Extension:MicroID

This is the README file for the MicroID extension for MediaWiki software. The extension is only useful if you've got a MediaWiki installation; it can only be installed by the administrator of the site.

The extension lets users verify their account on the wiki with an external service that understands MicroID (http://www.microid.org/). A microid is a special hash of the user's email address and user page URL that asserts that the user has that particular email address. One service that understands MicroID is ClaimID (http://claimid.com/).

This is an early version of the extension and it's almost sure to have bugs. (Don't despair, though: this is running in production on Wikitravel, a fairly big MW installation.) See the BUGS section below for info on how to report problems.

License
Copyright 2006 Internet Brands (http://www.internetbrands.com/)

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307  USA

Author
Evan Prodromou 

Pre-requisites
This software was tested with MediaWiki 1.8.2 (which is what Wikitravel was running at the time.) It may or may not work with earlier or later versions, but please test it.

It requires PHP 4.3.0 or greater to get the sha1 function to generate the special microid hash.

Installation
To install, copy all the files in the archive you downloaded to the MicroID subdirectory of the extensions subdirectory of your MediaWiki installation.

In your MediaWiki LocalSettings.php, add the following line some place towards the bottom of the file:

require_once("$IP/extensions/MicroID/MicroID.php");

Theoretically it should work out of the box. On your wiki, if you go to to the Special:Version page, you should see the MicroID extension listed.

Usage
The usage of the MicroID extension is mostly passive. User pages for registered users who have an email address stored in the system, and who've confirmed the address (or confirmation is disabled), and who've enabled MicroID (see below), will have a special tag with an appropriate MicroID. The page can be provided to identification services as verification of ownership of the account.

Privacy
MicroID lets an external entity that knows an email address and the URL of a user page verify that the owner of that user page is also the owner of that email address. The external entity can't figure out the email address if they don't know it already; they can just confirm a tip (or guess).

Because there may be cases where this is unacceptable to the user, each user can optionally enable or disable whether MicroIDs are created. A checkbox on the "Misc" tab of Special:Preferences lets the user decide whether or not to have a microid on their user page.

Configuration
The administrator can decide whether MicroIDs are generated by default, or if the default is that the IDs will not be generated. In the LocalSettings.php file, you can turn on the default by adding this line:

$wgDefaultUserOptions['microid'] = 1;

You can turn off the default by adding this line:

$wgDefaultUserOptions['microid'] = 0;

Translation
The text of the MicroID checkbox on the user preferences page can be changed or translated like other MediaWiki interface string. The key is 'tog-microid', and on most systems editing MediaWiki:Tog-microid as an administrator will be enough to modify the prompt.

Bugs and enhancements
If MicroIDs are not verifying correctly, check that the $wgServer configuration variable is set and is correct.

Bugs or feature requests can be sent to the author at evan@wikitravel.org.