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I’ve been working on setting up a new forum, but the person I’ve been working with on this one is a little more particular than John or Urs and has insisted on a much simpler login/sign-up process. I think it’s implemented now, it needs stress-testing this weekend.
One advantage of maintaining these forums using a single code base is that improvements on other forums automatically are implemented here. So, the sign-up procedure is now much simpler: the second step (associating with a forum) now happens automatically if you apply for the account starting from a particular forum. So someone coming here and clicking on an “apply for an account” just needs to apply once, the association is done automatically.
The other major change is that I’ve implemented OpenID logins. To make use of that, you need to register an OpenID. You can do this from the ’Account’ tab at the top - hopefully it’s obvious what to do. Then you can sign in using OpenID instead of username/password.
Please let me know if you notice any problems with the above, or you notice a new problem (it involved changing a few bits in the core so there’s always a possibility of messing something else up).
I need to update all the instructions which I’ll try to do this weekend or on Monday.
Incidentally, this update has also hopefully fixed the problem that sometimes people end up on the main Mathforge forum instead of here. If you start on the nForum, it should now be impossible to get off it by following normal navigation links.
The OpenID login seems to work fine for me; I logged out and back in again with no problems. Would it be possible to add a ’Sign in with Google’ button or link on the login page? That would make it even easier.
(If anyone doesn’t know about OpenID, you can read about it here.)
Edit: The OpenID login doesn’t seem to respect the ’Remember me’ box, so that I have to log in again every so often.
The OpenID login didn’t work for me; I entered my OpenID, and was redirected to sign in with it, but when I was sent back to the nForum the page still said “This account does not have any OpenIDs associated with it yet” and wouldn’t let me log in with the OpenID.
Did you add your openid to your account first?
Hi Andrew,
One of these days, I hope this forum software gets the attention it deserves. I think these forums are more valuable than the wikis currently associated with them, yet most of the users (in my opinion anyway) undervalue it, e.g. think of it as merely a tool to support the wiki.
With all the talk lately about Elsevier, I also think you’re in a unique position to rock the publishing boat considerably.
Keep up the good work. You rock!
With all the talk lately about Elsevier, I also think you’re in a unique position to rock the publishing boat considerably.
What can I say but … watch this space!
In the meantime, please test the OpenID stuff. I’d like to know if others get the same as Mike.
I tried it but it did not find my username-password combination. I then clicked on MO and found I was logged in there!
I tried. Was asked if I wanted to trust you with my stuff. I said, “Yes, just this one time.” Refreshed page. Still says no OpenIDs associated. Tried again, but this time said, “Yes, always trust Andrew”. Refresh. Still says no OpenIDs associated.
Edit: I was using my wordpress OpenID.
Okay, seems that the OpenID library I used doesn’t authenticate all OpenIDs (I just tried my other one and it didn’t work). I’ll swap in a different one tonight.
Right, I’ve swapped it for a better OpenID library. Better in the sense that it is supposed to be more robust and reliable. Unfortunately, not better in the sense of having documentation! So please try again. I’ve tested it with both my OpenIDs (one of which failed before) and both now work.
I know what the problem is with the “Remember Me” bit and how to fix it, I just haven’t gotten round to it yet.
Okay, I think I’ve done the “Remember Me” part.
The OpenID login has stopped working for me now – I tried to log back in with the same ID as before, the URL of my Google profile page, but I just get the nForum login screen again, without any kind of error message. This happens no matter whether I check the ’Remember me’ box or not.
I managed to add my wordpress OpenID to my account. Log out. Then log back in using the openID.
It worked, but it took what seemed to be ~45 seconds, i.e. eternity, to log in.
I associated my OpenID to my account, signed out, and signed in using my OpenID. I started from this page and ended on the main page of this forum, so somewhere in there it forgot where I was, but that’s the only thing that I can think of to complain about.
Finn, you probably need to delete yor key and add it again. I don’t store the actual key, I store the identity that the server returns (my thinking was that that was canonical, whereas as what you enter is a URI there are a few small variations that you might use). It may be that the different libraries I used return the identity slightly differently so the new identity isn’t matching the old one.
Toby, hadn’t thought of that. I’ll put it on my to-do list. It means remembering where you are across several HTTP requests, but that’s a known problem with a known solution, I just have to trace it through.
I tried to add in what Google says is my OpenID and get an account invalid message. Can someone provide an idiot-proof guide to doing this? I use Google OpenID for login at MO and StackExchange without difficulty.
I tried cutting and pasting the google url that appears in the box at MO when I click the google button and that seemed to work, at least, I didn’t get an error. I haven’t put it through its paces yet.
I tried exactly that and it threw me back to login page. … I will try another combination of silly actions!!!!
No progress. Yesterday I did get Google to say that nForum was associated but that did not seem to help. I deleted it from my profile and tried again and now even that does not work!!!
When putting in the Google userID I get
The page that you requested is invalid.
How do I get a Google id to test this? (I have a google account)
I went to MO and logged in. That gave me an open ID provider page. I clicked on Google and got:
Click your OpenID account provider:
then some clickable images.
Or, manually enter your OpenID URL: [and a box here]. I clicked on the google image and got a URL in the [box]. I presumed that was what had to be entered.
That after a brief pause gave me the Google account login page….
On the OpenID website it says that you can use your Google Profile URL as your OpenID, and gives a link to http://google.com/profiles/me, which redirects me to my Google Plus profile page, whose URL I used successfully the first time.
I tried deleting that ID from my nForum account and reregistering, but the same thing happened to me as to Tim – the Google page that I was redirected to simply said ’The page you requested is invalid’. I also tried using the OpenID string that appears on my MathOverflow profile page, which should represent the same Google account even though it’s different from the other one, but with the same result. I also logged out and in again on MO, as Tim did; the URL that appears in the box is https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id, which I presume is a generic one that gets redirected, so isn’t itself an OpenID. The ID on my MO profile page is that string followed by ?id=... and a bunch of characters.
One of these days you lot are going to realise how incompetent I am and fire me on the spot!
I’ll spare you the long explanations, but let’s just say that I should have figured that out a lot sooner than I did. I’ve now managed to register a Google account - you need to use https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id - and successfully logged in using it. Please, everyone, test it.
I’ll make the interface easier tomorrow: there’s no need to be typing that in each time as it is the same for everyone. But it’s Sunday night and my wife says I’m not allowed to do any more on this tonight!
Thanks everyone for testing - I wouldn’t have spotted these things if you hadn’t.
It seems to work fine for me now.
It works for me. The login is a bit funny, though: after I enter my openID and click the button, it first comes back to me with the empty login page again, then after a second or two refreshes to show the discussion list (with me now logged in).
It works for me now, but is no quicker than the traditional method! That is progress… i.e. it was not slower.
I joke. It should make things easier when away from home computers. Perhaps a page as on MO with a list of the more usual providers would be a good thing for a future upgrade. As it was the remember me did not remember the https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id and our discussion does not quite apply to users of other OpenID providers.
Thanks, Andrew.
Mike, that’s because there’s a sneaky redirect that sometimes needs to happen. But there’s no need for it to be sneaky - I’ll put in a message: “Redirecting you to your OpenID Provider for authentication” (or something like that).
Tim, Yes, a nice list is what I meant by “I’ll make the interface easier tomorrow”. What other providers do people know of? StackExchange provides:
I’d need to be able to test whatever I provided. I guess I could sign up for most of those, but I’d need other testers. Does anyone else have one of those accounts that they could use for testing?
Okay, I’ve now provided “Google” buttons anywhere and everywhere and put hopefully helpful little “Redirecting” messages. Should be easy enough to add other providers now that it works for Google.
Next big step will be to do account creation with OpenID. There’s the possibility of getting the information from an OpenID, but then it might be that the username is taken, or that the person might which to override it (since we prefer real names here). So my thinking is to allow someone to enter an OpenID on the sign-up page then to try to get their credentials from the OpenID provider and re-show the form with those values filled in but not automatically submit it.
I use Google for Stack Exchange, MO, etc. so cannot help. MO does include AOL. (You could include a statement suggesting that potential users may like to get an OpenID from one of these for convenience.) I do not have a facebook account.
Regarding the speed, it’s always going to be slower because it has to do more: it has to check your credentials against another server so has to send off a request, wait for the reply, and then check that against the database. The main reason for wanting to use OpenID is so that one doesn’t have to remember all those annoying passwords to log in to all the different sites that one might wish to log in to.
I just logged on again and found the Google button.. That is great and worked beautifully. Thanks.
I seem to have had no difficulties whatsoever – it was a snap signing in through the OpenID through my Google account. Thank you, Andrew!
I have noticed, however, that I am being automatically signed out after a period of time.
I’m already using MyOpenID, so that works.
I just noticed the same effect as Todd. This may be a good feature as it then relogged me in very quickly so there was no real inconvenience but greater security.
The signing-out means that the ’Remember Me’ isn’t getting “Remembered” properly through all the transactions that have to take place. I’ll take a look into it.
Impressive! Thanks.
Ok, got my Google OpenID to work now. Thanks, Andrew, for all this. Now I know why you were doing all this - for the Math2.0 site! :)
No, David – I’m sure you meant to say this: the Math2.0 site! :-)
Hi Andrew,
I just went over to the Math2.0 site for the first time, and this remined me of a comment that I wanted to make also about the Forum:
I think all these forums, are missing an About-page.
Somewhere right at the top, at least after opening the “Home”-tab there should be a statement “This is a forum for discussion of XYZ.”, and/or a link titled “About” that leads to a page with more detailed information.
I knew what the Math2.0 forum is about from announcements that I had seen elsewhere (on Google+, I guess), but otherwise I guess I would have had to read a chunk of discussion to deduce the underlying topic.
Specifically for the Forum, which I personally care about, naturally, I am often wondering if we are confusing potential contributors by not telling them what it is that we are doing here (we have this kind of information only on the Lab home page).
I will not be “requesting” such a feature, since I know that you are busy enough and I have no business requesting anything from you. But if you were to ask me what the main next missing thing is to make all the forums that you run be great and successful, I would say: an About-page. :-)
Ah, now that I said this I looked at all the tabs here again and see that “Help” leads one to Welcome to the nForum (nlabmeta).
If easily possible, I suggest the following: let’s rename the “Help”-tab into “About”, and then move it from the far right to the far left of the tab list!
I have bad experience with “about”. Every windows program has about button, which mislead me so many times when I was a computor beginner. I would click on it, expecting something useful, describing the program and how to use it, and than instead it would list some useless spanish names of contributors and some odius company name and copyright data and so on. On the contrary, help button is something I like to press as it was usually somewhat useful. Is there a better option than odius “about” and possibly misleading “help” ? “Intro” button for example ??
Maybe even better than a button or tab would be a subtitle.
Compare with
The -Category Café
A group blog on math, physics and philosophy
The subtitle gives everybody who arrives at the site a first rough idea of what it’s all about.
Similarly it might be good to have here on the forum a subtitle line
The Forum
Discussion of nLab edits and related nonsense.
This is a good idea, to have a description. However, the Forum is thought of wider than edit discussion and related stuff on Lab. It had notices, which should grow into a blog, it has lengthy discussions on anything of relevance for Community and more. I am sure you will find a mantra/slogan for that, but I think it should be a bit more ambitious than “Lab edits and related”. Plus the slogan should have the link in brackets, something like (see more) which links to the Welcome page as the current Help button does.
Sure. I thought “related nonsense” would serve as a clear indication that this is not yet my final proposal :-) But I don’t have time to think of a better subtitle right now.
I’ve shifted the discussion on suggestions for a subtitle or tag-line or whatever to a new discussion so that more people will see it and - hopefully - come up with good suggestions.
I’m not sure if there are experiments going on at the moment, but it seems I’m constantly being asked to re-sign in now. In the past, it remembered me.
I just had occasion to try to sign in again with MyOpenID, and it’s no longer working. When I select “MyOpenID” from the sign-in page, there is then a text box asking for my username, and when I enter it and click “Proceed” then I get an error message, rather than being redirected to myopenid.
I looked in to my Google account separately before starting on the nLab then to enter here clicked on the Google icon on the login. That worked fine. Does that alternative route work for you, Mike?
Mike, I think I’ve fixed this. I’ve tested it with my MyOpenID login and it works. Could you try again, please? Thanks.
I thought it was working for a while, but now it’s broken again.
The sign in seems to be broken. I logged into my Google account. Called up the forum, tried to use the Google icon and I got just a login page with an error message. Then clicking on the Google icon did not shift me from that so I used the old fashioned login.. (that worked :-))
One of these days I’ll just get it right first time and we’ll all be astonished.
I’m pretty sure I’ve fixed the main login screen now - thanks for reporting the problem. Just got to fix the side-panel login now.
The side panel worked for me when I tested a minute or two ago.
Yay, it works for me again. Thanks Andrew!
But it doesn’t seem to be very good at remembering my login.
It also logs me out quite rapidly if I leave the machine without activity, although the main (Google) login stays active???
You know how it goes, you clear up the room and discover that you’ve put away the one thing you needed next.
Sorry about that: reorganised the code but forgot to reorganise that bit. Seems to be fixed now.
Ta! :-)
Problem:
The Forum asked me to log in just now, so I clicked on the Google button and was redirected as usual, but then I was taken back to the login page with an error message saying that that OpenID wasn’t associated with an account. So I logged in the old-fashioned way and went to the ’Manage OpenIDs’ page. My Google OpenID was listed, so I deleted it in order to add it again (that worked once before). But now when I try to add it, having been sent over to Google to approve things, I’m brought back to the Forum and a 404 error page, saying that the URL account/VerifyOpenID/ wasn’t found.
Any ideas?
Thanks for the bug report.
There were a few problems with this and I think I’ve fixed them all now. Please try again and let me know.
It works perfectly now. Thanks!
Hmm. It seems that Google IDs are site-specific so anyone who uses a Google ID to log on to this system is going to need to reassociate their OpenID with their account. Sorry about that.
(That wasn’t the bug, though.)
This works well now. thanks
Turns out that there is an answer to the GoogleID issue. I’ll put a fix in place this weekend. Unfortunately, it does mean that all Google identities stored on this site will have to be regenerated. Sorry.
Right, once again I think I’ve fixed it!
I’ve made it so that OpenIDs from providers such as Google are now associated with the parent domain mathforge.org which means that they will work with all the forums without needing to associate a new OpenID for each one. As this messes up an OpenID which was, say, associated with nforum.mathforge.org I’ve put an open on the main sign-in page that can switch to the old behaviour if needed.
Tim, could you try it out to see if it all makes sense: namely, that the instructions are clear and you are able still to logon and understand what to do to avoid hassles in future? Thanks.
Guinea pig no one to Andrew.. will do!
Guinea pig at CIRM, Luminy: Report:
The Google Id did not work (as you had said) so I checked the box, and tried again. This time it worked. I checked that the new Id code had been entered in my account details. It had. I deleted the old code.
Thanks.
Back in N. Wales: the forum is logging me out after a fairly short period of inactivity. This does not worry me nor annoy me really but I thought it worth reporting.
Hmm.
I’m still logged on on my iPad which uses GoogleID to logon, and on my desktop then I can actually check the cookies (though don’t have the GoogleID password so have to use a different OpenID) and the right cookies are present.
Do you have a very restrictive attitude to cookies in N. Wales?
I’m on my home account here so I do not think so.
I just found something and made my first post on the Math 2.0 site about it.
Two problems:
1) there is no prominent link in the nForum about Math 2.0 so I had to search up its URL which was difficult because I couldn’t remember that its name is “Math 2.0”.
2) I have a straight login at nForum. When I went to Math 2.0 , It seemed to know about me (e.g keeping track of read/unread) but said that I had to “associate” my login. So I clicked to do that and was informed that the moderators would send me an email approving my membership. However it seemed I had the right to post before that and I successfully posted immediately after.
Good comments.
Until now, there hasn’t been a huge overlap between the various forums that I run so I’ve seen them as being somewhat independent. Maybe I could add a footer to the page, or bottom of the panel, with a discrete link to other forums. I also have in mind an idea to design a “MathForge” main page with links to everything (including things like the nLab). I could backlink from the forums to that.
That’s a failure of the message. The default setting is that applications have to be reviewed, but on some forums that’s not set. I’ve changed the message to reflect reality.
Maybe I could add a footer to the page, or bottom of the panel, with a discrete link to other forums. I also have in mind an idea to design a “MathForge” main page
I would suggest: best to create that main page and then add a single link to that.
OpenID is now broken again for me; trying to sign in with it gives me “Could not figure out your OpenID”.
Nothing has changed this end. Have you changed your open id?
By the way, I don’t use the open-id, but recently the nForum login page also behaved in an unusual way for me. It kept forgetting who I was.
Does it still do that?
Forgetting is usually to do with cookies.
Hmm, this time it worked. Maybe it was a momentary aberration or something on this end. Sorry for the trouble.
The OpenId login does not seem to be working for me. Are others experiencing the same problem?
Someone else had problems with it a week or so ago. The return whatsit sent by his OpenID provider changed meaning that it no longer recognised his OpenID. Given that you can still log on, try reassociating your OpenID with your account and see if that fixes it.
I tried but I was unable to re register that OpenId to my account.
I go through the ‘click on provider (i.e. Google) and wait quite some time and get a page with just Manage OpenId. No other text. I do not get registered.
Strange. I get the same (when trying to add my Google id). Maybe Google has changed the way that it deals with OpenIDs. I’ll investigate.
I get the same if I try Google Profile. but as I said MO seems to be working as far as OpenId is concerned.
I tried on azimuth forum and it worked, so that suggests the glitch is nForum based. (?) In fact, that has put a google account entry in the database! I will log out and try with that. (I did and it worked… strange!)g
That is really bizarre. There shouldn’t be a difference between the forums.
But there is - I just successfully added my Google open id via azimuth.
No, it’s not that as I just deleted and added it back via the nForum.
Maybe connections from here to Google were bad for a bit - I’ve just been debugging the reCaptcha stuff because those were hitting a brick wall and fetching the data from google was taking a looooong time.
Did you have two Google OpenIds when you looked first. I did and could not tell which one was correct so deleted both. Could that be the cause of some of the confusion. If there were two ids then it would not know which to verify. I also noticed it was taking a loooooooong time.
I think there was a big go slow between the forum and google. I did a very simple test from the hosting machine and it took a considerable time to load a page from google. It appears to be faster now.
It can figure out the ids because Google will return one of them and that’s what it uses to check. The problem the program has to figure out is “Which user does this id belong to?” not “Which id is this user using?”.
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