OpenID help

Anyone can post a comment to anything on my web site. You just need to log in using OpenID.

OpenID is a decentralized system which lets you use the same identity on any OpenID site. Your OpenID identity is a URL, and your password is verified by your OpenID provider–so my site never gets to see your password, and can’t do anything evil with your ID.

I regularly get complaints from people saying that they can’t post comments on my site, because OpenID login isn’t working. Generally I go test it, and find that it’s working fine. So, this page is here to help you if you’re having problems.

General OpenID problem-solving steps

  • Try clearing your cookies for ATH0 and the OpenID provider
  • Make sure you are accepting cookies for both ATH0.com and your OpenID provider
  • Go log in to the OpenID provider’s site first, before you try to post a comment. (It’s more reliable that way.)
  • Make sure your OpenID provider’s permissions list is set to allow identity information to be passed to ATH0.com. How you do this depends on the provider. Generally, the first time you use OpenID here, your provider will ask you to confirm that you want to pass your ID to my site. If you said no, you’ll have to consult your provider for how to change that decision.

Services known to work

Here’s a list of sample OpenID URLs that I have personally confirmed will work with my web site. If you have an account at any of these services, you can use it to comment on my postings.

LiveJournal (free)

Log in to LiveJournal first, at http://www.livejournal.com/

Then use an OpenID URL like http://www.livejournal.com/users/yourLJlogin (but with your actual LJ login in the appropriate place, obviously).

(It may also work with a trailing / but I haven’t tested it.)

LiveJournal (premium/paid)

Log in to LiveJournal first, at http://www.livejournal.com/

Then use your journal’s custom URL as your OpenID URL, for example http://yourname.livejournal.com/

The regular URL above may also work.

Google

Log in to Google first at http://openid-provider.appspot.com/

The URL is the same, but with your Google login name appended. For example, if your ID is johnsmith@gmail.com, your Google OpenID URL would be http://openid-provider.appspot.com/johnsmith

Yahoo

First, go to http://open.login.yahoo.com/ and confirm that you want to enable use of OpenID with your Yahoo account.

Your Yahoo OpenID URL is simply http://yahoo.com/ and the rest is worked out for you automatically. The default URL they assign you is really ugly; after logging in there’s a page where they suggest setting up your sign-in seal, and at the bottom of the section headed "Feeling geeky?" there’s a collapsed "Advanced options" section where you can pick something less ugly.

Other OpenID providers

Here are some other OpenID providers you can probably use, but I haven’t personally tested them.

TypePad: URL is http://profile.typepad.com/yourusername

AOL: URL is http://openid.aol.com/yourscreenname

MySpace: URL is your MySpace page URL, e.g. http://www.myspace.com/myusername

Flickr: URL is your Flickr page URL, e.g. mine is http://www.flickr.com/photos/meta404/




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