Social Couch

Remembering numerous passwords is really hard and having a same password across various sites is risky. It is really tedious to create accounts by filling the registration forms in various sites and the perfect solution to this comes in the form of social sign on. The single sign on solution Open ID created a lot of buzz some time back but many people are still not aware of the concept. The first hurdle is that many don’t know that they can use their existing account login credentials from popular sites (Flickr,Google,Yahoo) on Open ID enabled sites.

If you own a membership based website or a portal it is definitely worthy to enable social sign on. To clear the mist surrounding the concept of social sign on, it is nothing but providing an opportunity for the user to sign in to a website with their existing accounts on Twitter,Facebook, WordPress etc without creating an account. Enabling single sign on will improve the user registrations on the site and gathering user data also becomes really simple.

How can you enable single/social sign on?

RPX Now is a really nice service which will act as a bridge between your website and the identity providers. It provides a login interface which shows the various third party providers enabled for the website. The user can just click on any one of those and it will automatically create an account and map the corresponding login credentials.

When the user comes back to visit the site, RPX Now will remember the third party service which they used the previous time. Then, the user can sign in with a single click verification process.

Plug-ins for WordPress & Drupal

Integrating RPXNow into your website is pretty simple. All you have to do is get the API key from the website and follow the simple installation instructions. The sign in interface can be embedded in the web page or it can be displayed as a pop-up.

If you are running a site built on WordPress or Drupal your task has become much more simpler. There is a wordpress plugin and a drupal module which will help to enable social sign on in your website with ease.

The admin interface of RPX Now provides ways for customizations, account mapping, configuring the third part providers and many more features. RPX Now also provides a plus account and a pro account which gives additional features like social publishing, customizable login interface etc

Enabling social sign on will increase the interaction in the website apart from paving the way for more user registrations. Enabling it in the comments section is also a wise option as this will encourage more users to post comments. The Intense Debate commenting system has an integrated Twitter Sign in and a facebook connect.

ClickPass is a similar service which lets you sign in to websites without revealing your password. These services will definitely enhance the security and also makes the sign in process lot more convenient.