MySpaceID Plugin for WordPress not for Everyone

On Friday MySpace announced a MySpaceID WordPress plugin. The plugin allows users to comment on self-hosted WordPress blogs with their MySpace credentials and also share the blog on their MySpace page. Of course, this sounds a lot like Facebook Connect. However it’s nice to see a similar product based on open standards like OpenID and OAuth.

Difficult to Implement

Usually, WordPress plugins are quite easy to implement: uploading the plugin to the blog, activating it, and sometimes doing some settings. Ready. The MySpaceID plugin is more difficult, though.

First, blog authors need a MySpace account which I have. So that’s no problem. Second, authors have to set up a MySpaceID application. They will be provided an OAuth Consumer Key and an OAuth Consumer Secret which have to be added in the settings of the plugin.

If you thought that’s all, you’re wrong. Authors also need to install the OpenID and XRDS-Simple plugins for WordPress which are installed on my blog anyway (read all about setting up the MySpaceID plugin on the MySpaceID developer wiki).

I had all this set up, however, it didn’t work for me. I tried to comment with my MySpace credentials on my blog. The first steps worked as expected: clicking the MySpaceID button, a popup was shown (see below) and I was forwarded back to my blog. Though instead of being logged in, I saw my 404 page. I am not sure what went wrong, probably something wrong with the callback URL.

Also the plugin somehow interferred with the OpenID plugin, although that one is required. In the comment box the OpenID plugin shows some text indicating that the URL field is OpenID enabled. With the MySpaceID plugin installed that text was not shown anymore. Not a good idea.

So the MySpaceID plugin is certainly a good idea but it is not designed for ordinary blog authors like me, I guess. But maybe I just didn’t get it. Hm.