[wp-hackers] need a little nudge

[Shelly]

Hey all -

I have two questions, if someone can just give me a nudge in the right  
direction.

1) I'm doing a site for a client, and I'm a little stuck.  They want  
to add a blog to their site.  The problem is, most of the site is  
already using a custom-made CMS, and the URL they want to blog to  
appear at already has an index.php file there that they don't want to  
give up.  If I install WP where they want it, he WP index.php file  
will override the page they have there - and they don't want that.   
They also don't want to convert this one page to make it the WP index  
page.  SO I was wondering if there were any other options I could take  
on to give them what they want, or if I need to *insist* they let me  
put the index page within WordPress, or move the blog down a level.   
(I think it's the latter, but I wanted to be absolutely sure before I  
gave them this ultimatum.)

2) I'm compressing 20 blogs into one.  Right now, I'm converting the  
individual bloggers into categories on this single blog.  I *think* I  
can move the posts over from each individual blog and assign them to  
these individual users on the one blog.  But the question comes in  
where each of these users post on the site.  I want to restrict each  
user to a single category.  I can see a way to d this: the user names  
are actually *exactly* the same name as the category I want to post  
them in (for example, I want user John Smith to writ *only* to the  
category named "John Smith" - the category slug is different, however  
- it's "sd_smith")  I *think* i can write a little function for this  
(since most plugins I've found are either too much, or not what I  
need) that would check the author's name against what category he's  
selected when he hits the "publish" button.  Just basically do a  
preg_match or something.  Problem is, I don't quite know how to stop  
the posting function from going through, or how to stop it to check.   
(actually now that I think about it, I *could* just do author pages  
and "fake" the categories...hmmm...)

I was wondering if anyone here can point me in a direction to go for  
this.  (I'm not asking for you to do it for me - I've just been  
researching this for a coupe of weeks now, and I'm starting to think  
I'm looking for the wrong thing, because I can't find anything to help  
me, so it's time to ask.)  if there's like a plugin already written  
that stops the posting function - so I can look at it - that would be  
great.  Something like that, or suggestions on what you may have done,  
so I can cobble this together.

Thanks a bunch!

~Shelly