SLOpenID

Yes I’m aware I haven’t done much on SLOpenID in a while.

However, after some conversation with a few knowledgeable people, I’ve decided to migrate from the standalone PHP-based OpenID Server to a WordPress:MU-based install.

Reasons behind migration to WP:MU

• I’m more comfortable with the WordPress codebase
• WordPress:MU is more extensible than the standalone server
• Integration with bbPress (something I’ve done on SLBirthday.Info

Advantages of using WP:MU

Customisable Profiles

Lets face it. the my.slopenid.net profiles suck. Using, WP:MU, your profile page will be a WordPress blog. Anyone familiar with WordPress Sidebar Widgets will know what I’m talking about (no Pyrii, I won’t be using K2).

If you’re not familiar with WordPress at all, think more iGoogle than MySpace.

If there’s enough demand for it, I will tweak existing wordpress themes to fit with this plan.

Blogging

Giving each SLOpenID user a blog isn’t the reason why we’re moving to WP:MU. It is however a pleasant bonus, fits in with Gwyn’s original vision for SLOpenID.

bbPress

WordPress, and by extension WP:MU integrates extremely well with bbPress- and with good reason. I don’t plan to roll the forums out immediately as I’ll need to do a fair bit of plugin development, but I do have some rather big plans for SLOpenID’s forums.

SLOpenID’s new direction

Originally, Gwyn wanted SLOpenID to be a full-service project. Being a one-stop shop for the SL Community would be an impossible task for just a single developer (well, being a one-stop shop that didn’t suck anyway). We were both aware of OpenID at the time- I suggested we try doing something with that. So SLOpenID became a means of authenticating your identity as a Resident of Second Life on the internet.

In theory, it worked; You can only create an account from inside Second Life, and you can sign into any service that supports OpenID. In practice however, SLOpenID never really took off.

So admittedly, just using SLOpenID for OpenID sign-ins is a bad idea. With recent projects I’ve undertaken in the past several months, my mind has been mulling over what to do with SLOpenID.

SL Identity Management.

Yes I’m aware there are MySpace-esque sites out there that cater to SL Residents. Yes I’m aware people might think I’m going to reinvent the wheel. Yes I’m aware that expanding the scope of the SLOpenID project could kill the idea totally. However, not trying and leaving SLOpenID to stagnate till the domain expires or just shutting down the site entirely without trying would be giving up, my ideas will never come to fruition and I’ll have wasted the chance to see how far I can push my coding skills.

So with some form of a determined mind-set, I plan to turn SLOpenID into a place where you can manage your SL Identity.

What you can expect

Expect integration with 3rd party services.

If there’s a service that Residents are using and has an API, expect to see a widget you can drag to your profile.

If there’s a service that Residents use that doesn’t have an API, make enough noise about it and I’ll see if something can be done about it.

I’ve already got code lying around to connect your SLOpenID account with your Yahoo/Flickr account, and I’ve been playing with Google’s API (via the Zend Framework) recently so I’ll be looking into what I can do with that.

In-world tools

Avatars come in all shapes and sizes. These are the representation of your Second Life identity. One of my pet peeves in Second Life is that- other than obtrusive use of llDialog()- there is no automagical way of adjusting sit targets to suit your avatar. By taking inspiration from OpenID Attribute exchange, I’ll be creating a webservice that’ll allow in-world objects to react appropriately to a different avatars.

The basic gist is that you drop a script into a prim in your avie’s outfit folder that contains the specs for your avatar. Species, age, height, foot-size, weight, you name it (and if it makes sense) and it’ll be supported. From experience, I know that calculating the height of a tiny involves a lot of complicated maths, and you may end up with the wrong value- due to the way LSL handles avatar height, bounding boxes with the varying combinations of invisi-prims and animations. A quick llHTTPRequest() call and you’ll get the details you want and be able to alter the operation of an object to suit the user.

Linden Lab data integration

Linden Lab haven’t released their my.secondlife.com API yet, but with the joy of cURL you can expect to see widgets to display data from the Second Life Forums, the Second Life Wiki and the public bug tracker.

And yes, when they eventually release the API I will be making use of whatever I can get my hands on. I would much prefer to use a web-based API than to try and install libSL on Dreamhost, although I have been talking to Baba about a way for me to use reliably use libSL while avoiding the pains of getting it up and running myself.

In case you aren’t aware, Linden Lab makes in-world events available on the web via eventful. While I’m grateful to have such geeky access to in-world event data, I personally find LL’s use of the eventful API to be rather lacklustre. Expect to see automagical listing of events you’ve posted in-world displayed via a widget.