Forum login not tied to site login?

[Ben James Ben]

Is the general Thrillnetwork site login supposed to be tied into the vBulletin forum login automatically?

The behavior I'm seeing is that the two logins are separate. When logged into the site and visiting the forum, I see that I am not logged into the forum. That is, I see a "Please log into your account" message at the top of the page, with a link to a login page. Interestingly, the login page appears either to not work or perhaps it's just re-logging me into the general Thrillnetwork site and not the forum.

The only way I can actually log into the forum is to perform a forum action like reply to a post or view a member's profile. By doing so, I get a vBulletin login page, "You are not logged in or you do not have permission to access this page," and by using the login form on that page I am able to log into the forum.

Interestingly, logging into the vBulletin forum also logs me into the general site. But, it doesn't work in the opposite direction. My expectation of the correct behavior is that by logging into the site, I should also be logged into the forum without having to do anything else. Perhaps there is something that is supposed to be happening in the back end that isn't?

The two login page forms are different. The general login page:
<form action="login.php" method="post">
<input type="text" name="login" ...>
<input type="password" name="password" ...>

The vBulletin login page:
<form action="login.php?do=login" method="post" onsubmit="md5hash(vb_login_password, ...)">
<input type="text" name="vb_login_username" .../>
<input type="password" name="vb_login_password" .../>

[Katie]

Trying clearing your cookies and try logging in again. When you log into TN's front page it should log you into the entire site.

[Ben James Ben]

Thanks. Clearing *.thrillnetwork.com cookies solved the problem. I had problems a while ago where I was able to log in via vBulletin but not via the main login page due to a long password, and I'm guessing that my current problems are related to the past problem. The cookies on my system probably had been out of sync since that time.

However, I note that I am now seeing the problem in the opposite direction. If I log out entirely from the site and then log in via a vBulletin "you are not logged in" page, I get logged into the forum but not the general Thrillnetwork site. This behavior is reproducible, even with cookies cleared.

[Steven]

Rule #1 about this site's login... don't ever use the vBulletin login. We've stressed this enough times. It's even covered in our FAQ.

[Ben James Ben]

Thanks for your help. I should have checked the FAQ. My mistake was getting too used to logging in via vBulletin because, prior to now, it had been the only reliable way for me to log in.