BuddyPress

Gigya seems like a very nice solution for social network login/signup. You can connect existing accounts (on WP) (this to me is the killer app — users having their BP account connected to their other social network accounts), users can signup with various services once you have the APIs configured on their site, you can use the widget to let users invite friends from their other networks.

Very nicely-thought-out, rich developer doco on the Wiki, and a pre-existing standard Wordpress plugin (and I’ve found some hints via Googling that it works with MU as well).

I fired them off a support email yesterday to ask if they were willing to look at BP integration on their end a bit, but haven’t heard back.

Given that the FBConnect plugin here doesn’t really do the job, and this offers a lot more (FB, Yahoo, Twitter, Myspace, etc) I wonder if anyone else is looking at this (I’ve got everything connected up in the background, but am chasing configuration issues), and if so, if you want to share notes.

Have a look if you haven’t, let us know what you think. And if you’ve got it working with BP, please share how you did it?

I’m always leery of depending on third-party stuff, but this seems pretty nice, and if it’s set up right, even if Gigya goes away (which, looking at their client list, doesn’t seem likely), I reckon it wouldn’t cripple our BP sites in any way.

I can’t speak for this particular company but there are good and bad things for this sort of approach. I’m limited on time right now but my concern is like you say the dependancy on a third party.

For a site I’m working on, I’m utilising profile autodiscovery techniques with the account stored locally.

Why cant we get openID working instead !

My first thought would be: why ‘instead’?

My second thought would be: geeks and techies and developers know about OpenID (and it confuses me, even, to be honest). Your average normal person doesn’t know OpenID from a hole in the ground, but they sure as heck know how to log in to their Facebook or Twitter account.

This looks very interesting because right now there are plugins for facebook, twitter etc, but this one combines social networks and makes it a breeze for people to invite friends from other social networks to your BP site.. I would be willing to pay for something like that in BuddyPress

I’m a huge geek… and I have no idea what Open ID is.

I too think this looks very appealing. What is the consensus solution going forward for being able to allow user registration (on your BP/WPMU blog) with existing social network credentials like Facebook or Twitter? It seems to me like there isn’t one at the moment.

Is anyone (or perhaps a group of devs) working on this specifically? It just doesn’t seem sustainable to ask users to create accounts everywhere they go ad infinitum. Something’s going to have to give. Seems like a great opportunity for some solid, entrepreneurial developers!

Oh yeah, and what’s Open ID?

My bp allows anyone to register with twitter, facebook, myspace, google, windowslive, openid, aol, blah, blah, blah with rpxnow plugin.

I remember trying that and not having it work the way it ought to have, but I can’t remember why.

I’ll look at it again, maybe. Care to share any tips on getting it working, socialpreneur, or is it doing everything you want straight out of the box?

Hmmph. Keeps telling me ‘an error occurred’ in the WP dashboard when trying to enter my API key from RPXnow. Ah well, I’ll have a look later.

I have RPXnow running on my localsite.. It allows you to login using social networks. but I don’t see any other options then that.. I’ll look further into it.. socialpreneur have you used it for anything more then simply signing in (posting status updates to social network or inviting friends?)

Thanks for sharing regarding RPXNOW. After a quick review, I think their model will probably keep them around, but I’m concerned about the limited functionality at the free level. Most of it requires $10/mo. or more https://rpxnow.com/get. Gigya’s model seems to allow them to provide a free service with much more customization and features. The fact they have many major partners also suggests staying power. http://www.gigya.com/public/Content/GS/Implementation.aspx. THey even have an interesting toolbar, but I probably won’t use it.

Unless something changes, I’m leaning toward gigya. However, there are issues. Last I checked, they were just finishing the MU version of their plugin (even though some had gotten the .org version working). Also, the biggest complaint I saw was an inability to restrict people from creating multiple logins with each of their identities (e.g. Yahoo, Google). Also, getting users to fill out detailed profiles was more problematic. I would want to see these addressed (although I don’t see how the former could be addressed technologically).

Regarding OpenID, as with the liquor store, allowing multiple forms of payment is a must. Cash only will restrict customers.

Here’s an example of what I’m trying to accomplish using BPContents plugin to create member categories and Gigya to allow facebook and twitter registration http://www.reverbnation.com/controller/main/signup

From what I remember, BP Contents doesn’t allow you to setup member categories…