Now using OpenID for commenter authentication
In a series of experiments around identity and trust, I’ve now enabled OpenID comments on this blog. In the comment area, you see a new “Your blog URL” field. The default wording is a bit confusing, and what’s going on here is that it actually asks for your OpenID URL.
Typekey also remains working, but as you could also use Typekey as OpenID server, it’s kinda redundant. I could hack around this, but I’d prefer that SixApart and the plugin providers provided a bit cleaner solution in the next versions. The comment stuff is still a bit messy. For example, when using the “comment preview” function in Movable Type, you’re no longer signed in at all.
What I don’t like about OpenID here is that in it’s out-of-box configuration, it doesn’t provide “nicknames” for people, only an URL. People have names, not URL-s, even if you are authenticated by an URL.
I’ve been following OpenID for quite a while now and it’s got a big boost in the blogs. For an intro, check Simon’s webcast. I’m using Marc’s MT OpenID-comment plugin.
11 Comments
Leave a comment
And so this is what an OpenID comment looks like when using my own blog as the URL…
… and this is what it’s like when I’m coming through myopenid.com.
w00t, I remembered I have a Livejournal ID too. So this is what a comment authenticated by Livejournal looks like.
It wouldn’t make sense for OpenID to hand over a username, because it needs to be able to integrate with sites that already have user account systems and as such you can’t be sure that any given username hasn’t already been taken.
That said, there’s an OpenID extension that can hand over the user’s name and other information if the user gives permission for that to happen.
Indeed, Simon, that’s what I meant, thanks
not to have a unique immutable “username” in the system, but instead, hand over my nickname/alias/avatar as well as photo and other stuff, and have different sets of this info handed over to different sites.
Yes, myOpenID is great! As you see, I use it myself for various pages, so thanks for implementing it!
And the nifty thing here is that you can use things like eID cards to allow authentication of these identities - you really don’t need any passwords!
And as we can see from this same blog comment - you can put several interesting things together - openid and foaf - I never mentioned my real name but with automagic openid autehntication, my nickname name or even my real name can be extracted from my foaf profile that is referenced from my blog url.
As Cartman would say - sweeeet!
Testing commenting…
so.. what does this look like if I’m coming with my ID card?
Nice, Estonian ID-card based open.id.ee login works!