WP Discourse SSO - What happens with old members

Product Support WordPress
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AI-generated summary

Damian_Boon asks how old members can log in when using the WP Discourse plugin with WordPress as the SSO provider. angus explains that all authentication will be handled by WordPress, so users must have WordPress accounts to log in. If users don’t already have WordPress accounts, they can either: 1) migrate Discourse user data to WordPress (including passwords, which may require expert help), or 2) register a new WordPress account. When logging in, DiscourseConnect matches users by email—if the same email is used on both platforms, the existing Discourse account is accessed; otherwise, a new Discourse account is created, which can later be merged.

1

If we use the WP Discourse plugin and choose Wordpress as the sso login, how do old members login? Do they have to re-create there account on WP to be able to login again?

3

Hey @Damian_Boon, when you enable Wordpress as the DiscourseConnect Provider via the WP Discourse plugin all authentication will be handled by Wordpress. That means that all of your users will need to have accounts in Wordpress in order to log in. If all of your users do not already have accounts in Wordpress you essentially have a two options:

  1. Migrate (copy) your Discourse user data to Wordpress to ensure consistency between the two platforms; OR
  2. Require your users to register an account on your Wordpress, if they don’t already have one.

When users log into Discourse through Wordpress, DiscourseConnect will attempt to match users based on their email address. So if a user has registered their own new Wordpress account (i.e. option 2, above) they will log in to their existing Discourse account if they use the same email on both platforms. If they used a different email to register in Wordpress, a new Discourse user account will be created the first time they log in (you can of course merge user accounts if this happens).

Both options should work, however keep in mind that to successfully and consistently perform option 1 you will likely need to export user passwords from Discourse and import them into Wordpress. You will likely need expert help for that.