Thinking about OpenID

Jan 28, 2011 (about 1 year ago)

I like the idea of OpenID and I use my OpenID to login to numerous websites and services. I use the following link elements in my site’s HTML to delegate my login:

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

This means I can enter my own URL as my OpenID, which makes OpenID even easier to use — if I cannot remember my own URL, I might as well end it all now. Anyhow, I got to thinking that even though I use my OpenID on a daily basis, I have never really looked into how I might implement it, as a consumer, in one of my own sites.

This got me thinking about the CrunchBang Linux site and about how poorly it currently performs, in respect to how users login. Currently there are 2 areas of the site where users are required to login to gain write privileges, the forums and the wiki. These 2 areas are for all intents and purposes, completely separate entities. If a user wants to post something to the forums, they need to create an account. If that same person wants to contribute to the wiki, they have to create another account. Needing 2 different accounts on a single website is far from ideal and I am thinking it is something I would like to try and fix.

The cause of the problem is due to how I set-up the site. I used PunBB to provide the forum software and DokuWiki to provide the, erm, wiki, and both pieces of software use their own internal authentication systems. I believe there are some OpenID extensions/plugins available for both, but I am not sure this would negate the need to have two accounts.

Hmm, I need to research this some more.

Tagged with: crunchbang linux, dokuwiki, openid, punbb

4 responses to “Thinking about OpenID”

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