On the Road to OpenID

This week was a big push on OpenID preparations. For those of you that don’t know about OpenID, it is essentially a way for you to keep the same login name and password accross a myriad of sites (LiveJournal,Yahoo, and SmugMug are three good examples).

The plan is that every existing and new account on gamerDNA.com will serve as an OpenID. With this ID you can log in to your gamerDNA profile and other OpenID enabled sites, and you’ll soon be able to use it to access all of the sites on the gamerDNA Alliance. So in the near future, your profile will be accessible at:

<member name>.gamerdna.com

It will be one, simple URL to remember. Unfortunately, This does introduce a few issues that we will be tackling this week and next.

1. We will be emailing guild/clan/group leaders who have been inactive for three months or more explaining they will have to change their subdomain (<shortname>.gamerdna.com) if it conflicts with an active member. You do NOT have to change your guild/clan name, just your URL (the <shortname> part mentioned earlier. You will be given an easy form to do so.
2. We will email members that have been inactive for three months and notify them that they have to change their name if it conflicts with an active guild using an easy form as well.
3. If you are an active or new member, and your name conflicts with a guild, than the member will be asked to pick a new name using an easy form.
4. If you have a user name with any characters NOT supported for use as a subdomain, (something like !| H@voc |!) you will be prompted to change your username to something valid on your next login. All usernames must be numbers, letters, or hyphens… no other characters, no spaces.

These restrictions have already been in the product for all new members and guilds (except for underscores, as there was a bug) since the beginning of August, 2008.

Ultimately, we are doing this because it creates a really simple way to link people to groups and members… and it allows us to leverage OpenID in some new an innovative ways, which you will see in the future.

If you guys have any questions about the whole process, feel free to field them over to support@gamerdna.com!