Hey there.. have been looking at IP.Board and Converge as a solution to a website networking problem.

My goal is create a sports network by joining several different forums and having the same log-in credentials.

I have read that this is possible with IP Converge and IPB 2.3.. but my questions are:

1. Can I have the sites on different servers?
2. Is there a way to incorporate this into existing forums? As in.. if I already have a forum with 500 members and another with 700, will they all be imported into one central database? Or does Converge just check every single converged product when logging someone in?
3. Does the post count remain seperate in the sites or can you add the post counts to have a master post count for the network? As in.. if a user has 70 posts on one of the forums, and 30 on another, will it display 100 on both of them or how many he has on that specific forum? Is it possible to display the total number?
4. Is it possible to have global profiles? As in a user can just change the profile on one site and it be the same throughout the network. I saw somewhere that in the IPB ACP you can put URLs for where members will edit/create accounts.. does this have something to do with it?
5. On the sites, will it display how many members they have individually, or will it show the total number of users within the network? Is it possible to show the total number?

You see, my aim is to create a network where just forums/topics/posts/polls are different.. I want the member base to stay the same throughout.

Thanks

I'm trying converge in these days so i can reply to some question


Yes it makes an xml remote procedure call between servers


When you import you can choose to overwrite or add members renaming duplicates, so i think yes


Each forum has its settings & stats they cannot be merged


At this moment no, they told that something will be done in future (maybe)


As for question 3, but don't know if total number of users can be merged

Hope it helps

Thanks for the reply, Mak. I really appreciate it.

4) Not in any foreseeable release, though maybe down the road

5) It will show how many users are on that local board. i.e. the first one will show 500, plus however many from the other board have visited. It doesn't automatically load the users to each local board - that is done when the user actually visits the local board.


Converge is a single point of authentication - not a single point of user management. It's a slightly different (albeit related) matter.