WordPress Third Party Accounts Login Plugin

The Problem

I believe OpenID in its present form is unsuitable for mass usage the reason being that providing an intimidating blank textbox asking for your OpenID is perplexing for most users. A couple of articles about why OpenID is failing.

So whats the solution?

One good if not great solution is provide the user with a number of third party accounts he/she can login with. For example, a regular non-tech savvy user may not know that Google also provides OpenID support and even if a tech-savvy user knows about it, the URL is simply too long to remember. A good example of this usage is the login system at StackOverflow.

The Plugin

The plugin allows the user to provide his/her details via all the famous OpenID service providers (Google, Yahoo etc.) while commenting. A working example of the plugin can be found on this site itself (scroll down to comments).

To make this plugin work make sure you have OpenID for WordPress Plugin installed.

Here are a couple of instructions to make this work:

1. Download the plugin file
2. Extract the archive contents to the wp-content/plugins folder i.e. wp-content/plugins/third-party-accounts-login
3. Login to WordPress Administration Center
4. Activate the plugin
5. Goto Settings -> Third Party Accounts Login and set your preferences. Currently, you can choose from three different views- Only text, small icons, X highlighted (large icons) + remaining small icons. You can hide the icons you do not want to display by double-clicking on them and drag them to order them.

6. Add the following line in your comments.php page: <?php third_party_accounts_login(); ?>
7. Make sure that OpenID textbox is present in your comments page with an id=”openid_identifier”

A sample code:

<label >Please select one of these third-party accounts:</label><br/>

<?php third_party_accounts_login(); ?>   

<br/>
<label>Or enter your OpenId URL:</label><br/>
<input type="text" name="openid_identifier" id="openid_identifier"  class="textfield" tabindex="4" style="width:300px" />

Suggestions?
Do let me know your suggestions or any other OpenID service providers you would like to add. One feature I will add soon is Facebook OpenID integration similar to RPXNow.

baron
Works great, thank you
Raj
Hi, Its very good
google.com/accounts/o8…
Thank you for your hard work! This is pretty impressive stuff. I tested this in my dev environment and seem to run into some issues. The username and website all seem to point to the (long and ugly) OpenID url when leaving a comment thru one of the providers (like I am now /w Google). Is this intentional? Is this how OpenId works?
- Anant Garg
  @JP Unfortunately, this is the current functionality that the OpenID plugin offers. Am looking into other possibilities.
google.com/accounts/o8…
Good
google.com/accounts/o8…
Thanks
Edwin
I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but I don’t get the icons to show, since adding this the comment-box got very small. Also getting errors now with other plugins. (Google Maps Anywere)
I hope that this can be fixed easily.
Update: The issue was not related to this plugin. The error was caused independently by Google Maps Anywhere Plugin.
- Anant Garg
  @Edwin Am not sure why you getting these errors. If you can provide me further details, I can investigate. You may use the contact form below.
google.com/accounts/o8…
Gravatar is disappeared ? Anyway, it’s great !
- Anant Garg
  @Baonghia Thats strange. I am investigating the problem; will let you know if I find a solution.
RaiulBaztepo
Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language 😉
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo
google.com/accounts/o8…
Please Tell me which File i Should Add the Code mentioned in ur website
- Anant Garg
  @Reshma Hello, you must include the code mentioned above in the comments.php file (Appearance => Editor => comments.php)
google.com/accounts/o8…
Thanks A lot Anant
Mike
Is there any way to get this onto the actual login page easily?
- Anant Garg
  @Mike Hello, you will have to edit the login page and add the following code: third_party_accounts_login();
Jishi
Dear Anant, if you could add another Third Party? Russian major search engine & mail provider now supports OpenId – http://yandex.ru (English version http://www.yandex.com/ ).
It is used like “http://login.ya.ru” or just login.ya.ru .
Best wishes,
Jishi.
google.com/accounts/o8…
I cannot get the google link to wokr I just get
“Could not discover an OpenID identity server endpoint at the url: http://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id“
google.com/accounts/o8…
thanks very much
Ella
Hi…! This rocks. You rock. Thank you for sharing and helping people out. I send you a virtual beer 🙂
enc
Good work.
google.com/accounts/o8…
just what I was looking for, thanks!
Rajesh
good one.
Daryl
Where do I put the code – third_party_accounts_login(); – on wp-login.php?
google.com/accounts/o8…
Hello,
I installed this plugin on my blog, it does work fine, but instead of showing the name of the commenter, it just shows the openID service url… The same issue that you appear to have here for some comments :/
Thanks
google.com/accounts/o8…
Thank you! 😉
tagno25
in /wp-content/plugins/openid/login.php
add “third_party_accounts_login();” after “echo ”;”
echo ''; third_party_accounts_login();
echo '
' . __('Or login using an OpenID', 'openid') . '
google.com/accounts/o8…
This is great! Thanks! 🙂
Peter_P
I always get an “anonymous” post when I use this plugin… what´s wrong with my installation?
I added …
” third_party_accounts_login(); ”
…to the comment.php file.
I have the OpenID plugin installed.
I´m confused… I want it to work… 😉
Julio Mejía
Muy Bueno estoy interesado en este plugin me gusta mucho.
Hope
I encounter similar error when I use the OpenID plugin: Could not discover an OpenID identity server endpoint at the url.
Pizy
Thank you, Anant 🙂
Ajdin
Just attempted to post a comment on you site. I was already logged in to Gmail and Google asked if I Allowed authentication. I said yes and got this message
“OpenID Authentication Error
We were unable to authenticate your claimed OpenID, however you can continue to post your comment without OpenID:”
Dan
I thought this plugin would do just the trick but it is still cludgy
The plugin should hide the “manually enter details” section once a third party login is clicked. Its currently confusing to visitors what to do with those form fields.
Also, once logged in through a third party provider, why are those three manual enter form fields populated with garbage data? Ideally, the login completes after you allow Google the access and then all the user is presented with is the comment box
Blogger comment system is the best out there. They let you login through a dropdown of different services and it’s completely seamless and intuitive
t_qooze
Congratz. Love it. Can’t wait for facebook integration… 😉
Anders S. Løvlie
This is a great contribution! However, I’m having some trouble using this. With just OpenID activated, I can input my OpenID URL which is already associated with my account, and login without trouble. However if I activate the Third Party Accounts plugin, somehow this breaks – so when I input my OpenID URL I open a new account instead of coming to my existing one. Any ideas how to fix this?
Update: Actually, trying to post this comment with my OpenID I get “OpenID Authentication Error”… maybe related? The ID URL is fine, I have checked…
Giovanni Bajo
Make sure your server has php-xml module installed. That’s how I fixed the “OpenID authentication error” I was getting.
Anders S. Løvlie
@Giovanni: Thanks for your response! However, as far as I can see I do have xml support in php. From my phpinfo:
XML Support active
XML Namespace Support active
libxml2 Version 2.6.30
XMLReader enabled
core library version xmlrpc-epi v. 0.51
php extension version 0.51
XMLWriter enabled
any other suggestions? Is it possible to just modify the plugin so that it uses a url of type google.com/profiles/username instead?
Anders S. Løvlie
…eh, my blockquote tags got messed up there, so I repeat the last lines:
any other suggestions? Is it possible to just modify the plugin so that it uses a url of type google.com/profiles/username instead?
Anders S. Løvlie
…ok, so i figured it out myself:
in third_part_accounts_login.php, line 51, you have to change the google url from whatever it was to:
‘https://www.google.com/profiles/USERNAME’
if you have already activated the plugin it seems it doesn’t help to deactivate and activate it again, you must manually update the appropriate entry in the database to the new url.
Of course, an even better solution than this URL would be to have some kind of prompt to the user asking for his/her google username, and then inserting the correct url to the form…
Matt Vogt
So would this work with Blogger profile pics in wordpress? Or is it solely for authentication? Thanks!
Clean website Anant!
Henrik
How is the Facebook integration coming along? I would love to have that as a option.
Is it possible to use this third party providers to sign up for my blog?
helpin
I installed the plugin and able to view it .But how can I set it in wordpress 3.0 ? I can’t able to find these…
Please select one of these third-party accounts:
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.Or enter your OpenId URL:
7.
lines in comment.php .
helpin
Is this plugin is used only for commenting or registering too?
miguel
Does this work with WordPress 3.0.1?
Roman
on my WP the Google OpenID isnt work :(((
it said:
Could not discover an OpenID identity server endpoint at the url: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id
WP 3.0.1
openid plugin 3.3.3
Jodi Schneider
Do you have to add code besides in comments.php? This is passing comments through anonymously, without authentication for me.
As installed on your website, it fails sometimes (e.g. delegated OpenID redirecting to ClaimID).
Julian
The installation process appears to be outdated; if you don’t put the code into the actual comment FORM tag, it does nothing (as per Jodi Schneider).
You can put it there by editing wp-includes/comment-template.php, but that isn’t right since it will be overwritten when you upgrade. I’m not the best with WP yet, but I see that function has an option to take custom content for the comment form. To install this properly, the sample code in the plugin docs needs to be passed to WP’s comment_form function.
Ray
Where are you supposed to place the “third_party_accounts_login();” code on your login.php file?
Mike Smedley
This does sound like the ideal plugin I am looking for, it doesn’t seem to ask for any kind of authentication at any point though, is there a step I’ve missed?
google.com/accounts/o8…
it’s working!!
Warren M
This looks very interesting
google.com/accounts/o8…
thx for this plugin,
but it dont do exactly the same thing that
stackoverflow
is it possible to do that?
google.com/accounts/o8…
not bad, but I’d rather the fields adjust to what the users click.
If i click on google, i dont need the field “Or enter your OpenID URL”, or the 3 manual entry fields.
Cheers,
Danger
Lucas
i “Successfully fetched” the openID but cannot login.
[Tue Dec 04 16:31:12 2012] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] Successfully fetched ‘https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx’: GET response code 200, referer: http://127.0.0.1/wordpress/wp-login.php
Bishojet Chandra Nath
Nice………..