The recent Wordpress 2.5 press release from Matt on the state of WordPress 2.5 reads like a Christmas list of epic proportions. My own long wish-list for mojoBlog pales in comparision with what the wordpress developer community has achieved over the last six months.
Successful blogs by their very nature tend to grow and evolve exponentially over time. Adding new categories and topics to your blog structure doesn’t pose much of an issue but, what do you do when you need to change the structure and categorical markup but don’t want folks/search engines getting whacked with “PAGE NOT FOUND” errors?
OpenID is a framework for user authentication. As I’m in the process of implementing OpenID libraries into joommunity so our members will have verifiable member tools and features I thought I’d post a short article on what OpenID is, what it does and how to get your own, unique ID.
OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity or, in less geeky terms… Imagine a single login for all your sites, blogs and favorite webplaces. With an openID you create (and verify) a unique online ID that’s yours and only yours.
To qoute the folks at OpenID: “OpenID starts with the concept that anyone can identify themselves on the Internet the same way websites do-with a URI (also called a URL or web address). Since URIs are at the very core of Web architecture, they provide a solid foundation for user-centric identity.”
The first thing to do is create your profile. There’s a growing number of online communities supporting OpenID (Technorati , Live Journal, Ma.gnolia and AOL) but the easiest way is to create your profile/account first at : claimID, register your main website and follow the simple process of adding verification to your site domain. Once you’ve gotten your email confirmation you’re good to go.
An added benefit to having a unique, global id is that you can use it to “authenticate” a website you’ve developed or own… as your intellectual property. I’ve recently added joommunity.com along with 1guy and my photoblog.
For us Joomla and Wordpress users there’s a couple of plugins available which make adding your OpenID account and websites pretty much a no-brainer.
There’s a great little plugin developed by longtime component guru Absalom Media. Currently, it’s available on the older file repository on sourceforge.org so expect an occasional delay or timeout on downloading. Once you get abs_openin.zip
For WP folks a WP widget plugin is available from the ClaimID group and can be found on their blog.To install the ClaimID widget:
While searching for a solution on migrating older jd-wp/wordpress posts to joomla I ran across a plugin for WordPress that displays frontpage joomla posts as excerpts in a blog sidebar widget.
The author (Philipp Heinze) released this plugin-in GPLv2 and is available on his website for download. It’s a bit dated (actually, April 2nd, 2006) and, I’ve not had a chance to install or play with it other than browsing the code and reading his extensive “options” and configuration details but… It looks promising.
Update 04-03-07After replying to a bunch of folks yesterday who’ve mentioned problems with accessing philippe’s website I’ve added a temporary link to his plugin below; Phillippe’s site is now functional, follow the link above to download his wordpress sidebar widget.
