OpenID submission system.

[Steven Smethurst]

Hello

We are in the process of updating the submission system to include live tracking of your submitted stories. A dashboard that shows what place in queue your stories are, how many days have passed since you submitted it, the version of the contact that you agreed too, ect...

One of the new features that we want to add is the ability to log in with an OpenID enabled account. Using OpenID solves a lot of administration problems for us like; creating/validating accounts, reseting passwords, problems with people not being able to login (becoming a bigger problem every week), and a lot of confusion over workflow (what to do next). This system would replace the forum login system. 

All the big name email providers have switched over to an OpenID system such as Google, Yahoo, AOL, LiveJournal, Facebook, MySpace, MSN/Hotmail, Twitter, Wordpress, Blogger, Flicker, Digg, Paypal, and many more. And you can use any of these accounts to log in to our system and submit a story/poem.

It does creates one potential problem;
What happens if a user does not have an account with an OpenID enabled site?

Currently 75% of our users have an email account with Gmail 40%, MSN/Hotmail 22%, Yahoo 8%, AOL 5%. These people already have OpenID accounts, just most of them don't know it yet. Everyone that wants to be paid for there work on EDF/EDP will need a paypal account and your paypal account they are also an OpenID provider (I would assume that most people would not want to link there papal account with us thou). And I assuming that most of the remaining people will have a Facebook or MySpace account. The problem is what happens if a person does not have an account at any of these websites or any other OpenID enabled site.

We could ask them to create an account on one of these websites before they can submit a poems/stories.
We could just not accept poems/stories from people who don't have accounts on at lest one of these websites and are who refuse to create one.

Both options leave a foul taste in my mouth but no matter what we do some people are not going to be happy with this new system.

Currently I am leaning towards asking people to create accounts on one of these sites if they don't have one. Websites like Facebook, Digg, can be great for promoting your work. Having a blog on Wordpress, Livejournal, Twitter, Tumblr, Blogger, can help your readers find more about you and where you have published your work. 

Before I do anything drastic I would like to get your thoughts on the idea.

• How do you feel about changing the login system to OpenID?
• If you don't have an account with an OpenID Provider (see links below), Would you be willing to create one to submit poems/stories to us?

Feel free to ask any questions about the system you have. I should be able to answer most of them.

More information about OpenID http://openid.net/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID,
Some popular OpenID providers: http://openid.net/get-an-openid/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OpenID_providers
A decent explication of OpenID: http://openidexplained.com/

Oh in case you are curious I'm planning on using https://rpxnow.com/ for the OpenID dashboard and login system.

[Camille Gooderham Campbell]

I was a bit confused by OpenID until I watched this video on openidexplained.com:

http://www.youtube.com/v/Vq0R1Y1A2rE&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1

Now I feel pretty confident that it's a good system for us. Could we have a link to the video with our login for anyone who's confused by the whole thing?

[AntonGully]

FWIW, I love the OpenID system and use it through my Google/Blogger account.

IMO, anyone that's writing and wants to promote themselves should have a Blogger blog anyway, even if you only use it to re-post from your Typepad or Wordpress. Google owns Blogger. Nuff said.

And Twitter is genius, once you figure out that it's not about posting about what you had for lunch and realise it's really an incredibly useful search tool. eg do a search for #fridayflash.

Oh and Hi! I'm "new" here. wink wink.

[Alex B.]

Seems to work pretty well. I noticed a couple of typos:

On the "Track Story" page - "This story has been accpeted and..."

Under the "Update Profile" page - "Statle or provence" (pretty sure Province is spelled with an i)

[Steven Smethurst]

Fixed

[Mostly Unsure]

Hi, I'm new, but i have a few a story submitted already, any chance the open ID system will apply to the backlog so I can track them?

thanks

[Steven Smethurst]

Hi, I'm new, but i have a few a story submitted already, any chance the open ID system will apply to the backlog so I can track them?
Thanks

Currently the only way would be to manually associate the stories with the new system and that would be a lot of work.

[Steven Smethurst]

Hello
I got this support email this morning about OpenID that i thought i would share with you

Question:

When I went to submit another story, why am I asked to choose a provider?
Why is, and I quote,: “Abluestar.rpxnow.com is asking for some information from your Google Account.”
Does Every Day Fiction support this?
I’ve been published with you before and have submitted other work and did
not have to do this new sign on procedure.
Is this you or a scam?
If it’s you, why do you need to see my Google account?
Please explain.

Response:

Hello

We have changed over our login system to use OpenID.
OpenID allows you to log in with any 3rd party OpenID provider like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Wordpress, ect..
We switched over to using this system in order to simplify the submission system so we could add new features like story tracking and author pages.

re: Is this you or a scam?
No

Re: “Abluestar.rpxnow.com is asking for some information from your Google Account.”
Abluestar.com is our test domain, I use it to test new technology such as OpenID.
When I first created an account with RPXNow (OpenID login system) I created it for our test domain. When I finished testing I found that the transfer process between domains wasn't so easy. So we decided to use the test domain RPXNow account for the first 2 months while we work out all the little bugs. By the end of november you will see everydaypublishing.rpxnow.com instead of abluestar.rpxnow.com

re: If it’s you, why do you need to see my Google account?
Email address, Account ID, Provider . We don't request any other information.
Google and Yahoo are warning you that we are asking for some information, if in the future we do ask for more information like your 'real name', your provider (Google or Yahoo) will again ask you if you allow us access to this information.

[Steven Smethurst]

Great new tool. Can't seem to log in. I'm using a blogger ID, but when I
enter the password it just sits there and does nothing. I have checked the
password by logging into the blogger site separately. Not sure what the
problem is.

Step 1: Select a OpenID provider, in this case we are going to use blogger.


Step 2: Enter in your blogger domain. my blogger domain is funvill.blogger.com, and click login.


Step 3:
If you are not logged in to your Google account you will have to log-in here. Most of the time your Google account username will be your gmail username.


Step 4: You are now logged in, update your profile before submitting a story.

[Steven Smethurst]

I don’t understand “provider” are you using?” Why do I have to use a “provider?” No other web magazine specifies a provider. I logged in before without a “provider,” didn’t I? I just want to log-in, period. Like I did before.

re: I just want to log-in, period. Like I did before.
You can't. We have switched to using OpenID for our login service.
Please see this post for more information
http://www.everydayfiction.com/forums/index.php/topic,1641.0.html

re: I don’t understand “provider” are you using?” Why do I have to use a “provider?”
A OpenID provider is a website that supports OpenID, such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Wordpress, MSN, blogger, ect... for example you can log in to our website with your facebook login. We switched over to using OpenID for may reason including security, with OpenID we do not have to store your personal information on our servers.

List of OpenID providers, there are 1000s of them to choose from.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OpenID_providers

re: No other web magazine specifies a provider.
500k+ websites are now accepting OpenID loggings. A lot of web2.0 sites, Google, Facebook, Flcikr, Blogger, even the US government.

We know that OpenID does have its problems but its much safer for us then the previous system.

for more information
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID
http://www.everydayfiction.com/forums/index.php/topic,1641.0.html