I did my baby steps with OpenID some months ago, but never started using it consequently with the growing number of web services supporting this single-signon concept. There are several OpenID providers out there, but I was afraid of having to change all my accounts again if the provider I chose (MyOpenID.com) went out of business. That fear now has vanished.

With their new service "MyOpenID for Domains", MyOpenID.com now offers the opportunity to use your own domain name in your OpenID credentials. Using that feature, your OpenID will not be "yourname.myopenid.com", but a name that'll fit to your web presence.

You can choose between two formats:

• http://username.yourdomain.tld if you'd like to provide a separate subdomain for each user name, or
• http://subdomain.yourdomain.tld/username if you want to configure a subdomain (e.g. "openid.yourdomain.tld") once and just append the different user names in the URL path.

In both cases, you'll have to add a DNS entry for the subdomain(s) as an alias pointing to www.openid.com. Maybe you'll need assistance by your web hosting provider's tech support; if you have control over your domain's DNS entries yourself, like I do, you just add the necessary CNAME entry.

Now, you'll have to verify that you're actually in control over the named domain by either adding another subdomain entry, or by creating a web page under that domain. In both cases, the name you have to use will be randomly created by MyOpenID.com.

After the short verification period (DNS verification can take some hours), you'll have OpenID credentials using your own domain name.

If the worst case happens and MyOpenID.com goes down for good, I'll just have to find another OpenID provider offering the same service and point my OpenID domain(s) to them.

Time to start optimizing the number of my user accounts!