90 day challenge, day 34
I mentioned this on Twitter the other day, but in case you missed it, I posted a short explanation of my project. Here it is:
It’s been fun hearing a few reactions. It’s all just words though… the real test will be the implementation, which is slowly but surely coming along.
The part of building websites that I dread, account management, sign in, log in, authentication, etc, has gotten a lot more interesting in the last few years. Mostly because of all of the options for logging in via other site credentials. OAuth, Open ID, Facebook Connect, etc. I’ve done Open ID and Facebook Connect before, but this time around I thought that OAuth might be the best suited. Because, even though being able to log in without creating a new account is pretty interesting, I’m more interested in getting data from the other sites than in just simplifying log in. OAuth is good because it often gives you access to the APIs of these sites in addition to being a method of authentication.
It took me a while to wrap my head around the basics, but once I got it working for Twitter, Tumblr was no problem. And even though Facebook has its own implementation of “OAuth 2.0″, that proved to be the most elegant implementation I’ve yet seen, and was actually a lot easier than the others. I’m so glad I gave up on the Javascript API that Facebook offers. It’s meant to make things simpler, but I think it’s actually a lot more fragile and complicated than the OAuth authentication options.
I also implemented Foursquare pretty easily. And Google Contacts… but then I disabled it because I think that’s not quite the same as the rest.
Even though Flickr doesn’t use OAuth, they use something that works pretty similar, so even though I’ve had trouble getting their authentication system to work in the past, this time it was really no problem. I think the whole series of steps of requesting a token, getting another token, and then verifying that token makes sense to me now. Only took me about 5 years to click.
I am not just adding these sites for kicks. There are actually a few things that I think can be improved in the whole “connect your sites up” world, which I’m excited to implement. One thing, for example, that I don’t see many sites doing is allowing you to “auto-follow” people that you have added over time. Or, at least, letting you know that another of your friends has joined the site since you imported Twitter or Facebook or whatever.
I’ve got another big part of the site to figure out today. The game wall. After you fill in your day’s work, the primary next step is to see stats and charts about your progress in the game and in the month, and the secondary step is to see how you are doing compared to others. The secondary step is what I’m going to start working on today.
July 22nd, 2010 at 7:38 pm
Buster, I’m excited about this.
Not only am I excited about the end result and seeing how the game/website plays out, but also that you’re being completely open about your process of creating the experience.
Will you write more detailed insights into the technical aspects (Why are you programming it the way you are? What are the most challenging parts of building a community site like this?) or are you trying to stick with articles detailing your exploration of going from idea to product?
July 22nd, 2010 at 7:41 pm
Looks really, really interesting and good. I think I can see how you’re building on aspects of 750words.com.
July 23rd, 2010 at 3:05 am
Tanner – I can definitely write more about the technical aspects… that’s what I’ve been trying to do but I inevitably end up writing about the technical aspects that for some reason annoy me or interest me, rather than a more broad explanation. If there’s something in particular you want to hear about, let me know. Basically, I’ve always tried to build on the work of others. I’m not the kind of person that wants to re-invent the wheel as I build the cart. I want the best wheel that someone’s made, and the best seats that someone else made, etc.
In the end, if feels like all that’s left for me to do is to put up a projection of what I want to build, and glue the pieces together. Of course, the projection is the challenging part. And the part I love the most.