How to Use Your Own URL, Not WordPress.com’s, As Your OpenID
March 7th, 2007 (11:10am) Anne Zelenka 23 Comments
WordPress.com announced today that you can use your WordPress.com blog URL as an OpenID. That means you can log into sites supporting OpenID using that URL. You just enter the URL, click on the sign in button, and you’ll be directed to WordPress.com to sign in if you’re not already and to confirm that you want to pass your WordPress.com identity to the site. Note you must be an administrator on the WordPress.com blog you’re using, and the OpenIDs belong to a blog as a whole not just one user on the blog, so it probably won’t work so well for blogs with multiple users.
This is great if you use a custom domain name like www.yourname.com mapped to WordPress.com but not so great if you’re just using WordPress.com’s basic yourblogname.wordpress.com URL. As we move towards a world of single sign-on, you will want to be in control of your identity. Ideally, your OpenID username (which is expressed as a URL) will be under your control and will represent you independently of any particular platform or service. It should use a domain name you own–probably yourname.com if you are fortunate and/or foresightful enough to have it.
If you do own a URL you’d like to use as your OpenID, with WordPress.com or someone else as your OpenID provider, that’s pretty easy to do:
1. Sign up with an OpenID provider such as LiveJournal, MyOpenID, or WordPress.com.
2. Delegate OpenID handling from your home page (e.g., index.html) on your OpenID domain to your service provider by adding this to the <head> section of the HTML (example given for WordPress.com):
<link rel=”openid.server” href=”http://yourblogname.wordpress.com/?openidserver=1″>
<link rel=”openid.delegate” href=”http://yourblogname.wordpress.com/”>
To find the OpenID server name to use in the first link, go to your OpenID page at your OpenID service provider, do a “view source” on the page, and search for “openid.server” within the text. You’ll see the server specified right there. The URL in the second link is just your URL at your OpenID provider. Now, should you ever want to switch OpenID providers, you just edit your home page. Your OpenID username stays the same.
Once you’ve done this, you should be able to login at any OpenID-enabled services, but not, unfortunately, WordPress.com blogs themselves. WordPress.com is only an OpenID provider right now; it doesn’t not support OpenID logins itself.
23 Comments Post your own comment
GigaOM » Good Bits From Around The Blogs says: March 7th, 2007 12:51pm
[...] EC2 from Windows Desktop. (Link)How to use your own URL, and not WordPress.com as your Open ID. (Link)Vintage 50s radio, better than iPod. (Link)Calgoo Calendar is live (Link) Sphere Topic: Asides | [...]
Thejesh GN says: March 7th, 2007 10:24pm
I would rather prefer to make my ‘about’ page as my OpenId. For example
exampleblog.com/author
would be great as a an openId. When ever you login to any service provider your URL is shown. And your URL is your identity. Making your about page as your identity i more appropriate.As it a gives chance for readers to know who are you. And you need to maintain only one updated profile.
Veille Perso » Blog Archive » Utiliser OpenID avec son propre nom de domaine says: March 8th, 2007 6:34am
[...] mais très utile, que j’ai trouvé sur Web Worker Daily: l’utilisation de ton propre nom de domaine comme identifiant OpenID. Actuellement la plupart des serveurs OpenID te fournissent une url du type [...]
matbalez says: March 8th, 2007 10:38am
Nice tip, thanks Anne.
The Web Tyrant » Blog Archive » OpenID - The end of multiple passwords? says: March 8th, 2007 3:47pm
[...] problem seems to be perpetuated somewhat. If you do have your own domain, you can go ahead and create your own openID account there, but you won’t be able to sign into wordpress.com with [...]
Raj says: March 12th, 2007 12:01am
Which release of WP has OpenID support?
Lorelle VanFossen says: March 13th, 2007 5:59pm
This is great, though you might want to turn the quote marks into character entities so it makes the code easier to copy.
This issue of OpenID has been a pain for many WordPress.com users, so this is a great tip. Thanks!
WordPress Wednesday: Mandatory Update Reminder, WordCamp2007, Instant Upgrade Plugin, SxSW Conference, and More at The Blog Herald says: March 14th, 2007 11:56am
[...] they couldn’t use their OpenID accounts from non-WordPress.com blogs on WordPress.com blogs. Web Worker Daily has a solution on how to get your OpenID URL account to work on WordPress.com [...]
Puzzlehacker Use your Url as ID « says: March 17th, 2007 2:28am
[...] source Posted in Useful info. [...]
The WordPress Podcast » Episode 21: WordCamp, an official plug-in directory and Charles’ troubles with upgrades says: March 31st, 2007 3:11pm
[...] How to get your OpenID URL account to work on WordPress.com [...]
jdev says: April 24th, 2007 9:14am
Thank you very much for your post. You helped me a lot, because I always wanted to leave comments to my LJ friends under my openId wired to my blog. I couldn’t do it before, but now I can:) If you don’t mind, I posted a more WordPress oriented brief tutorial where I mentioned this article. Well done!
mp3rocker says: June 12th, 2007 2:15am
i prefer blogspot ) but of crs if you have own host when wordpress)
alex says: June 13th, 2007 12:08am
Thanks for the cool info Alex
alex says: June 13th, 2007 12:09am
I am going to try it
Wave of MP3 says: July 18th, 2007 5:04am
Thanks for the interesting info, I am going to try it too.
itiraf says: July 26th, 2007 5:00am
I am going to try it
Firma Ekle says: July 26th, 2007 5:02am
thanks
http://www.firmaniekle.com
Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive 37Signals Updates Backpack for the Better « says: July 31st, 2007 2:01pm
[...] OpenID is easy to use on sites that support it, and you don’t have to remember multiple user names and passwords. [...]
Kolz Blog » Blog Archive » 37Signals Updates Backpack for the Better says: August 4th, 2007 2:33pm
[...] pages. I’ve found it very handy to bounce between multiple Basecamp accounts and Backpack. OpenID is easy to use on sites that support it, and you don’t have to remember multiple user names and [...]
David Bradley says: August 7th, 2007 6:15am
I reckon OpenID could be taken one step further. On the back of an idea from tech writer Wayne Smallman, we came up with metaID, which would provide users with a single ID for all social networks, bookmarking sites etc, but pull in their profiles not just their ID when you sign up with a new network. We reckon XML will be the key to making this work, anyone care to chip in with ideas?
http://www.sciencetext.com/building-metaid-openid-with-bells-on.html
db
What is a URL? says: November 23rd, 2007 3:46pm
What is the advantage of logging in like this? What is it saving us?
Judi Sohn says: November 30th, 2007 8:05am
@What, it’s like when you register your own domain. If your hosting provider goes south, you can be up and running somewhere else (assuming you’ve backed everything up) in as long as it takes to for your new name server info to propagate.
If you use your own domain as your OpenID, you are not held to the whims of whatever OpenID provider you are using. Let’s say MyOpenID closed up shop tomorrow, as unlikely as that is. You immediately start using WordPress (or MyVidoop, or LiveJournal, or Bloglines, etc.) as your OpenID provider and all it takes is a change of 2 lines in your own HTML. You don’t have to go to all the sites that you’ve been using your OpenID URL as the login and change your access information.
You’re also more likely to remember your domain compared to username.providerdomain.com.
Prom 2008 says: January 26th, 2008 12:35am
Write your comments here, please. - I know you can write it here. Not Me