Jonesieblog

I recently installed the wp-openid plugin on this blog, to allow people to identify themselves with an OpenID in comments. One downside (pointed out by John) is that when you do this, your name above the comment will link to your OpenID URL rather than to your blog. Bummer!

So I deactivated the plugin and hunted around the Web for a solution. This post will explain the solution: how to delegate from your blog to your myopenid URL, so that in effect your blog URL becomes your OpenID URL. Once you’ve done this, you’ll be able simply to enter your blog URL in the Website field of the comment form. Neat!

OpenID delegation works like this:

1. You set up an OpenID URL at www.myopenid.com (or some other openid provider)
2. You put some fancy code into the header of your blog that points openid authentication requests to the OpenID URL you set up already
3. There is no step 3.

The fancy code should be as simple as this:

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

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

but unfortunately not all OpenID implementations seem to support this - some, including the wp-openid plugin, only recognise the more sophisticated YADIS format. Setting up YADIS involves putting something like this in the header:

<meta http-equiv=“X-XRDS-Location” content=“http://www.jonesieboy.co.uk/yadis.xml” />

along with a  matching yadis.xml file on your server that looks like:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>

<xrds:XRDS xmlns:xrds=“xri://$xrds” xmlns=“xri://$xrd*($v*2.0)”

xmlns:openid=“http://openid.net/xmlns/1.0″>

  <XRD>

    <Service priority=“10″>

    <Type>http://openid.net/signon/1.0</Type>

    <URI>http://www.myopenid.com/server</URI>

    <openid:Delegate>http://robertjones.myopenid.com/</openid:Delegate>

    </Service>

</XRD>

</xrds:XRDS>

If you are using Wordpress, the wp-yadis plugin takes care of the whole thing automatically. If not, you can get full details of how to set delegation up on Sam Ruby’s blog: OpenID for non-SuperUsers.

As always, this technology is way too user-unfriendly now, but over the next few months I’m sure that euqivalents to the wp-yadis plugin will come along for most blogging platforms.

I’ll post a couple of comments to this post to show the use of my myopenid URL and the use of this blog as a delegated openid.

Stumble it!

This blog is misbehaving.  If you click on the link for a page or a post or a comment, you get shown the feed for the site.

Has anyone else experienced this?  I thought it might be evidence of hacking, but can find nothing to suggest that my server has ben compromised.

[UPDATE] The creation of this post seems to have fixed it.  Some kind of cacheing problem?

Stumble it!

No sooner have I upgraded to Wordpress 2.1.1 than this comes out:

WordPress 2.1.1 dangerous, Upgrade to 2.1.2

I’ve upgraded again. Hopefully that’ll be it for a while!

Stumble it!

I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my Wordpress installation to 2.1.1

The entire process took me a timid 25 minutes.  Pretty painless really

Now I can relax until the next security upgrade comes along.

Stumble it!

Stumble it!