V4 without forum module until mid-2011?

Hi all,

Please read on, there's a question in the end, hoping someone can advice me.

Of course I'm looking forward for the release, and I'm glad that the licensing/pricing model has been adjusted a little since the RC webinar. (Yes! I see that Granular Permissions has just been added to the Standard Edition in the comparison table)
I fully understand that Telerik had to make some changes to the pricing, and I think they have wisely worked the model. Well at least for us, now that we don't have to go Professional right away.

All fine, until I realized that the forums module was not only left out from the RC, but it is supposedly scheduled some time in the middle of next year. Got this from the sales department (was in contact with them for other reasons, they were very helpful by he way), and if I have understood this correctly there's no current info on whether there will be conversion of v3.7 forums or not.

I must blame myself quite a bit for choosing a remarkably unfortunate upgrade path for our company's forums, starting with our move to Sitefinity nearly two years ago. We liked the Yetanotherforum.net that we were running at the time, but I felt that it had to go, favoring a modern single sign-on CMS. Yes, the Sitefinity forums module was at best very basic, but from my experience with other Telerik products I felt certain that it had to improve quite soon.
So we re-entered some important older threads in the Sitefinity forums (naturally, a forums import feature could not have been a priority at the time), and started using them again for our product support.

While waiting for SF4 we have run out of time, because of upcoming activity, and we will probably have to re-implement Yetanotherforum.net or a similar forum, starting no later than next Friday.
I am hoping for, in this order:
a) Telerik will in short time decide that they will include a simple (like now?) forums module after all, at or soon after SF4 release.
b) Telerik keeps the schedule with a forums release around next summer, but soon announces an upcoming feature to import from one or more forums systems (like Yetanotherforum and others do).
c) Telerik keeps the schedule, but someone can start us out in setting up a common ASP.NET user authentication/membership system (like at least Yetanotherforum is capable of)

I have trouble getting the right hits while searching these forums (often best with Google from the outside).
Anyone with great success in sharing Sitefinity's authentication with other ASP.NET systems?

Thanks.
-olav

I hate to be a pessimist, but based on Telerik's track record for delivering SF4, I wouldn't hold my breath (or your client's breath) for any of the functionality that was axed from version 3.7. I'm prevented from upgrading some clients due to the missing Newsletter module and since I already told these clients SF4 was supposed to be hitting beta in Oct '09, I'm not about to embarrass myself any further.

Hi Olav,

Thank you for your feedback. I really understand how you feel.
The decisions you had to take as well as the paths to follow were full of uncertainties, and it's entirely our fault for this.
Most probably we are going to take the following option:
c) Telerik keeps the schedule, but someone can start us out in setting up a common ASP.NET user authentication/membership system (like at least Yetanotherforum is capable of)

Thanks for pointing me out in, well, at least some direction.
Georgi, I think catching up with a future SSO in a later SF4 release could do.
Which mean that we will move on with external forum software right away, and consider gradually moving back to a SF4 forums module whenever that might show up.

It looks like Yetanotherforum.net (YAF) is the only real contender, but please advice me if someone has integrated other forum software with Sitefinity, as we are still free to choose differently.

The part of embedding YAF in a user control within Sitefinity is easy, making Sitefinity the application. For sharing membership/profile providers between Sitefinity and YAF, it looks like Darren initially asked for some advice on these forums (Reusing the Sitefinity Membership and Role providers) and later shared some results on the YAF support forum. (I'll consider trying to contact him later, but first I need to find out which approach is preferred these days)

I see from one of the YAF wiki pages:
"To integrate with ASP.NET membership, use the same ASP.NET membership settings on your YAF forum as your main membership. As long as YAF and your primary membership are on the same page, they will work perfectly together. You will also need to use the same Forms authentication settings and possibly set your machineKey if you have YAF running in a different application."

I could use some jump starting here, ASP.NET Membership management is mostly new to me. Does that still mean I have to create a custom membership provider in Sitefinity? Anyone with some sample code to give me an idea of the proportions of this task?

I'll gladly pay a little for some sort of basic solution of sharing membership, going through the Marketplace or elsewhere!

Thanks.
-olav

Hi Olav,

"To integrate with ASP.NET membership, use the same ASP.NET membership settings on your YAF forum as your main membership. As long as YAF and your primary membership are on the same page, they will work perfectly together. You will also need to use the same Forms authentication settings and possibly set your machineKey if you have YAF running in a different application."

I could use some jump starting here, ASP.NET Membership management is mostly new to me. Does that still mean I have to create a custom membership provider in Sitefinity?