I ended up trying this, and it somewhat seems to work, but I'm trying to juggle some code and configurations to get authentication and permissions to act nice together, so I haven't had time to really check to make sure its working. I'd bet it would work, though.
I was trying to add some snippets to my Users.php under the appropriate table to make sure you couldn't create an account with a duplicate email address, and I'm trying to overcome some hurdles in that department. There's a host of information on this (and the weblite) site, so I've been sifting through those.
I always go back to the Web Auction source code for ideas, and am usually pleased with results, but I'm mostly just an armchair coder, so I'm trying to piece it all together.
Thanks again, Steve
sophistry