Can Joomla site use an external site for sign on?

Yes it can be done. You can do it through cURL, details here.

Yes it can be done. You can do it through cURL, details here - Logging In To Joomla 1.5 Using External Form (not within joomla folder, but on same server) In order to get the users to an external login page when Joomla tries to send the user to it's own login page, I would use a simple redirect in htaccess. If you are not using SEF URLs then the redirect will need to look something like this - RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (^|&)option=com_user(&|$) RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (^|&)view=login(&|$) RewriteRule ^$ http://mySSOsite.com?R=301,L.

Thanks Brent. I've already got the signing in aspect taken care of (in part, thanks to your post). What I can't figure out, is if a guest user on the joomla site tries to go to a private page - how do I get Joomla to redirect to the external login URL?

Right now, I hacked the "authorize" method in /includes/application.php. However, I was looking to do this without a core hack.. – cinqoTimo May 2 '11 at 15:14 Ahh gotcha, I misunderstood the intent. I'll update my answer.

– Brent Friar May 2 '11 at 15:20 +1 for the good idea. I'll see if I can figure out how to accomplish that - will post results back.. – cinqoTimo May 2 '11 at 15:39 I tried 'Redirect /index. Php?

Option=com_user&view=login 'htttp://mySSOsite.com' - (it's actually 'http', was getting formatted as link) but it didn't work. I'm on Windows, that could be a problem, or perhaps because the login page isn't a physical path..? – cinqoTimo May 2 '11 at 16:15 Any time that you have a query string the redirect is a little different. It takes a few lines, editing my answer once again.

– Brent Friar May 2 '11 at 17:25.

Joomla 1.5 comes with plugins for LDAP, OpenID and Gmail authentication. The plugins can be configured in the Joomla backend (Extensions > Plugin Manager). If you do not use any of these authentication methods you might check out the plugin code to create a new one fitting your needs.

This is custom SSO -- not Windows AD, or Gmail. I need the system to redirect to an external URL before login (There are lots of plugins for controlling what happens after login). An authentication plugin isn't really what I'm looking for.

– cinqoTimo May 2 '11 at 15:00.

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