Blogger, OpenID and Nickname control
January 2nd, 2008 - Fred StutzmanAnother issue that’s generating some questions among ClaimID users is how to control one’s nickname when posting an OpenID comment to blogger. The nickname is what shows up as your name in the comment. Here’s are two examples of OpenID comments; the nickname is “Fred” in one, and “This shows up” in the second comment.
To accomplish this, first I leave a comment with my OpenID URL:
Once I do this, I am sent over to the OpenID server for authentication. As you’ll notice, it asks me for some information:
Blogger is asking for your nickname, which is what will show up as your name in the comments. As a test, I’ve given “This shows up” as my nickname.
Success! Now I can control what nickname shows up when I comment. Note, if you choose “Log in and Trust” this will set your nickname permanently unless you revoke Blogger’s trust, which you can do by managing your profiles at http://openid.claimid.com.
January 2nd, 2008 at 9:31 pm
My recent experience with Blogger’s OpenID support was that they correctly used the nickname when I hit “preview” (after the login dance), but then they forgot about it and used an incorrectly-derived nickname based on the URL when I hit “submit”. So the process may not be entirely bug-free.
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:48 am
Thanks for the tip.
February 23rd, 2008 at 11:48 am
Let’s see how this works…
February 23rd, 2008 at 11:52 am
While it seems to work here, on other OpenID sites (livejournal & blogspot,) it shows “blog” or “blog.jeffool.com” as my name. Any tips?
February 23rd, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Jeff,
It’s up to the relying party’s implementation of the protocol. We’re using libraries that respect the ’sreg’ information, so it does what you expect. There’s nothing more you can do to make it work (outside of complaining loudly) - it’s up to the site to show the nickname.