In one of my previous post, I explained about the rise of OpenID movement & how it is moving towards becoming a De facto standard in the online Digital Identity field. If you are still not aware of OpenID, you can consider reading my earlier post to get some gyaan on OpenID before continuing with this post. Today, I like to throw more light on OpenID by explaining how one can use his own website/blog/domain URL as an OpenID. This feature comes in handy when you have your own domain and/or if you don’t like to trust any of the OpenID providers in the market.
One can seamlessly start using their own site URL as OpenID by employing one of the following 2 methods.
1) OpenID delegation
OpenID delegation mechanism decouples your OpenID from any of the providers. In the recent times, the OpenID delegation mechanism has become quite popular among the OpenID enthusiasts. This can be achieved using the below steps.
Any of the popular OpenID providers like MyOpenID, MyId.net, claimID, myVidoop or VeriSign’s PIP can be used to register for an OpenID. In case, if you are using services like Blogger, wordpress.com or AOL you can safely skip this step as you will be already having an OpenID. For example, an OpenID registered with MyOpenID will be having a URL in the format http://username.myopenid.com.
The next step is to map the OpenID to your domain URL. This can be done by including the following lines of code in the <head> section of your site/blog.
<link rel=”openid.server” href=”http://www.myopenid.com/server” />
<link rel=”openid.delegate” href=”http://username.myopenid.com/” />
<meta http-equiv=”X-XRDS-Location” content=”http://www.myopenid.com/xrds?username=username.myopenid.com” />
Where,
‘openid.server’ is the path to the OpenID provider’s server &
‘openid.delegate’ is the URL of your existing OpenID
Once you are done with these two steps, you should be able to log in to any of the OpenID enabled services using your site URL.
2) Wordpress OpenID plugin
If you have a self hosted Wordpress blog, then you can directly make use of the Wordpress OpenID plugin. The OpenID plugin can act as both the provider as well as the consumer. That means, apart from adding OpenID support for your blog URL, it also enables the users to comment on your posts using their OpenID. The OpenID plugin requires XRDS-Simple plugin as a prerequisite to perform some of its functions. So, be sure to install & activate XRDS plugin before starting your play with OpenID plugin.
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This is very informative…
if you can write an article on how we can use our selfhosted wordpress blog as openID that will be great and helpful
@Prnoid, Thank you. Whatever I have written above works well with self hosted Wordpress blogs also. You can use any of the two approaches. Let me know if you need any help in this regard.
Interesting, I never thought of using my url as open id, thanks for the detailed guide.
JR
Hey Pras,
Good to see you back. Open IDs…hmm, I am yet to fully buy this idea. Not that it’s bad, but there has to be some kind of compliance and acceptance from all services right? I mean, does the delegation mechanism make sure that if I sign up with one provider, I can use it anywhere (even when they are not the providers for some other service)
@Ajith, Yes, If you sign up with any one provider you can use it across all other sites with OpenID support. That too with delegation mechanism, you are free to choose any provider as long as you have a mapping with your own URL. Incase, if the provider goes down for some reason, you just need to change your delegation code with a new OpenID server. And regarding acceptance, most of the major Internet players like Google,Yahoo, AOL & Microsoft have already pledged their support for OpenID. Recently, Facebook has also joined the OpenID movement. Many of the smaller players are expected to follow the biggies in the near future.
Very informative. The idea behind Open ID is certainly good. But then, many changes should be made so that the identification of the ‘open id’ becomes much simpler. For instance, I signed up with VeriSign and it’s hard to remember it.
This idea has been coming for a while…
Wonder if it will happen give the fragmentation of website/domain ownership?
@Arun, Yes. I do agree with you for certain extent. Its very hard to remember few OpenId’s. Lets hope it evolve better in the coming years by overcoming few shortcomings.
@Rico, I didn’t get you. Can you give more clarity on your thought ?
Very good idea, i thing you are pioner !!!!!!!!!!!!!
I never know of using url as open id, thanks for the guiding
Wonder if it will be happen give the fragmentation of website.
@Archez, Its good to know that the information was useful for you. Thanks for your kind words.
Hi Prasanna, Good blog.
@Jeet, Thanks man. It was nice meeting you in the bloggers meet. I will try to keep an eye on your upcoming blog posts.
Thanks for sharing this tip Prasanna =)
Do you guys think OpenID is going to stick? I haven’t heard a lot of casual users really comment on it in my area.
very useful information…but i really don’t know why people use open id…
Hi,
I think this is very good idea.
i never heard about it before.
thanks
keep sharing
Great article, you just helped me so I learn more today.
very good intruction,simple,Quick & to the points. thanks.
OpenID offers so many options it’s insane. Too bad most of them is not documented properly. I hate having to look up tutorials on other sites just because someone didn’t think of releasing a comprehensive tutorial.
Has anyone successfully delegated to their Yahoo OpenID? I couldn’t get it to work when I first signed up with SO, so I just went with openid.com (for whom delegation worked no problem).
Thanks for info presana,
just I created my selfhosted WP openID.
thanks a lot