More and more websites are now asking the audience to register to access the content of their website. In some of the websites registration process is very simple, just email address is required whereas in some of the cases you have to go through a big list and enter hell lot of unnecessary required informations. OpenID is an excellent initiative to avoid repetitive registration on different websites. Once you create your OpenID, you will never need to go through the registration process again with the sites that support OpenID.
What is OpenID?
OpenID is an open, decentralized single sign on system with free framework for user-centric digital identity. It starts with a concept that anybody should be able to logon to website using URI(Uniform Resource Identifier). It works a bit like old Microsoft Passport except that it is an open standard.
How it works?
On OpenID enabled websites, the internet users do not need to register or manage a new account. Instead, they only need to be registered on any of the OpenID providers and can use the URI given by OpenID provider to logon to any one of OpenID enabled website.
For Example : A website, such as example.com which wants to enable OpenID login for its visitor places a login form somewhere on the page. Unlike a traditional page which contains a username and password textbox for the authentication, there is just one textbox for URI where you enter your OpenID identifier.
If a user named Pradeep wants to log onto example.com using pradeep.openid.net OpenID identifier which he has registered with openid.net OpenID provider, he will need to enter pradeep.openid.net identifier in the OpenID login box.
Now the website example.com will communicate with OpenID provider to authenticate the identifier, If Pradeep is already logged on to OpenID provider server then example.com will get a successful authentication message otherwise Pradeep will be prompted a screen of OpenID provider webpage to authenticate and after authentication the webpage will automatically get redirected to example.com
