At some point in the future I’ll be writing a more comprehensive article on linking external applications authentication to the phpBB user system, but in the meantime, if you just want to hash passwords or compare hashes then the following code is really useful

define('IN_PHPBB', true);
$phpbb_root_path = './';
$phpEx = substr(strrchr(__FILE__, '.'), 1);
include($phpbb_root_path . 'common.' . $phpEx);

$password = 'password';
$hash = phpbb_hash($password);

if (phpbb_check_hash($password, $hash)) {
echo '"Hash "'.$hash.'" matches password "'.$password.'"';
}

It allows you to run a separate php file which utilises phpBB functions to hash passwords; call it from a shell script, use it to login to servers etc.

Now as any developer who’s dabbled with WordPress knows, it’s easy to change the root directory location of WordPress so that directory structure wise different CMS systems can play nicely alongside one another.

What about, however, the situation where two CMS systems both require a root file of index.php? Well there you have a problem because if you change the name of the WordPress index file, which on the face of it seems easiest, you break the search feature (and possibly other things I’ve not found yet).

Fortunately I found a simple 3 step method which requires modifying only 1 line in 1 core file, which compared to other CMS systems, is not that many.

1. Firstly you’ll want to follow the instructions on the link at the start of the article to move your WordPress root away from the root of your site so that it can co-exist with your other app. Then, instead of creating a file named index.php in your website root, you create wordpress.php or another name of your choosing
2. Secondly, in the .htaccess file you created as part of the aforementioned guide, replace instances of index.php with wordpress.php or whatever name you chose
3. Now, for the final bit of magic, locate the following file wp-includes/class-wp-rewrite.php and replace
   

   public $index = 'index.php';

   with

   public $index = 'wordpress.php';

   taking care to use your alternative file name if it differs

That’s a wrap as they say! You should find that WordPress works fine, including the search feature, all the while leaving index.php free for use by another CMS. Do let me know in comments how you get along with this if you try it.

Oh and remember, if you upgrade WordPress, which will happen every now and again, do check to make sure your core file change gets put back – I hate to change core, but as index.php is hard-coded, it’s the only way.