We recently rolled out a new account signup process based on OpenID. OpenID is a relatively new technology that has a lot of features and I want to talk about it from two different sides.
Why OpenID Rocks For Our Users
One of the most compelling features of OpenID is truly portable username/password management. I am constantly frustrated when registering with a new website and my username is already taken or their password requirements are different than my standard password. It doesn’t take long before you have a half dozen different username/password combinations floating around the internet. Talk about a maintenance nightmare!
Now, with OpenID, you no longer have to come up with a different usernames/passwords for every website you use. The same OpenID account can be used for any OpenID website.
There are a number of free OpenID services out there that you can sign up with, or you can run your own personal OpenID service if you’re so inclined.
Why OpenID Rocks For QuickDeck
When investigating how to implement security for QuickDeck, OpenID was a no brainer for us. The alternative to OpenID was basically to roll our own authentication system, and let’s face it, dealing with sensitive information is something we’d rather avoid. Instead of spending precious time building security features into QuickDeck, we were able to invest that energy into improving QuickDeck and rolling out new features (like OpenID!).
OpenID is also an Open Standard that has experienced a lot of adoption from the development community. Community support ensures that new features will hit the market quicker than some proprietary solution. Since OpenID is not owned by any corporations, we don’t need to worry about expensive licensing costs either.
There are a number of websites implementing OpenID security to complement their existing username/password system. We’ve decided to go whole hog and use OpenID as our only security solution. We want to hear your feedback to know if this is a good thing for our users, or if this is a major annoyance!
