouble, visit our support forum to get help in getting your SSO connection set up.
