Allow Facebook, Google, etc. (OpenID) login to my WordPress.com blog

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  joshbeall · Member · Jan 4, 2014 at 1:40 am

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  Hello,

  Is it possible, if using a wordpress.com hosted blog, to allow users to login via Facebook, Google, Yahoo, or other OpenID providers?

  We have a private blog, and we prefer that users not have to signup for yet-another account at WordPress.com, and instead could simply login using an account they already have. Between Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, I think that nearly all of our readers would already have an account.

  I see that there are a number of plugins that offer this functionality if you’re self-hosting WordPress… but what if you’re hosting at WordPress.com?

  Thanks!

  -Josh

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  raincoaster · Member · Jan 4, 2014 at 1:42 am

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  No, it is not possible. Because of the privacy setting, WordPress.com needs to verify that those people are who they say they are, and they can only really do that if they have a WordPress.com account.

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  raincoaster · Member · Jan 4, 2014 at 1:42 am

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  Also, OpenID hates WordPress.com. HATES it. Ask anyone who’s tried to use it to comment on Blogger.com blogs.

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  joshbeall · Member · Jan 4, 2014 at 1:46 am

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  @raincoaster, are you saying that this wouldn’t work even if I was self-hosting WordPress and using one of the various OpenID login plugins?

  Also, in case this was unclear: I am not talking about (or interested in) using my WordPress.com credentials to login, via OpenID, on other sites. I’m interested in letting my readers login to WordPress.com (specifically, my blog at WordPress.com) to authenticate themselves, instead of requiring them to signup for an additional account that’s specific to WordPress.com.

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  raincoaster · Member · Jan 4, 2014 at 3:21 am

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  I know what you’re interested in. It’s not possible here. It’s possible on a WordPress.org install. For security reasons, WP.com doesn’t outsource its account verification to sites like Facebook, Google, etc. It keeps that in-house. For a private blog, they will have to have a WordPress.com account.

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  joshbeall · Member · Jan 4, 2014 at 3:50 am

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  I tried this on a self hosted WordPress installation, and the combination of plugins I used didn’t work… Here’s as far as I got:

  http://wordpress.org/support/topic/private-wordpress-blog-requires-user-registration-approval-and-openid-login

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  raincoaster · Member · Jan 4, 2014 at 4:08 am

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  We do not provide assistance for WordPress.org questions here. They have, as you’ve discovered, their own support forums, and there are tens of thousands of WordPress.org consultants.