Claiming your identifier is the way you show that you have control over that identifier. This involves editing the page with the identifier URL to embed information about your SimpleID installation. This then allows web sites to find out where to find SimpleID when you attempt to log into them using OpenID authentication.

There are various ways in which you can claim your identifier.

Use <link> tags

The easiest way to claim your identifier is to use <link> tags.

To do this, edit the web page returned by the identifier URL. Copy and paste the following section between the <head> and </head> tags:

<link rel="openid.server" href="http://www.example.com/simpleid/" />
<link rel="openid2.provider" href="http://www.example.com/simpleid/" />

Replace the URL http://www.example.com/simpleid/ with one which points to where you have moved the www directory of the SimpleID installation.

The URL specified by these link tags must contain a trailing slash, unlike the SIMPLEID_BASE_URL configuration option in your config.inc. Otherwise, your installation may not work for certain web sites.

Use the YADIS Protocol

You can also use the YADIS protocol to claim your identifier. In short, the YADIS protocol requires you to create an XML file called an XRD document, then modifying the web page returned by the identifier URL to point to that document.

SimpleID automatically generates a XRD document for you, which should be suitable in most cases. Go to http://www.example.com/simpleid/index.php?q=xrds/username, where http://www.example.com/simpleid/ is where you have moved the www directory of the SimpleID installation, and username is your user name. SimpleID should return a file, which you can then download and open with a text editor.

The YADIS protocol specifies three ways in which you can modify the web page returned by the identifier URL to point to the XRD document.

  1. If the web page returned by the identifier URL is generated programmatically, you can detect whether the Accept HTTP header contains the MIME type application/xrds+xml, and if so, return the document directly or redirect the response to the document.

  2. If the web page returned by the identifier URL is generated programmatically, you can also return the following HTTP header in your response:

    X-XRDS-Location: http://www.example.com/simpleid/index.php?q=xrds/username

  3. Otherwise, you can include the following section between the <head> and </head> tags.

<meta http-equiv="X-XRDS-Location" content="http://www.example.com/simpleid/index.php?q=xrds/username" />