Renay (![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small} renay) wrote,@ 2009-06-03 11:28 pm UTC |
| Entry tags: | openid |
Good evening! Welcome to my nerdy OpenID tutorial. This tutorial is largely aimed at the book community I interact with, who I want to feel comfortable in my space with their own identities. It can be used as an example in Livejournal OpenID experiences, as well, but is coded to Dreamwidth. It might be useful to others, though! Everyone is welcome.
Who has OpenID?
The following people have OpenID simply by having an account at the following services:
- Blogspot. Example: username.blogspot.com
- Wordpress. Example: username.wordpress.com
- Livejournal. Example: username.livejournal.com
- Dreamwidth. Example: username.dreamwidth.org
- Typepad. Example: profile.typepad.com/username
- Myspace. No example, because I can't find one!
Who doesn't have OpenID?
If you said self-hosted blogs, give yourself a high five! For example, if you have your own hosting company and have installed blogging software on it, you probably won't have an OpenID server.
In these cases, I suggest a third party application like ClaimID. All you have to do is sign up there, edit your source code on your site and add the following after the <head> tag and before the </head> tag:
<link rel="openid.server" href="http://openid.claimid.com/server" />
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://openid.claimid.com/USERNAME" />
Once this is done you can log in to any site that accepts OpenID with your URL allowing people to follow you back to your home base.
OpenID is confusing!
I am stealing from Dreamwidth's FAQ about OpenID, which is an entire section devoted to talking how OpenID works on Dreamwidth. It's good reading! As a bonus, reading it will teach you how to use OpenID on Livejournal.
Stealing from the FAQ #1: How do I comment using OpenID?
If you already have an OpenID account, you can log in with that account. When you're logged in, your comments will be posted with your OpenID name by default. If you're not logged in, you can enter your OpenID directly comment form by selecting the OpenID option and entering your OpenID URL into the form. You may need to use the More Options button to move to the full reply page which includes this part of the form.
You don't need to have an OpenID account set up on Dreamwidth for this to work. If you don't, though, your comments will be treated as anonymous and you can only comment if anonymous comments are allowed. If you've set up an OpenID account and confirmed an email address for it, your OpenID comments will be treated as comments from a known person. Where you're not allowed to comment with unregistered OpenID identities, the OpenID part of the form will be de-activated. In this case, logging in with your OpenID will let you comment.
I have made myself a guinea pig using an old Blogspot account, bottleofshine.blogspot.com. Please accept the following illustrations:
Results:
Using your OpenID account on Dreamwidth
Time to log in!
I have made it a habit, when I comment anywhere, to highlight my comments, right click and copy them before I attempt to post, just in case the unthinkable happens and there's an ERROR. Blogger likes to eat all comments over 500 words, and you know, I'm kind of wordy so my comments are never comments on Blogger, they're dinner. It's important to note that Dreamwidth is in beta, so sometimes when commenting you might get an error. Just hit the back button and try again. If your comment is gone, put your cursor in the box and paste it back — ta-da!
If the site you are validating through has been told to always trust the site you're attempting to log in to, your comment should be posted. If not, you'll be asked if you want to confirm:
When you put your URL in the OpenID box, don't think of it as the URL to your site, think of it as a log in username for the rest of the internets to know you by. Leave the "http://" off and just use username.site.com.
You can also log in without leaving a comment at http://www.dreamwidth.org/openid/.
So why am I even bothering to log in?
Logging in at Dreamwidth affords you bonus features! Let's talk about those.
At the top of each Dreamwidth journal (example) there should be a bar with actions you can take after you log in. It will say "confirm e-mail address".
After you have confirmed your address, checked your mail and validated you're not a robot, you're good to customize your account. Check the top of the page and find the "Account Setings" link. Each tab does something different, so click around! Here are the two I think are most important:
- Display: time zone, how you view the site, what parts of the site you would like to view, the site scheme your prefer, and your adult content settings and whether you want Dreamwidth to protect your innocent eyes from the sexy times.
- Notifications: how you want Dreamwidth to notify you of actions relating to you. If you click "someone replies to any comment I make" Dreamwidth will tell you when you have a reply in your e-mail; no checking for follow-up comments manually. It's unlike subscribing to the entire entry for new comments — it only sends you replies to your comments.
What else can there be?!
Your profile! Under "Create" in the menu there is "Edit Profile". You can list your details let people know you're just visiting. The first thing I would do is set your birthday so in case of age warnings you don't have to click 0472623 times to get to the content—the site will know you're okay to see them. This information can be hidden from the public with the drop down menus.
There are also icons. Each OpenID account can have up to six icons. If there's an icon you're known by on Twitter or at your blog, it might be an excellent idea to use it to visually cue people in to who you are. These are my icons.
There is another text tutorial here, which is very useful and might clarify my points. For more information about OpenID, please check out the Wikipedia page. The best way to learn OpenID is to log in, log out, and mess around. If you have questions, ask, either in a comment or e-mail me at renayorama@gmail.com, especially if you get an error several times. It might be a bug, and copy/pasting the error message to me so I could pass it on would be awesome. :) You can log in to Dreamwidth with your OpenID at http://www.dreamwidth.org/openid/.
A sidenote about conversations on Dreamwidth
On other sites, comment threads are straight down. Owners respond by leaving new comments with the @Name symbol to denote who they're responding to. Over here it's different. We move through conversations in threads. Think of comments starting in a vertical line and then sub-conversations moving horizontally. I love threaded comments. Here is an example, to show that there is a difference between "New Comment" that appears at the top/bottom of comments area and "reply" that appear under each comment. "New Comment" is a comment to the original blog post. "Reply" means you're leaving a comment to another commenter.
The end!