Will, It would be great to have 3rd party authentication providers integrated in the login view of Active Social. I really would love to see the Facebook authentication provider integrated. Anyone else?

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I was having a play around with this the other day using RPX - it's really awesome - check out the login page on my test site:

test.pokerdiy.com/home/login.aspx

and click on Partner Sites. You can log in with Twitter, OpenID, LiveID and a lot of others (you can choose up to 6 providers). Excuse the layout (the core login module is non-tempatable!)

The problem is it won't work without some changes in the AS login module ;(

Hi Rodney,

This is pretty cool stuff!! I'd really love to see this get integrated with the Active Social. I bought the Facebook login module based on the web demonstration that AM has provided a while ago where this module has been noted as a module that is used along with Active Social.


I guess this is the exactly the reason why I can't use it at this time and I hope that this is getting integrated with Active Social on a short notice (1.7 preferably ).

Agree wholeheartedly. I would love to see integration with third party authentication. The core DNN does not handle (for example) Twitter very well at all, and the implementation kinda precludes logging in via other methods such as normal login, LiveID, etc. In addition, addition of each provider can substantial slow DNN performance.

Active Social has an opportunity to provide a much more consistent and uniform approach which would support users use of the login method of choice (which can change). It could abstract it from DNN altogether.

One additional note: since basic authentication is to be retired for Twitter (was delayed), this could be an opportunity to implement oAuth and full integrate Twitter to user profiles.

It would also be great for future API usages.

+1

+1

facebook login integration would be superb!

I can has bump?

Also, +11 million :P

Hello,

Is this release made by AS ?

Hi Komi Sika,

If you're referring to the original question I posted about the Facebook Integration provider I can say no. This is 3rd party module which can be purchased on Snowcovered.

@Will, what is your position on this one? Do you think that we can expect this somewhere in the future?

Technically now that oAuth is so well integrated, it could be feasible for Twitter integration ...

Would love it.

I polled my users last month about a FB provider and got nothing but positive responses. So many of our users are already on FB this would make the registration/login process seamless.

In view of the relatively big hacks of well-known sites of late, an opportunity could be there for Active Modules to capitalise by making it feasible to disable basic auth altogether for users ...

When we evaluate features for any of products, we try to find a balance between DotNetNuke functionality, third-party offerings and overall value. This is one of those areas where I find it difficult to expand into Active Social when there are already other solutions available. However, I do think it is our job to make sure we provide solutions that cater to community needs and usability. The fact that we haven't implemented this request yet doesn't mean we don't care, it means that we don't have the ideal solution yet .

Now, this isn't just about authentication. This is about authentication and registration. In most cases, a typical DNN site provides separate links for Login and Register. This immediately creates a usability question for new users. This usability problem also will create user account issues further down the road. Let's walkthrough the process as a new user.
1) I visit your site and I want to join.
2) I click register and sign-up.
3) When I return to the site I click Login.
4) I see I can enter my username and password or use Facebook.
5) I choose Facebook.
6) Since I really don't know how the site works, I just created a new account using my Facebook information that isn't associated with the account I created previously.

See the problem? Now, there are ways to associate that old account with the Facebook account but that really isn't user friendly either.

How could we make it better?
1) I visit your site and I want to join.
2) I click register and see the sign-up along with a button that says I can sign-in with facebook.
3) I click the facebook button and authenticate.
4) I'm now presented with the site's edit profile page which is pre-populated with my facebook data.
5) I can change or enter data that is necessary to complete the registration process.
6) When I return to the site I click Login.
7) I choose the facebook login button and I'm ready to go.

Now, while that might sound pretty easy, there is a lot that needs to be considered behind the scenes. To be perfectly honest, while this is definitely a benefit to community sites, it really needs to be addressed at the DotNetNuke Core level. In my opinion, if third-party modules need to "hack" the DNN registration process to be more user friendly then DotNetNuke needs to make some changes. This is an area of DNN that hasn't really made any progress since DNN 3. Instead of adding this functionality to Active Social, I think I will write up a recommendation and code package for core submission.

Hi Will,

Despite of the fact that I would love to see this happen rather yesterday than tomorrow I do understand the concerns you have expressed. I agree with you that the best way to integrate this would be through the official DNN channel and as far as I can see I think it will be very helpful when someone like you will present such a case to the appropriate DNN team. Especially when you have a lively thread like this to back you up.

I hope that you will be able to make a proposal for the DNN team (and that it will be picked up rather soon). When this would be incorporated in the core I am sure that it would easy things for you to advance in this area.

Thanks for your thoughts and comments on this one.

Understood. The existing Twitter, Live, OpenID auth isn't up to the job, and of course doesn't work with AS.

I just felt that there might be an opportunity for AS users to abstract this so that it was independent of DNN's logins - eg. a user is still created but basic auth is unavailable unless we enable them to be prompted for a username/password. Multiple logins possible, eg. Facebook, Twitter etc.

All just thinking out loud of course, and the DNN approach you propose is much nicer for the broader community. Agree that it desperately needs looking at.