DISQUS

Sharing at Work: Running your own vanity OpenID provider is a horrible idea

  • jaakkoh · 7 months ago
    You can use any of your Blogger blog URLs as an OpenID. Add the (free) option to use a custom URL and you can see that Blogger OpenID combines the best of the both worlds: Have a big and stable player handle your OpenID but use your own URL.

    I think that using your own domain (or a domain controlled by someone that you really, really trust will not lock you into undesired things) is not just a good idea but in the longer run it's the only good idea - and the fact that Google offers it for free makes it doubly nice.

    I also think that Google offering custom domain OpenID for free means that in the longer run there will always be someone who will offer the service for free (with decent terms). Now, this may be obvious to geeks (and I haven't looked into the OpenID delegation well enough to understand if that ensures the same thing) but since I just recently realized this whole thing I figured that there are also those who haven't yet realized this.

    E.g. http://blogtemplate20.blogspot.com/2008/04/blog... provides details on how to set things up (see the link to previous post for nitty gritty).
  • Carsten Pötter · 8 months ago
    Sorry to hear about your problems with OpenID. However OpenID delegation should help, like Jeremy mentioned. You should keep in mind, though that you should get an OpenID from a provider that supports both OpenID 1.1 and OpenID 2.0. Then you can set up delegation. Check DelegatID (I have written about here: http://spreadopenid.org/2009/02/25/delegation-m...) and delegation is a n-brainer.
  • Daniel J. Pritchett · 8 months ago
    Thanks for the tips Carsten. I have gotten comfortable using Blogger as my OpenID (http://danielpritchett.blogspot.com) and so I set it up as my delegate. No problems so far!
  • Jeremy Logan · 8 months ago
    You've missed something pretty big... you can have your cake and eat it too. Look into OpenID delegation. With a small snippet of HTML you can use your domain as your id and still have one of the larger players handle it for you. Plus, you can move providers if you ever decide to, but keep the same id. For me (I've been using LiveJournal) the HTML is:

    <link rel="openid.server" href="http://www.livejournal.com/openid/server.bml" />
    <link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://fixedd.livejournal.com" />
  • Daniel Pritchett · 8 months ago
    Thanks Jeremy! While writing this post I kept cringing at the thought that someone would provide me with a simple solution, but I always imagined it would involve a WordPress-related workaround. I'll try and add this to my WP template this weekend.

    PS - I had no idea you read my blog! Thanks for participating!
  • Jeremy Logan · 8 months ago
    I don't read your blog, I DO read your Twitter :)
  • theMadness · 1 month ago
    If such a problem happens you just need to edit your theme/template/whatever and add one TINY little piece of html to forward all the login requests to myopenid or whatever you want to use.

    The issues about the plugin are issues about the plugin, NOT the technology.

    Seriously, it's two fricking lines of html, a bunch of <link> tags.

    Should anyone still have troubles with the same thing, I'm willing to help on twitter.
  • Daniel J. Pritchett · 1 month ago
    This blog uses OpenID delegation now - is that what you're referring to?