Handling OpenID Delegates with DokuWiki

If you are running a DokuWiki site and want to setup OpenID delegates, then our latest DokuWiki plugin is the right choice for you.

OpenID is a authentication system allowing you to login into websites without having to memorize their passwords. Instead, if the site provides OpenID authentication, you just drop the URL of a website which is used to determine your digital identity. The authentication is done by OpenID providers.

In order to obtain such a digital identity URL, you have to

• get one from a public OpenID provider
• or setup OpenID providing software by yourself

Because there are a lot of public and free OpenID providers where you can get a OpenID URL (Yahoo, Google, openid.org, Claim.ID and a lot more), there is no need to burden yourself with the hassle of software setup and administration. But using these URLS isn't a good idea either:

• often these URL's are cryptic and hard to remember ¹⁾
• Using a certain provider will bind you to that company.

With DokuWiki, OpenID setup is quite simple. All you need is to install the OpenID delegate plugins, which adds the required headers to the pages of your choice. For a maximum convenience, the plugin does some autodiscovery - just drop the providers URL; the Server (Version 1.0), Provider and XRDS paramters are determined automatically.

Suggested Links for further reading:

• The list of CosmoCode's DokuWiki plugins
• The OpenID delegation plugin at dokuwiki.org
• The OpenID foundation website http://openid.net
• A useful explanation about the principles of OpenID: http://openidexplained.com/
• A List of OpenID providers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OpenID_providers
• Sam Ruby post about setting up OpenID delegates manually