Not yet having tried the software myself, I was very impressed after looking at the video on the site and the features provided. Very impressive. I think I’ll try it out real soon.

So far, I am impressed with how sites are designed. I have been actually working on a more simplistic version of a theme designer for WordPress. Progress is moving along slowly.

The bad thing about Squarespace. It’s not open source. I’ll stick with WordPress as my blogging platform of choice and continue to look for ways to make it easier for everybody to use by creating plugins and looking for other plugins created by the WordPress community.

I do love finding software like this. It forces the web to progress. Hopefully, in the future, I will try out the software and let you know what I think.

What is OpenID?

OpenID.net says it best:

OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.

You get to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets your needs and most importantly that you trust. At the same time, your OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to. And best of all, the OpenID technology is not proprietary and is completely free.

For businesses, this means a lower cost of password and account management, while drawing new web traffic. OpenID lowers user frustration by letting users have control of their login.

For geeks, OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity. OpenID takes advantage of already existing internet technology (URI, HTTP, SSL, Diffie-Hellman) and realizes that people are already creating identities for themselves whether it be at their blog, photostream, profile page, etc. With OpenID you can easily transform one of these existing URIs into an account which can be used at sites which support OpenID logins.

How I Did It

I first had to do some research on exactly what I needed to do to make this happen. I found a few sites that ultimately helped me.

• OpenID for Non-SuperUsers – Sam Ruby gets a little geeky in this simple how-to.
• claimID OpenID help – already having a profile on claimID made this a good reference.

After learning what I needed to do, I had to enable my blog by finding and adding the necessary plugins.

• WP-OpenID – lets users log in to a blog or leave comments using their OpenID.
• OpenID Delegate WordPress Plugin – add OpenID delegation abilities to your blog, thus allowing you to sign in to various OpenID supported sites using your blog’s URL.

Why I Did It

Now I can use my site to login to OpenID enabled sites. I have already started my identity/brand here on my blog and continue to add to it.

It’s part of my goal of owning my data.

And while I was OpenID enabling my site, I made it possible for others to use their OpenIDs.

Many people already have an Open ID and don’t know it. I know lots of people with Blogger accounts. Blogger is Open ID enabled. Many sites provide this service. I just wanted to do it from my own site.

Those of you who are already using Firefox will know exactly what to do. Just download it and install. I have heard there are significant improvements in both speed and security.

For those of you using other browsers such as Internet Explorer, I invite you to give Firefox a try. It is a way better browsing experience. Especially after you add your favorite add-ons.

Firefox changed the internet forever when it became popular at the beginning of the decade. It had become stagnant after the dot com boom. Microsoft had already won the browser war and did not bother to upgrade it’s browser until it upgraded to IE7 within the past few years.

Browsing has become safer and web development is a lot more fun thanks to Firefox.

For those who aren’t familiar with WordPress, it is the blogging software that is running my site. I am happy with the decision I made to use it.

One of the great things about WordPress is it allows other developers to customize their own installation via plugins and themes. In reality, the possibilities are endless with what you can accomplish.

Automattic, the company who created WordPress and runs wordpress.com, has recently started BuddyPress. BuddyPress allows you to transform WordPress MU into a social networking platform. They have already created some useful plugins.

Even though I think this is an awesome project, I have one thing that I would love to see. I want to add these social networking features to an individual WordPress blog or have one WordPress MU installation communicate with another. I think everybody that wants to should be able to participate in social networks but do so from the comfort of their own web site.

There is lots to be said on that topic. But it’s late. More later.

Enter the base tag. Never seen it. Never heard of it. Didn’t even know about it. If you are interested, read the official documentation. In a nutshell, it “specifies an absolute URI that acts as the base URI for resolving relative URIs”.

I will never use it. It seems to be handy if you are manually editing your site and you happen to move everything to a new server. In this case, all you would have to do is modify the base tag. Simple. Your links would still work as expected. But in anything that I have ever worked on, I simply update a database field or a config file and everything is good. Links are updated.

Here are some good links with some additional info regarding the base tag:

• Ambiguity in HTML 4.01 Specs
• The Pros and Cons of the base Tag

Tags: tag, HTML, base