OpenID Website Issues
The main OpenID website may be many people's entry point into the world of OpenID. But is it up to this important job? Here are a number of issues which should be considered for improvement.
Contents |
Content
- The home page states "With one OpenID you can login to all your favourite websites". At best this is wildly overblown hype. To be less charitable, it is a blatant lie. Yes, the aim is to be able to do this, but we are nowhere near that situation. Have a look at the list of 500 most popular sites (from Alexa) and compare with the myOpenID Site Directory. Is there any overlap at all?
- The site recognises two classes of visitors: end-users and developers. It does not realise that there is an important third group: site owners. I.e. people who build and configure websites from software packages (e.g. from CMS systems, forums, wikis etc.) These people would like to know whether the packages they use can support OpenID (either natively in a newer version, or via a plugin or extension). Where are they supposed to find out? Without support for them, the email template is an embarrassment.
- To help address this, a list of Website Software has been started
- The Developers page claims "There are a lot of great guides to getting started with OpenID" but lists only one on how to implement it - and that is on an external site. And where should one look for the rest?
- The email template claims that OpenID is "really easy to integrate". However, the Recipe for OpenID-Enabling Your Site document runs to 8 pages when printed and covers around 60 steps to be followed - not my idea of "really easy"!
General Usability
- The home page does not have a clear "tagline" explaining what the site is about.
- No search facility.
- No "Contact us" link. Is there any way to contact the webmaster?
- There is. The standard webmaster (at) openid.net address exists. But yes, this should be clarified. --Trevor Johns 20:30, 19 January 2008 (PST)
Layout / Formatting
- An over-large banner, wasting screen real-estate
- The layout is fixed width, annoying to both those with narrower windows (left/right scrolling required) and those with wider windows (wasted space).
- Link menu in unusual place (bottom of the page).
- Link menu colour scheme (grey on lighter grey) is not very readable.
- Cannot sign in to wiki using OpenID 2.0
- This is currently waiting on an updated version of the MediaWiki OpenID Extension to be released. --Trevor Johns 20:30, 19 January 2008 (PST)
Wiki
Technical
- Wiki banner is even more bloated (159 pixels high!).
- The Help:Editing page on the wiki looks very messed up.
- Wiki 'blobs' for unordered lists appear halfway down the paragraph, making it harder to read. Especially for nested lists.
- Create new MediaWiki theme to match the main openid.net theme.
- Users' OpenIDs don't show up on their user pages when using the OpenID theme. However, they do show up if any of the other themes are used.
- The OpenID login mechanism needs more instructions to make it more user friendly (for example, it should link to Public_OpenID_providers.
- Upgrade MediaWiki to v1.1.2.
- Upgrade the MediaWiki OpenID extension to v0.8.2 (12 Mar 2008).
Pages Needing Cleanup
- IPR_Policy/Formal_IPR_Policy needs to be updated to reflect the finalized IPR.
- Current_events is out of date, and doesn't match Events
- Website_Software needs a Yes/No template for background colors.
- OpenIDServers needs to be organized, and needs to be renamed.
- OpenID_Wiki:Translation_article_list is out of date, and could probably use some instructions to explain it's purpose.
- OpenID_Wiki:Privacy_policy needs to be written or deleted/removed from the sidebar.
- OpenID_Wiki:General_disclaimer needs to be created or removed from the sidebar.
- OpenID_Wiki:About needs to be created or removed from the sidebar.
- OpenID_Wiki:Community_Portal isn't much of a community portal. This would be a good place to put lists of pages that need to be cleaned up, administrative requests, etc.
Miscellaneous
- No explanation of the relationship between OpenID and Six Apart Ltd. of San Francisco, who own the openid.net domain.
Related Pages
- Home Page Improvements suggests descriptive text for the home page.
