"OpenID is a decentralized single sign-on system. Using OpenID-enabled sites, web users do not need to remember traditional authentication tokens such as username and password." Instead you have to remember an URL.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID
In your case you have 2 providers. You can keep one and forget the other.

Tutorial:
https://www.myopenid.com/tutorial

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID
http://openid.net/what/

When it comes to your own blog, here's how I understand it to work. OpenID allows users to log in without needing to remember a username and password that was created especially for your site. They still have to go through a registration process at your site, but instead of creating a password there, they connect their wonderwinds account to their OpenID. That requires some talking between your openID provider and your b2evolution. When it's done, instead of typing a password and username to log in, you just enter your OpenID url and the plugin says to your openID provider, "Is this guy logged in with you and is this the same guy who created an account here at wonderwinds?" Your openID provider says, "Sure, let him in." And so you're logged in.

If you don't have open registration at your site, then this will all only apply to you, the site's sole user.

The benefit for you really comes in when you're signing into various accounts around the web and they're all connected to your OpenID. You don't have to remember lots of passwords, you connect them to OpenID when you register and then when you log in, slap your OpenID url into the text box and bam, you're logged in.

You really only need one OpenID account. In fact, that's kind of the point. It's a single sign-on. And most providers will let you use your own url, if you have one. So, you could tell myopenid.com that you're going to use wonderwinds.com as your openid url. They'll say, "Sure, go ahead. Just slip this snippet of code into your skin that points to myopenid.com for the actual login process. Then wonderwinds.com is the only thing you need to remember. If you want to switch openid providers, then you can.

I hope I understand it correctly. If not, someone will correct me.

Okay so the key is that I'm logging in with this thing. I do all the regular registration stuff (or maybe openid can register for me?), but after that I won't have to remember my login name and password as long as I can remember my OpenID URL. Via delegation my openid could be my domain name - that part I got. It doesn't help me at all with commenting somewhere - correct? I still have to click in the fields and let Firefox provide a drop-down of all the bits I've previously entered into that field name and pick the one I want.

Multiple OpenIDs makes sense if you have multiple domain names? For example here my www button is linked to my personal name, but in other places I use a different domain, and in some cases none at all.

So let's say I'm registered somewhere that is openid-enabled and I'm on the road or at a library. I know my username is EdB but I forget what the password is and can't access my email because I don't know any of my email passwords. In this case I use my OpenID URL (which could be my personal domain) ... assuming I can remember my openid password ;)

I think I'm getting it, but I think it's silly.

So for me to have the OpenID plugin doesn't really add value because I don't have open registration and don't feel the need to blog from work or a library - right? It doesn't really help commenters - does it? Also I tried pasting my openid into the little box on my profile page but it threw up a stream of errors. Am I missing something there, or is it a flaw of some sort? Do I need to do the delegation thing before I paste my OpenID URL in there, or do I need to paste something totally different into that field on my profile?

Ah well. I got 2 3-letter openids. I should go collect edb.whatever yah?

Wow I'd really like to play with this more, but I'm having way too much fun figuring out all the different ways my CC License plugin can work then break :roll:

The note at the OpenID box on my blog when you want to leave a comment says "You can just use your OpenID to provide your name, e-mail and url." so I tried that (using IE where I'm not logged in) and I got an error that I believe slamp already documented. So now it's time to find that thread and see if there is any followup.

To me that would be a cool use of OpenID because mostly I comment at places, but rarely register.

EDIT: I also have to consider if my TuringTest plugin is interfering with OpenID, but http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?t=14024 tells me it's time to crack open a file and slampify it ;)

Okay looks like we're on different versions, but I managed to define Auth_OpenID_RAND_SOURCE as null and it went to the openid people, but then crashed because my visiglyph plugin freaked out on it's line 104.

>:-<

EdB wrote:

http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?t=14024 tells me it's time to crack open a file and slampify it ;)

:lol:

Got this error when trying to post a comment.

Fatal error: Call to a member function get() on a non-object in /home/wonderw/public_html/plugins/visiglyph_plugin/_visiglyph.plugin.php on line 104

Yeah I just posted a conflict notice about that. I dropped OpenID but I'll be dropping visiglyphs in a few moments and enabling OpenID again so I can see if there is a way I can "fix" visiglyphs. Really: overcome the conflict because it's not broken - it's just that without a name and email (required fields ! ) it can't work.

EDIT: wow I hate IE. It doesn't remember anything I type into fields!