OpenID, Livejournal, and Dreamwidth Open Beta
Well, my journal is all tidied up and ready for visitors so I'm feeling accomplished even if there wasn't that much effort involved. As I'm thinking I'll opt for a 'Paid' level of account, I trimmed my icons down to 73 (extra two slots! I was very impressed with myself) and now I'm waiting for 9pm EST (which would be my local time) to roll around so I can make it official like.
On the same note, within the next 12 hours (more or less) I'll be getting invite codes to hand out. If you would like an invite, please let me know (comment, drop me a message via your LJ inbox, or send me an email at firebluemeridian [at] gmail [dot] com) and I will see that you receive one. Just make sure to leave me an email as I'll need to enter it at DW in order to have the server send along one of my codes.
Bear in mind that if you have registered your OpenID with an email and confirmed that email (by clicking on the link that arrives in your inbox), then you will already be receiving a code directly from DW. By the way, for Livejournal, the OpenID format would be "USERNAME.livejournal.com" -- just substitute your username for the one in all caps and eliminate the quotation marks. The same applies for using your Dreamwidth account at any other site which supports OpenID** ("USERNAME.dreamwidth.org"). You'll probably be asked if you'd like to pass through the okay to use your login credentials, so you'll obviously need to agree for the process to work!
Note that you cannot later convert and/or associate an OpenID account at Dreamwidth to/with a regular account. At least, not at this time. I believe that it is a feature they would like to add in the future, but there is no time line as yet.
**OTW Random Public Service Announcement: In one of Drupal's fun fun quirks (or, more precisely, this may be a module quirk, but whatever), there's a catch to using your OpenID at TransformativeWorks.org, aka the main OTW site which is not a) The Archive of Our Own (A3O), b) Fanlore (the Fandom Wiki), c) Open Doors (George), or d) Transformative Works and Cultures (the Journal). The catch is you must create a regular account first, then you can log-in with your OpenID and associate it with the account you just created. The reason this was left in place was for the user convenience of only needing to remember an OpenID log-in. It certainly didn't turn out the way we thought it would!
Now I'm half tempted to change the names on all my Livejournal icons to match the much more logical naming scheme I have going on at Dreamwidth just to make cross-posting easier. Plus, it would make the neuroses happy. *ponders*
ETA: moonilicious made a good point that I thought I'd pass along on the above topic. Also, please don't delete your Open ID accounts. When someone imports their journal and comments, Open ID accounts are automatically created (eg. moonilicious.livejournal.com) to make clear who the comments are from. In the future it will be possible to link your Dreamwidth account to your Open ID account(s), which will turn your Open ID comments into comments from your actual DW account. Which is awesome!
If you delete your Open ID account(s), however, your imported comments will appear with a strike through. This is not only ugly, there's also the danger of your Open ID account(s) being purged and your comments disappearing. This is bad! There was talk about fixing this (ie. making Open ID accounts unpurgable) but I don't know if this already happened. So for now, please don't delete your Open ID account(s)!
On the same note, within the next 12 hours (more or less) I'll be getting invite codes to hand out. If you would like an invite, please let me know (comment, drop me a message via your LJ inbox, or send me an email at firebluemeridian [at] gmail [dot] com) and I will see that you receive one. Just make sure to leave me an email as I'll need to enter it at DW in order to have the server send along one of my codes.
Bear in mind that if you have registered your OpenID with an email and confirmed that email (by clicking on the link that arrives in your inbox), then you will already be receiving a code directly from DW. By the way, for Livejournal, the OpenID format would be "USERNAME.livejournal.com" -- just substitute your username for the one in all caps and eliminate the quotation marks. The same applies for using your Dreamwidth account at any other site which supports OpenID** ("USERNAME.dreamwidth.org"). You'll probably be asked if you'd like to pass through the okay to use your login credentials, so you'll obviously need to agree for the process to work!
Note that you cannot later convert and/or associate an OpenID account at Dreamwidth to/with a regular account. At least, not at this time. I believe that it is a feature they would like to add in the future, but there is no time line as yet.
**OTW Random Public Service Announcement: In one of Drupal's fun fun quirks (or, more precisely, this may be a module quirk, but whatever), there's a catch to using your OpenID at TransformativeWorks.org, aka the main OTW site which is not a) The Archive of Our Own (A3O), b) Fanlore (the Fandom Wiki), c) Open Doors (George), or d) Transformative Works and Cultures (the Journal). The catch is you must create a regular account first, then you can log-in with your OpenID and associate it with the account you just created. The reason this was left in place was for the user convenience of only needing to remember an OpenID log-in. It certainly didn't turn out the way we thought it would!
Now I'm half tempted to change the names on all my Livejournal icons to match the much more logical naming scheme I have going on at Dreamwidth just to make cross-posting easier. Plus, it would make the neuroses happy. *ponders*
ETA: moonilicious made a good point that I thought I'd pass along on the above topic. Also, please don't delete your Open ID accounts. When someone imports their journal and comments, Open ID accounts are automatically created (eg. moonilicious.livejournal.com) to make clear who the comments are from. In the future it will be possible to link your Dreamwidth account to your Open ID account(s), which will turn your Open ID comments into comments from your actual DW account. Which is awesome!
If you delete your Open ID account(s), however, your imported comments will appear with a strike through. This is not only ugly, there's also the danger of your Open ID account(s) being purged and your comments disappearing. This is bad! There was talk about fixing this (ie. making Open ID accounts unpurgable) but I don't know if this already happened. So for now, please don't delete your Open ID account(s)!