Web sign-in

Use the (Web sign-in) button on a site to sign-in with your personal web address.

When you click a (Web sign-in) button, the site will ask you for your web address, e.g.:

Web address: [........................] (Sign-in)

Web address:
[........................]
(Sign-in)

Enter your personal web address and press return / click (Sign-in).

set up

Your personal site must be set up for web sign-in.

1. Link from your personal site to your other profiles. Add rel="me" to those hyperlinks. E.g.:

   <a rel="me" href="http://twitter.com/your_twitter_alias">...

2. Edit your other profiles, e.g. your Twitter profile settings, and set the "Web" ("homepage", "Website/Blog") field to your personal site. E.g.

   Web http://yoursite.example.com/

3. When you use your personal site with web sign-in the first time*, your browser will redirect you to to your online profile, e.g. Twitter, and ask you to:
   • Sign-in with your account on that profile (e.g. sign in to Twitter) if you're not already signed-in.
   • Authorize the site to use your account, e.g. your Twitter account:

     Authorize Site to use your account?

     This application will be able to:

     • Read Tweets from your timeline.
     • See who you follow.

     ( Sign In )

     Click the ( Sign In ) button and you should be all set.

* Subsequent sign-ins to the same web sign-in form should be pre-filled with your domain name (e.g. via a cookie from the site) so all you have to do is click (Sign-in). In addition, if the site is properly using HTML5 <input type=url>, browsers will help you auto-complete your personal web address for you across all sites that do web sign-in.

developers

user interface

For the Web sign-in UI, see the text mockups at the top of this page as a design starting point.

Important details:

• The web address input "[........................]" MUST accept
  • a "plain domain" e.g. tantek.com and canonicalize that to http://tantek.com/
  • an http(s) domain without a path e.g. http://sixtwothree.org or https://sixtwothree.org and canonicalize http://sixtwothree.org/ or https://sixtwothree.org/ respectively

protocol

See the RelMeAuth page for documentation on how to support Web sign-in protocol on your site.

example implementations

• RelMeAuth prototype demonstrates Web sign-in for both read-only/read-write permissions, and provides a simple interface for Tweeting when read-write permissions are provided.
• IndieAuth not only uses Web sign-in but also provides a web sign-in authentication API!
  • IndieWebCamp: Try out IndieAuth by signing-in to IndieWebCamp.com.

why

See Why web sign-in on the IndieWebCamp site.