Run your own openid server in 2 minutes | Hacker News Reader

Run your own openid server in 2 minutes

tonido.com

17 pointshackerdino8 comments

If you have your own website, and an OpenID provider (you do if you have a Google account), you can use your domain as an OpenID uri by adding two lines to the <head> section of your homepage. For example:

  <link rel="openid2.provider" href="https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/ud?source=profiles" >
  <link rel="openid2.local_id" href="http://www.google.com/profiles/<username>" >

I find that it's much easier to remember my own domain than https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id

Source: http://smarterware.org/6286/how-to-set-up-openid-on-your-own...

Cool. Except that completely misses the original point: do not centralize what you can avoid to. And do not trust a third party when you can avoid it.

Yes but the upside to his method is you still have final control, as if you don't like one OID provider anymore you just change the redirect and it all keeps working exactly the same way.

Is it possible to have a fall back OpenID provider on your own domain? So that way if you're on a computer away from the one hosting your oID server and something happens to it, the consumer can gracefully fall back to a secondary provider.

I think it would be really cool to use Opera's Unite as an oID provider, but there's no guarantee you'll be able to run Unite (e.g. on school/work computers)

I logged into HN using this

Is anyone on HN running this?

the problem with openid is that there are too many providers and too little consumers. I see it as a failed project which tried to solve an important problem. OAuth Seems a better option which just works, I have implemented it in a couple of projects and it looks promising, 'sign in with twitter' is a good example of an intelligent OAuth use.

the problem with openid is that there are too many providers and too little consumers. I see it as a failed project which tried to solve an important problem.

I think it's partially a chicken-and-egg problem, no one wanted to be consumer because none of their users knew if they had openid, and it's not worth it to be a provider because there was no place to use it. To solve this, it's easy to set up or become a provider. It's also that most sites are more walled gardens than they'll admit when it comes to user accounts, since openid, in theory (depending on the provider), makes it even easier than most signup/login forms to create an account or login, and no one wants to make it easy for their users to go to a competitor.

And this doesn't even get into the user-facing UX issues that openid has.

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