OpenID provides the ability to create a single username and password, yet use the same credentials at many different sites. Anyone that has been surfing the Internet for any duration of time has surely come upon the issue of remembering a login name and password for many sites. How do you handle that? Enter OpenID, your solution to not having to remember so many credentials, maybe. Read on to learn more.
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OpenID
OpenID is an open-source solution (which means any site is free to implement it). As Brad Fitzpatrick (the father of OpenID) said,
Nobody should own this. Nobody’s planning on making any money from this. The goal is to release every part of this under the most liberal licenses possible, so there’s no money or licensing or registering required to play. It benefits the community as a whole if something like this exists, and we’re all a part of the community.
It looks and smells like the right approach. With every web site you visit requiring a login and password from you, how do you remember each and every one? You could use the same password, use a pattern that includes something about the site you are on to help you remember your username and password. There are many ways people remember their user name and password from site to site. To each their own, right? OpenID allows you to use your credentials from OpenID for authenticating yourself with other sites. These ‘other sites’ must allow the use of the OpenID of course.
How Do I Use It?
Each and every Blogger.com user already has an OpenID account and can use it. You created it by creating a Blogger.com blog. Perhaps you didn’t realize that.
When I visit a blog that offers the OpenID mechanism like most of our Blogger.com users do, I simply need to select the OpenID item when commenting, and input http://www.viewsonlife.net. That’s it! OpenID has associated my Blogger.com URL with who I am, so when I comment and use this option, the result will look like this:
Of course, the hyperlink leads back to my blog on Blogger. Each time I leave a comment, I simply drop my URL into the ‘Who are you’ part and I’m done.
The one problem I have with using OpenID is that I don’t seem to get any control over the text of the link. What if I wanted to use the words ‘Wayne John’ in the link, instead of what I get above? I can’t, and that my friends is pretty limiting in my opinion.
Do You Use It?
I don’t support OpenID on my blog yet, perhaps someday I will. I’d be more curious to find out what number of users are currently using this technology today. I don’t see many people commenting and using OpenID as a way of identifying themselves to the blog they are commenting on. I can count on one hand the number of comments I have seen left by those using OpenID as a way of authenticating themselves.
So I ask you, do you use it? Is it something you might begin to use in the future?
To learn more about OpenID, you can visit their web site.
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Wayne John is a web developer in Southern California that shares his 25+ years of programming and web development experience freely and happily to anyone willing to learn. He also loathes speaking in the third person. If you enjoyed this post, make sure you 
I’d call that a healthy paranoia. Many companies have created what’s known in the IT world as SSO (single sign-on) systems to better help their customers. The idea is always this, give the user a single id and password, and allow them to enter these systems that are tied to their SSO implementation.
As you might imagine, Microsoft’s LiveID is the same darn thing, yet still constrained to everything MS based.
We still will need to remember multiple usernames and passwords. I don’t think we’ll ever get away from that. Not until we are all cataloged and ID’d by our eyes, genome, or fingerprint.
That’s when the paranoia will really set in…
Interestingly Apple has had this sort of thing for several years now called Keychain. I haven’t used it either. I’m as far from a programming whiz as you can get but what if somebody figures out the initial access code? When hackers can break into pentagon computers with ease what’s to stop them from them getting and using my ID? I was hacked once some years back so now if you were to try and track me you’d find that I don’t exist. Paranoid? Hell yes.
I can accept that Dana. I’ve always pictured things like the ocean. Right now the waves are big and the sea is stormy. Over time, it will settle and we’ll have what we really need to do what we want to do. Right now its a big free-for-all, so I don’t blame you or your leaky ears one bit.
Hang in there, ring out yer brain, we’re coming up on templates…
It seems like the more I learn the dumber I get. I’ve gotten to the point where the area between my ears is so saturated that I’m having to purge some of what I finally learned, just to have a little air flow in there. Open ID? Sounds too “open” for me. And I’m getting so tired of the new stuff every day that just doesn’t live up to the hype.
I’m way ahead of ya Gary, I already left you a message there to say hi. hahaha
Damn, I love it when I’m on the ball…
Like you I prefer to have more flexibiility in my signature, prefering to use my first name and my nickname (old dude), and I can always drop my blog url under it, when I feel its needed. So I don’t use OpenID.–I did jump into your yahoo community, in case ya hadn’t noticed (lol)
Gary (old dude)
http://threescoreplusten.blogspot.com/
Yeah, OpenID is supported by a few other sites so far. Here’s the breakdown (this should be part of the post)
If you have an account at one of these sites: http://openid.net/get/ then you have an OpenID account.
Did you like that Auto-comment?
I’m running BlogEngine.net, which thankfully some developer had wrote a module for that functionality already when I first installed it. I’m not sure if there is one or not for WordPress unfortunately. I’ll keep my ears and eyes open for one though.
I didn’t know it was just blogger. I thought you could use it on other sites.
By the way, when I commented in your blog, I received a “thank you” email right away. I’d like to do that to my blog. What plugin did you use, and would it work for WordPress?
SharkGirl, the user name you would use looks like the URL for your blogger blog. You wouldn’t be able to create your blogger blog if someone else is using the name you gave your blog, right?
If someone is using your blog address to leave comments, well, that’s another story entirely.
I’ve seen the OpenID field but I didn’t know what it was. I also didn’t know I already had an account for it.
Is it supposed to “merge” all our IDs into one? What if I want to comment on a site that requires me to log in, but someone else is already using the username that my OpenID is using?