We’ve just started using OpenID on this blog to see how it’s working before we add it to all our blogs. If you haven’t heard about OpenID before it’s a way to login at sites (register) by simply using a URL as ID. That way you don’t have to fill in the same information on all blogs or sites where you have the need to login. You also get the benefit of not having to remember 89 million user names and password because you simply login with your blog URL for example.

So we’re doing this to make it easier for you (our visitors) to register and comment in this blog

Where can I get an OpenID?

Over at openid.net you’ll find a list of providers offering OpenIDs. WordPress.com, Yahoo, Technorati, Flickr and AOL are some examples of OpenID providers so the chances that you already got an OpenID is really big. I haven’t been able to verify if Google are offering OpenIDs or not or if they’re planning to do so in the future. I really hope Google got such plans because that will increase the usage of OpenID by at least 100% or something. EDIT: I just learned that Google both accept comments from OpenID users in Blogger blogs and Blogger is also an OpenID provider (see this page).

So how do you login using your OpenID?

At this blog you simply just visit the login page and fill in your OpenID URL instead of any user name or password (like on the example picture). Then press the login button and you will be redirected to your OpenID provider (like Wordpress.com, AOL or Yahoo!) to verify your identity. You will then be sent back to our web site logged in as your OpenID user .This way you don’t have to register or anything at this blog since you’ve already done that at your OpenID providers web site .

If you’re already registered as a user at blog.xaviermedia.com you can associate your current user name with your OpenID by visiting this page.

You can of course also access the comment form directly and fill in your OpenID URL directly as web site URL like in the example below. Unfortunately that will give you an error on this site due to some problem with the popular posts plugin we’re using here . So it’s recommended that you login as the above example first before using your OpenID.

The idea is to look for the OpenID logo when you’re visiting a blog, forum or other web site that require registration.

This looks cool! Can I do it on my own blog?

Yes, of course you can and it’s really easy. At this blog we’re using a plugin called WP-OpenID which can be found at Wordpress.org. Just upload the plugin to your blog and activate it. That’s all!

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 5:46 pm and is filed under Blogging, Google, Xavier Media, Yahoo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.