Description: ------------ Looking at the LiveUser getAuthAdminObjectByName function code I found: $con =& new $classname($container, array('type'=>$container['type'])); So the second parameter always contain an array with a single value: type. Now in the constructor of the Admin/Auth/Container/DB.php function &LiveUser_Admin_Auth_Container_DB(&$connectOptions, $conf) I found that the code try to read $conf['authTable'] and more properties overwriting the first part of the constructor where it assign to the object properties the values from the connectOptions array. $conf['authTable'] will never be something different from null (as you can see in the second line of this example) and will overwrite the default authTable or the authTable defined with the value from the connectOptions array.