As far as I can see, you can use EE’s standalone member profile functionality, or if you use the forum module (which I plan to), you can use the profile pages included within it.

The latter means that any use of a profile link redirects users over to forum/profile/*

I am trying to decide on a strategy, but am unsure how forum profiles are linked, if at all to member/author profiles etc in EE.  Are they interchangeable, are there distinct benefits in using either?

Thanks,

D

Membership is installation-wide: the data is identical, it’s just the look/feel that may be different.

The forum module - if you allow multiple themes using a theme drop-down, will skin its own member templates too, so that may be an advantage if you use that functionality.

Good to know, thanks.

What I want to avoid is having users maintain/view more than one “profile” - e.g. one on the site and one on the forum.  Technically it’s the same data I know.  The advantage of having the forum profile concept is that a lot of the options in it will be related to the “forum” so it is useful, but ideally a user would have a profile for the whole site, which includes forum statistics etc.

Therefore the question is whether there is any restriction on the URL side, e.g. forum/profile/*** - does it have to belong there to grab forum statistics, or can I access those from profile/member/***?

Ordinarily this would not be a problem, but from what I have seen member/profile handling is slightly special within the confines of EE.

Hope this makes sense!

Slightly OT, but is there anyway to post to a forum thread from outside the forum? The integrated idea with threads linked to weblog posts is great, but only if the user can also post to the forum automatically from the weblog page?