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Just an update to a previous notice about the OpenID comment authentication system used at D5GW:
Previously, I gave some links that will help visitors begin using OpenID for commenting on D5GW. You can use an OpenID provider or, if you are a LiveJournal user you can use LiveJournal logins. (You can even become your own OpenID provider if you own a domain and have a host; but this includes using OpenID server scripts with which I have very little experience!) In fact, if you have a Wordpress blog, you automatically have an OpenID! TypeKey users can enter their TypeKey profile url in the “blog url” field and login with OpenID that way.
Any of the above options work for logging in via OpenID. However, if you’d like to use your own blog url instead of an OpenID provider-supplied url to log in (usually your profile page on that provider), you can do so by inserting a couple lines of code in your blog’s main index template <head>. The code lets the site you are logging into know who your provider is, and your provider recognizes the referral from you home site during log in attempts. A good tutorial for adding the code can be found here:
http://simonwillison.net/2006/Dec/19/openid/.
I’ll quote the relevant parts:
Here comes the magic. Having picked your provider and created an OpenID there, edit the HTML of your weblog’s homepage (or indeed whichever URL you want to use as your personal OpenID) and add the following to the document
<head>:<link rel="openid.server" href="http://www.livejournal.com/openid/server.bml"> <link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://swillison.livejournal.com/">Replace the openid.delegate href with the OpenID at your provider, and the openid.server href with that provider’s OpenID server. You can find the server by viewing source on your OpenID page there, or by using this table:
OpenID Provider Server URL LiveJournal http://www.livejournal.com/openid/server.bml Vox http://www.vox.com/services/openid/server VeriSign https://pip.verisignlabs.com/server MyOpenID http://www.myopenid.com/server This delegation mechanism is key to OpenID’s status as a truly decentralised authentication system. If you decide you no longer trust your identity provider you can switch to another one by just editing a couple of lines of HTML—your OpenID will stay the same.
Using this method will allow you to enter your blog’s url whenever you find a login with the special OpenID symbol: 
. Additionally, as mentioned by Simon Willison, if you decide to change your OpenID provider for whatever reason, you can change the code on your homepage to a new provider and continue to log in with your homepage url. (Incidentally, those of you using TypeKey to log in through OpenID could do the same with TypeKey, allowing you to set TypeKey as your provider but enabling you to use your homepage url to log in instead of your TypeKey profile url.)
You can also create a FOAF file, also linked in your homepage, to pass certain information to sites where you log in via OpenID. D5GW visitors can view some of my own comments to this site (I’ll leave one below) and see that my actual name is used on the comment instead of my login url. (OpenID TypeKey logins use a FOAF as well, as you’ll see if you check your profile page source code.) Here’s the code I use:
<link rel="meta" type="application/rdf+xml" title="FOAF" href="http://phaticcommunion.com/index.foaf" />
And here’s the FOAF linked above:
<rdf:RDF
xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"
xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/"
xmlns:admin="http://webns.net/mvcb/">
<foaf:Person rdf:ID="me">
<rdfs:seeAlso rdf:resource="http://phaticcommunion.com/index.foaf"/>
<foaf:name>Curtis Gale Weeks</foaf:name>
<foaf:title>Mr</foaf:title>
<foaf:givenname>Curtis</foaf:givenname>
<foaf:family_name>Weeks</foaf:family_name>
<foaf:firstName>Curtis</foaf:firstName>
<foaf:surname>Weeks</foaf:surname>
<foaf:nick>Curtis Gale Weeks</foaf:nick>
<foaf:depiction rdf:resource="http://dreaming5gw.com/images/authors/curtis_gale_weeks.jpg"/>
<foaf:homepage rdf:resource="http://fifthgeneration.phaticcommunion.com"/>
<foaf:weblog rdf:resource="http://phaticcommunion.com"/>
<foaf:weblog rdf:resource="http://fifthgeneration.phaticcommunion.com"/>
<foaf:weblog rdf:resource="http://fifthgeneration.phaticcommunion.com/blorum/"/>
<foaf:mbox_sha1sum>28aa9a478a71ae7d1c994407d66cb132e43869c7</foaf:mbox_sha1sum>
</foaf:Person>
</rdf:RDF>(Note that the email is a hex hash, to protect from spammers.)
I used the FOAF-a-matic to create it, but edited a few things by hand.
For a simple video introduction to OpenID, Simon Willison created a video which might help new users get a good idea about how OpenID works:
(A much clearer screencast video can be found on Simon Willison’s site if you can view MPEG-4 movies: http://simonwillison.net/2006/openid-screencast/ )
Posted by Curtis Gale Weeks on Sep 15, 2007 05:04 AM
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4 Comments
Example OpenID comment using my own blog URL to log in (with a FOAF to pass on more information).
Example comment using my TypeKey profile URL to leave a comment — profile.typekey.com/cgaleweeks/.
Note that I did not need to enter “http://”; this is typical for OpenID logins but may not always be the case.
Also note that TypeKey has passed on my TypeKey username and added “[typekey.com]”; just now checking the FOAF TypeKey has for me, I see that my TypeKey username is not provided by FOAF. Hmmmm. Instead, my nickname is given as “Curtis Gale Weeks” which doesn’t appear as my commenter name here for some reason. It could be that the OpenID script used for commenting on this blog (an MT plugin) does not strip that info by “nickname” but in some other way, or that TypeKey sends info to the blog which overrides the FOAF they provide; dunno.
Incidentally, logging on to other sites with my blog url sometimes does, sometimes does not, use “Curtis Gale Weeks” as my commenter name, I believe. Sometimes, my blog URL is used as the commenter name, which is the default for blog comments made via OpenID logins (at least on some blogs.) So different sites may have different ways of accepting and rendering OpenID logins.
Technically, your OpenID is your blog/provider URL. You are id’d by your URL.
I am liking OpenID more and more.