This plugin turns your WordPress Dashboard into a familiar management interface for an enterprise-scale LDAP Directory Information Tree (DIT). Configure a connection to your LDAPv3 directory server, and from then on any modifications you make to your WordPress user database through the WordPress admin screens will be reflected in your LDAP database. This offers a simpler and more convenient front-end for managing user account information to support single sign-on (SSO), identity management, and other enterprise functions.
Donations for this plugin make up a chunk of my income. If you continue to enjoy this plugin, please consider making a donation. :) Thank you for your support!
All user accounts on the WordPress side are mirrored as
inetOrgPerson
(RFC 2798) entries on the LDAP side. The following WordPress user account fields to LDAP attribute translations take place when a new WordPress user is created:
- The WordPress
user_login
field becomes the uid
attribute in the LDAP database.
- The WordPress
user_email
field becomes the mail
attribute in the LDAP database.
- The WordPress
display_name
field becomes the displayName
attribute in the LDAP database.
- The WordPress
user_pass
field becomes the userPassword
attribute in the LDAP database.
There is no mapping for the WordPress user ID number on the LDAP side. Instead, users are uniquely identified by their fully-qualified Distinguished Name (DN). A user's DN is automatically composed by combining their WordPress
user_login
with the WordPress Multisite's configured LDAP Search Base setting. For instance, by default, a WordPress Multisite with WP-LDAP installed running at
https://example.com/
with a user whose username is
exampleuser
will automatically be mirrored over LDAP to the user identified as
uid=exampleuser,dc=example,dc=com
.
In addition to the above mappings, the following optional mappings also take place if or when the user updates their user profile:
- The WordPress
first_name
field becomes the givenName
attribute in the LDAP database.
- The WordPress
last_name
field becomes the sn
attribute in the LDAP database.
- The WordPress
nickname
field becomes the cn
attribute in the LDAP database.
- The WordPress
description
field becomes the description
attribute in the LDAP database.
- The WordPress
user_url
field becomes the labeledURI
attribute in the LDAP database.
- The WordPress user's avatar becomes the
jpegPhoto
attribute in the LDAP database. (Not yet implemented.)
Moreover, WP-LDAP is aware of certain features provided by other plugins. These include:
- The WordPress user's S/MIME certificate (
smime_certificate
field) becomes the userSMIMECertificate
attribute in the LDAP database. (This functionality is provided by the WP PGP Encrypted Emails plugin and that plugin must be installed and activated for this to work.)
This plugin is designed for medium to large deployments of WordPress Multisite (or Multi-Network) instances, originally developed as a collaboration with the
Glocal Coop's Activist Network Platform project. If you run multiple WordPress Multisite Networks, you can configure each WP Network with different LDAP settings. This plugin does not currently support single-site installs; please
post an issue on GitHub if you want to use LDAP data stores with a WP single-site install and we can discuss use cases.
For most systems,
WordPress's automatic plugin installation will correctly install WP-LDAP. However, you can also install the plugin manually by following these steps:
- Upload and unzip the
wp-ldap.zip
archive to your WordPress install's /wp-content/plugins/
directory.
- Network-activate the plugin through the Network Admin → Plugins menu in WordPress. Again, the plugin must be network-activated.
- Configure your LDAPv3 server address and authentication parameters in the Network Settings admin screen:
- Enter the LDAP URI referring to where your server is listening for connections. (Only
ldaps:///
is usable for remote connections; an unsecured ldap:///
connection URI will only be accepted if the server IP address is 127.0.0.1
. Please read the remarks at OpenLDAP Administrator Guide § Security Considerations for more information.)
- Enter the binding DN and its password.
- Optionally, enter a custom search base, or accept the default. (The default for a WordPress Multisite at
example.com
is dc=example,dc=com
.)
Requirements
- PHP 5.3 or later is required, as WP-LDAP makes use of PHP Namespaces.
- The PHP LDAP extension must be installed. On a Debian system, this is usually as simple as running
sudo apt install php-ldap
. The plugin will automatically deactivate itself if this requirement is not met.
- Your WordPress installation must be configured as a Multisite instance. (WordPress single-site installs are not currently supported.)
- You must be able to bind to an LDAPv3 directory server. (LDAPv2 is not supported.)
- To configure the LDAP connection over the Web interface, you must be able to serve your website over HTTPS. (Unsecured HTTP Web-based configuration is not supported.)
Configuration
If your web server does not serve pages over HTTPS, you will need to use the
WP-CLI or the
mysql
command-line client to configure the plugin as follows:
mysql> SELECT meta_key,meta_value FROM wp_sitemeta WHERE site_id = 1 AND meta_key LIKE 'wp_ldap_%'; +------------------------+----------------------------+ | meta_key | meta_value | +------------------------+----------------------------+ | wp_ldap_bind_dn | cn=admin,dc=example,dc=com | | wp_ldap_bind_password | password | | wp_ldap_connect_uri | ldaps://ldap.example.com/ | | wp_ldap_search_base_dn | dc=example,dc=com | +------------------------+----------------------------+
Of course, you should replace the specific details shown above with values appropriate for your deployment. You should also consider configuring your LDAP server such that the bound DN has restrictive
access controls enforced on it, as its password must be stored in the clear within WordPress's database for the plugin to function.
Security
The extreme convenience this plugin offers makes it even more important that you take your LDAP DIT's security seriously. Here are some highly recommended additional configuration steps you should take if setting up a directory server for the first time.
OpenLDAP
slapd(8)
will by default listen on both the IPv4 and IPv6 "any" address, exposing your directory contents to the Internet if you have not configured a firewall. Worse, the unsecured
ldap://
protocol is used out-of-the-box, which will further expose the contents of LDAP traffic to eavesdroppers. This is almost certainly not what you want.
This is
bad, and not what you want to see:
$ sudo netstat --listening --numeric --program --tcp | grep slapd tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:389 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 20244/slapd tcp6 0 0 :::389 :::* LISTEN 20244/slapd $ ps -ef | grep slapd | head -n 1 openldap 12932 1 0 03:28 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/slapd -h ldap:/// ldapi:/// -g openldap -u openldap -F /etc/ldap/slapd.d
The above shows us that
slapd
is listening for incoming TCP network connections on its default port (
389
). This is happening because
slapd
was invoked with the
-h ldap:///
option.
In contrast, this is
good, and what you probably want to see instead:
$ sudo netstat --listening --numeric --program --tcp | grep slapd tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:389 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 20282/slapd tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:636 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 20282/slapd tcp6 0 0 :::636 :::* LISTEN 20282/slapd $ ps -ef | grep slapd | head -n 1 openldap 20282 1 0 10:51 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/slapd -h ldap://127.0.0.1:389/ ldaps:/// ldapi:/// -g openldap -u openldap -F /etc/ldap/slapd.d
The above shows us that
slapd
is still listening for connections on any configured IP address, but only with the secured
ldaps://
scheme (LDAP over TLS). It is still accepting unsecured connections, but
only on IP address
127.0.0.1
, the local host. This means cleartext LDAP traffic is not transiting the network; it is contained within the machine itself, only traveling over the loopback interface.
On a typical Debian GNU/Linux system, you invoke
slapd
as
sudo service slapd start
(which runs the
/etc/init.d/slapd
script). This sources the file at
/etc/default/slapd
to set the invocation arguments. Look for the
SLAPD_SERVICES
variable in the
/etc/default/slapd
file and set it to sensible values, as shown above, to make the change persistent across system reboots.
This plugin is free software, but grocery stores do not offer free food.
Donations for this plugin make up a chunk of my income. If you continue to enjoy this plugin, please consider making a donation. :) Thank you for your support!