shared login page for portal and communities

Question

Is it possible to have a single login page that both Customer Portal and Communities users can login with? We are in the process of transitioning users from Customer Portal to Communities. We would like to allow everyone to continue to login using the same URL they were perviously using to access Customer Portal. When they get transitioned to Communities (different profile), they would be automatically redirected to the new communities instead of customer portal.

Not sure if this is possible as Customer Portal uses the Site.Login() method and communities uses Network.forwardToAuthPage(). Wondering if anyone has run into a similar use-case and how you might have solved it.

Answer 1

When you have a customer portal and a customer community, you can't use the same log-in url with redirection between the two depending on the user id.

Answer 2

Since its not possible for both to login with the same URL, here is what we came up with:

1. Try to direct new communities users to use the new login URL (email).

2. Should they end up at the old portal login:

   a. When they enter their credentials, before actually login them in, retrieve the users profile.

   b. If this profile is associated with the new communities, display a message that they need to login into at a different URL.

   c. Redirect them using javascript after X # of seconds (also provide a link incase they have javascript disabled).

I'm aware that this could be seen as a security hole, as you give feedback to hackers if the username exists in the system. I think that Salesforce's strict password requirements and lockout policy should negate this though.