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I’m a great fan of OpenID and the whole idea of an open-source single sign on. Since I first started to use the technology in late 2005, I’ve seen it become more and more supported. Today, even AOL, Mozilla and Microsoft are working on supporting it.

It has jumped miles from being a protocol a few odd blogs use to authenticate commenters to a leading log-in mechanism employed by various start-ups as well as estabilished Internet companies. The OpenID Directory has 271 sites listed which support it, including ourselves, but this is a tiny handful of the total amount.

However, I expect many of you will not use OpenID or if you do you will not know how to unlock it’s full potential.

1. Why?
It’s annoying having a different log-in for every site online. OpenID allows you to have one log-in (a URL) to use to sign onto many sites. It follows the same principles as earlier SSOs such as Passport.net but allows people to integrate it into their sites free of charge.
2. How can I allow people to comment on my blog through OpenID?
It depends on your blogging engine: some such as LiveJournal have support out-of-the-box whilst others such as WordPress or MovableType require plug-ins. Some engines, such as Blogger or MSN Spaces, do not support it.

The odds are you’ll be using WordPress or MovableType.

Personally, I use the OpenID Comments for WordPress plug-in although the OpenID Registration plug-in is more impressive as it lets users log-in to the site using their OpenID. Sadly, the latter dislikes the new WordPress log-in form.

If you use MovableType, you could try Mark Pasc’s plug-in which I used when I was on MT.

3. How can I log-in to site’s using my blog’s URL?
You have two options: you can either run your own OpenID server or delegate the URL to another server via. HTML.

Running your own server may prove hard if you are using shared or free hosting or if you lack technical experience. The OpenID Wiki has a good article on how to set-up your own server in a variety of different languages from PHP to RoR. The advantage of running your own server is that you get full control over your identity as you do not have to rely on a third-party to host it for you.

Delegating is a much easier options. If you choose to delegate, you still get some control over your identity as you can move between identity providers whilst keeping the same log-on. To delegate, all you have to do is sign up for an identity provider such as MyLID, MyOpenID or even TypeKey and then link to it in the head of your website’s HTML like this (changing it when necessary):


<link rel="openid.server" href="https://www.myopenid.com/server" / >
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://username.myopenid.com" / >


Additionally, if you use a LID service such as MyLID you might like to add:


<meta http-equiv="X-YADIS-Location" content="http://mylid.net/username?meta=capabilities" / >
<meta http-equiv="X-XRDS-Location" content="http://mylid.net/username?meta=capabilities" / >


Eran Sandler has a WordPress plug-in which supposedly makes the whole process easier.

Does anyone have any questions I could answer? If so, just fire them away in the comments area.

Tags: web2.0, web 2.0, openid, faq, identity 2.0