If you’ve commented an a blog hosted by Blogger/Blogspot lately, you would have noticed that they have rolled out a new commenting system. Gone are the days when you could just enter your nickname and key in your URL to publish your comment. If you are already using Blogspot, LiveJournal, TypeKey, or WordPress, then don’t worry, your OpenID has already been setup and you can start commenting on Blogspot sites. The site owner and other readers will be able to see your URL. For other’s who are hosting their own blogs or websites, please read on to find out how to set up your own OpenID.

Here is what the new commenting options for Blogspot looks like:

As you can see, you could either use a nickname or comment anonymously, but you wouldn’t be able to specify your URL. As I mentioned earlier, you could use the OpenID provided by Blogspot, LiveJournal, TypeKey, or WordPress, or if you are hosting your own website, you could create your own OpenID and link it to your URL in just 15 minutes.

What is OpenId?

OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.

You get to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets your needs and most importantly that you trust. At the same time, your OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to. And best of all, the OpenID technology is not proprietary and is completely free.

For businesses, this means a lower cost of password and account management, while drawing new web traffic. OpenID lowers user frustration by letting users have control of their login. (Source: OpenID.net)

Although OpenID is not used on many websites at the moment, it is slowly gaining popularity and the fact that Blogspot has started to implement it could mean that more and more websites could use it in the future (after all, Google does not implement something just on a whim).

Set up your OpenID in 15 minutes

First, we will need to find a free OpenID provider. There are various providers that can be found here: http://openid.net/get/
Personally, I am using myOpenID and I find it to be sufficient for most blog or website owners. The following tutorial will deal with signing up with myOpenID as a provider, but feel free to join any other providers as you please.

Step 1: Sign up with a provider

Go to myOpenID and sign up for an OpenID. Pick a username (as long as it has not been taken), and fill in all the other details. I recommend that you fill in your email address as well in case you forget your password in the future and need to retrieve it.

Check your email and click on the confirmation link provided.

You are now the proud owner of an OpenID, and your OpenID URL will be http://<yourusername>.myopenid.com. Here’s mine.

Step 2: Adding a Persona (only applicable for myOpenId, other providers might have their own)

What is a Persona? A Persona allows your OpenID to be linked to the blog or website that you own. This will be extremely useful for multiple blog/website owners who want to unify all their sites under a single OpenID. This means that if you own a parenting blog and a cooking blog, you can create a Persona for each blog. The usefulness will be apparent when you start commenting on another cooking blog, and you want your OpenID to link you back to your cooking blog instead of your parenting blog.

To create a Persona, click on Account Settings on the menu and select Registration Personas. Add a new Persona, and enter all details as necessary. Save your Persona, and confirm that the details have been saved correctly. Repeat this step as needed for your other blogs.

Step 3: Taking your OpenID for a test run

Ok, so how can you use your OpenID, now that you have one? You could try out some of these services: https://www.myopenid.com/directory

Since the focus of the article is using your OpenID on Blogspot, go look for one now! Anything which has a URL like http://<something>.blogspot.com. If you can’t find one and you like dogs, visit my friend’s site, but keep the comments on topic. I don’t want to get her pissed off at me: Togo the Dog.

Find something you would like to comment on, and hit the comment button. Select to sign in using Any OpenID, and key in your OpenID URL (http://<yourusername>.myopenid.com). Once you hit the Publish button, you will be redirected back to myOpenID’s website to sign in to myOpenID (if you are not signed in already), or you will be asked to verify your OpenID. You can select your Persona that you want to display to the blog you are commenting to. For testing purposes, please only click on “Allow Once”.

Go back to the comment page, and look for your comment. Beside your Persona’s nickname will be an icon, this icon is the standard icon for OpenID. When you click your own nickname, you will be redirected to your Persona’s detail page. (If the site says that you need to enable your identity to be viewed, you should sign in to the myOpenID website and click on Account Settings and select Identity Page). Your Persona’s detail page should display your URL as well.

When you clicked on your nickname, you will be redirected to myOpenID’s Persona detail page. What if you want to have it redirected to your blog instead?

Step 4: Delegation of your OpenID

To link your OpenID to your blog or website, you will need to add some HTML code to your site’s main page. If you are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with doing this, get someone who is proficient in HTML to help you with this step.

The following code should be pasted to your website, just within the <head> section.

<link rel="openid.server" href="http://www.myopenid.com/server" />

<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://kennylaw.myopenid.com/" />

The URL in the second line should of course be changed to your own OpenID URL, so do not forget this step.

Load your blog or website, and take a look at the HTML source code and make sure that the two lines have been added.

Step 5: Taking it for a final test run

For the final step, make another comment in a Blogspot blog, and choose to sign in using Any OpenID. Instead of your myOpenID URL, key in the URL for your blog or website. When you hit Publish, you will be brought back to the myOpenID verification page, so you could click Allow Forever to skip this particular step forever.

Now look for the comment that you just published, and click on your nickname. If everything has been setup properly, you will now be redirected to your own blog or website, instead of the myOpenID Persona page.

Summary

As mentioned earlier, OpenID eliminates the need to remember multiple usernames and passwords for different sites. I think with the implementation of OpenID by Google, it will eventually start to be adopted by more and more sites.

I hope this tutorial has served to give you a basic introduction to OpenID, and how to setup your own OpenID.

Please feel free to leave any questions or comments below.

Thoughts Aside

Once, there was a time when people used to get custom made tables for their desktops. Now there is actually a furniture piece called a laptop desk. The Sony laptops come with really magnificent laptop cases and one does not really need a desk to go with it. However, one thoroughly enjoys Apple laptops when sitting in an upright position, which is not possible without a desk.

Written by : Klaw Last Modified : February 2nd, 2008 Filed under : Blogging

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