Thibauld - Imagination and Execution -

Login everywhere with your own OpenID identity server

Tired of creating new accounts each time you use a new website? Maybe it is time for you to begin using OpenID. The principle behind OpenID is simple: Once you have a so-called OpenID, then you just have to provide it to log into the websites that supports OpenID (and there's already a lot!). No username, no password... the website will automatically ask your OpenID provider for your credentials. If it is the first time you log into this website, your OpenID provider will ask you your permission to provide your credentials to the website. Wonderful isn't it?

The beauty of this solution is that it is completely decentralized, there is no entity that gathers the credentials of everybody, and you can choose your OpenID provider: Yahoo can be your OpenID provider, Wordpress can be too... there's a lot to choose from! Obviously, you should choose the one you trust most for holding your credentials.. so why not you? Why not be your own OpenID identity provider? For example, my OpenID is http://thibauld.com. It has several advantages :

• You can choose your OpenID (since you can use your own domain name)
• You can manage all your websites accounts from 1 unique place
• You can have create several identities and use the one you feel comfortable with for each website you visit
• No one else but you own your credentials
• and last but not least... it's cool

Assuming you're a bit nerdy (like I probably am), there's no reason to let somebody else be your identity provider! Convinced? Good, in 30 minutes you'll be ready to go!

An OpenID server is really easy to setup provided you already have a webserver with PHP support installed. There are various Open Source server to choose from : phpMyID, phpMyOpenID (based on phpMyID)... but my favorite is SimpleID because of its nicer user interface and its ability to offer a "secured" (at least more than the other projects) login mechanism even if you're not using SSL (use SSL if you can though). Please note that your webserver should be able to write files on the system for SimpleID to be able to run smoothly (it might not be the case on mutualized servers).

Setting up SimpleID is very easy, you just have to follow the instructions. Please note that version 0.6 needs to be patched to prevent problems sites using OpenID version 1.1. If 'svn' is not a unknown word to you, I advise you to checkout the last version directly from svn (I did that), in this case, patching the code isn't necessary. Or, other solution, wait for version 0.7 to be officially released

Once installed and setup, you can test your openid identity server and your openid page to check everything's ok!

Finally, here's a screenshot of the SimpleID administration console for a given identity: