[wp-hackers] Re: GSoC 2009 Ideas: Open ID integration with Wordpress & Template Versioning

[Vidyarth E.S]

Just a small addition to my previous post. For Open ID integration in the
points to note no 3, another reason why OpenID could benefit Wordpress is
that a quite a number of reputed blogs requires people to sign up or give
details like name/email address to comment anyway and an OpenID integration
can only make commenting easier in such cases.

Regards
Vidyarth

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 11:31 AM, Vidyarth E.S <esvidy at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> I have 2 ideas I would like to discuss here
> *
> I) Open ID integration:*
> I was thinking about why not integrate and adequately market Open ID (
> http://openid.net/) into the Core Wordpress files. That way we don't have
> to sign up for each of the wordpress blogs out there, and can instead use
> our Open IDs! This would allow the OpenID login box to be automatically
> included as part of the theme (currently it requires editing the theme files
> if you don't want it under the comment box) as well as greatly expand the
> number of blogs that support it. This is also a concern shared by 596 users
> on the ideas page in wordpress (
> http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/topic.php?id=40)
>
> This I believe would make Wordpress more open and enhance the probability
> of "talkback" for most blogs.
>
> Some points to note from my research so far are
>
>    1. There is an OpenID bounty program that pays out $5000 to any project
>    that adds OpenID to their core. You'll notice they have WordPress listed as
>    one of the projects they hope to take up the challenge.
>    http://iwantmyopenid.org/bounty
>
>    2. The issue that is raised by Matt Mullenweg on the wp-hackers list in
>    Oct. 2005 <
>    http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-hackers/2005-October/002969.html>,
>    is that
>
>    '.. currently there exists lots of identification methods and none of
>    them tend to be universally adopted. Moreover, the next reply tells a way to
>    identificate other than just for blogs would be much more interesting, more
>    'universal'. So, I doubt too OpenID would ever make in WP Core.is that there
>    were competing identity standards.'
>
>    But since then, of the 7 that he lists 5 (OpenID, Ping Identity,
>    Identity Commons, Sxip and LID) have collapsed together into one and it's
>    called OpenID. He suggests letting them duke it out and they have. Now we
>    have OpenID. The other 2 he mentions are Yahoo (now BBAuth) and Passport.
>    Those are both proprietary. Recently there is another competing ID mode -  a
>    web Jabber identification (http://shearproject.info/jcas/), but I
>    believe it has entered the market slightly later and hence is losing out to
>    OpenID. Furthermore here is what jaykul says (
>    http://wordpress.org/support/topic/70225?replies=7#post-492486) says
>
>    "Regarding Jabber .... I know there's a web/jabber-id project, but I'd
>    have to say that I don't think it's a good login identifier. The key to the
>    OpenID system is that (similar to CardSpace -- they are essentially
>    compatible) you get to choose which infromation you make available to sites
>    that you log into using your ID. Some sites can *require* that you
>    include certain pieces of information (like your email, or real name, or
>    whatever) but you don't implicitly give them access to anything else. Doing
>    the same thing with JabberIDs would require quite a bit of modification to
>    the Jabber spec (currently your ID/vcard access is basically all or nothing)
>    and would require web sites to implement a Jabber login themselves so the
>    website could log into Jabber to check your ID in some way..."
>
>    In summary at least, OpenID has emerged as the de facto, decentralized,
>    open standard for identity and WordPress gets paid to add it to the core.
>
>    3. Giving readers the ability to register an identity easily on any
>    WordPress blog with one set of details, instead of having to create a new
>    login and password for every blog. This would then mean that blog owners
>    could turn off anonymous commenting, in turn cutting down somewhat on spam.
>    But as Otto points out in the above mentioned thread (point no 2) "Most
>    comment spam is done by automatic systems using the trackback functionality.
>    Requiring users to register to comment just means that most users won't
>    comment and reduce the number of real comments"  Although I agree with Otto
>    partially, I think it is the number of real "not so serious comments" that
>    are usually moderated out that are reduced which I believe is good.
>
>    4. I think to an extent giving the users an option to use open id to
>    register in wordpress as a whole might help bringing in more people to
>    wordpress.
>
> *II) Template versioning in Theme Editor:*
> Also another idea that I am quite interested in is the versioning of  theme
> editor template and style files. I believe several people edit (especially
> when it is bulk) on other editors (like notepad++ etc) for the fact that the
> theme editor lacks several attributes of WYSiWYG editor (changing that also
> interests me especially since a lot of users find it troubling, but I think
> it might take more time than what is allocated for GSoC). So the only thing
> that benefits people is simple versioning of files and a nice interface to
> manage those file versions that enables quick restoration of previous
> versions coupled with ability to compare versions.
>
> Summarizing here is what I think should be done
>
>    1. Build a versioning system for template files within the theme
>    editor.
>    2. UI for showing different versions of a file (only the title like
>    time modified etc)
>    3. UI for comparing 2 versions of a file.
>
> For the purpose of GSoC points 1 and 2 might be realistically achievable.
>
> What are your thoughts on both of the above ideas, specifically on any
> technical complexity or feasibility issue for either or rather simply if
> they are good enough ideas or not?
>
> Regards
>
> Vidyarth
> Final Year Computer Engineering Student, National University of Singapore
>