Integrating Gallery login with my blog

I have a website with a Gallery2 install and a blog. The blog actually pulls content from an IPB blog on another site I host. The problem with this setup is that anyone wanting to comment on my blog would have to find the other site and register there, then find my blog there and comment on it. Obviously not the best setup!

I want to move the blog contents from the IPB forum to my website, and I'd like to use Gallery to handle all the login/authentication stuff, so they don't have to have two accounts. I need advice on how to do the following:

- Make the blog know when someone is logged into the Gallery (probably easy via a cookie or something)
- Make the blog know who is logged into the Gallery

Once I figure out how to do that, I think I can handle the rest.

Thanks for any input!

By "the other way around" do you mean write my own authentication system and use that for Gallery?

Yep, but like I said, that blog is on a totally different site (which happens to be hosted on the same machine) and I don't want users to have to register on that site. Also, I might not host that site forever, so eventually I'll want to move my blog to my own website. Might as well start now rather than do all this twice.

Ok, so what I'm doing here is first checking for the GALLERYSID cookie:
$currentSession = (isset($_COOKIE['GALLERYSID']) && $_COOKIE['GALLERYSID'] !='TMP_SESSION_ID_DI_NOISSES_PMT')?true : false;
If false, I display my login link which pops a login form.
else if true, I ajax query another script for the user:

    /* Load our GalleryUser */
    var $user, $isAdmin;
    $.ajax({
        type: 'GET',
        dataType: 'json',
        data: {'userInfo':1},
        url: '_assets/userActions.php',
        success: function(data){
            if(data.user){
                $user = data.user;
                $isAdmin = data.isAdmin;
                if($user.userName != 'guest'){
                    //do something
                }
                if($isAdmin){
                    //do something else
                }
            }
        }
    });

userActions.php

snip...

/* Connect to Gallery */
require_once ('/path/to/gallery2/embed.php');
$ret = GalleryEmbed::init(array('fullInit'=>true));
if ($ret) {
    echo 'GalleryEmbed::init failed, here is the error message: '.$ret->getAsHtml();
    exit;
}
GalleryEmbed::done();

...snip...

    $user = $gallery->getActiveUser();
    list ($ret, $isAdmin) = GalleryCoreApi::isUserInSiteAdminGroup();
    if($ret){
        logIt('Error checking is User In Site Admin Group');
    }
    if (is_object($user)) {
        echo json_encode(array('user'=>$user, 'isAdmin'=> $isAdmin));
        exit;
    }
    exit;

...snip

-s
FlashYourWeb and Your Gallery with The E2 XML Media Player for Gallery2

you don't need to json_encode if you're not returning for ajax.

$user = $gallery->getActiveUser(); gets you all you need, the user object and then you can use the built-in getters like: $user->getUserName(); and $user->getFullName() ...
http://gallery.menalto.com/apidoc/GalleryCore/Classes/GalleryUser.html#sec-method-summary

-s
FlashYourWeb and Your Gallery with The E2 XML Media Player for Gallery2

-s
FlashYourWeb and Your Gallery with The E2 XML Media Player for Gallery2