Provide your own openid server

Question

Right now I use 3rd party sites to act as my openid provider (myvidoop and myopenid). I was thinking about enabling my site to act as my provider. I thought for sure there would be some scripts I could install and achieve this easily. I have tried janrain's apps, clamshell, phpmyid, etc. I could not get any of these to work. I am pretty competent in web dev so I was surprised.

Do you think I should just stick with myOpenID?

Are there scripts that you would recommend to achieve what I want?

I don't need to provide authentication of multiple people, just me. I don't need to authenticate openid users on my site.

Answer 1

Instead of running any type of server on my own, I delegate the authentication to another provider while still typing my own URL.

Many OpenId providers let you do this. On the case of myOpenId, here are the directions:

https://www.myopenid.com/help#own_domain

This way you can provide your own URL (highfivefriday.com) when logging in an OpenId enabled site, and if some day you decide to move away from myOpenId, you can delegate to another provider transparently.

I thought this could be helpful, since you only need to authenticate yourself.

Answer 2

Hosting your own provider is absolutely doable, but doing it securely is a lot of work. Seriously, consider looking for a professional site like myOpenID, Google or Yahoo that you trust before looking to host your own.

If you want to host your own, many libraries make this more or less easy.