Distributed authentication

One of the more tedious moments in visiting a new website is filling out the registration form. Here at FamilyTimes.com - Online Journals, you do not have to fill out a registration form if you are already a member of Drupal. This capability is called Distributed Authentication, and is unique to Drupal, the software which powers FamilyTimes.com - Online Journals.

Distributed authentication enables a new user to input a username and password into the login box, and immediately be recognized, even if that user never registered at FamilyTimes.com - Online Journals. This works because Drupal knows how to communicate with external registration databases. For example, lets say that new user 'Joe' is already a registered member of Delphi Forums. Drupal informs Joe on registration and login screens that he may login with his Delphi ID instead of registering with FamilyTimes.com - Online Journals. Joe likes that idea, and logs in with a username of joe@remote.delphiforums.com and his usual Delphi password. Drupal then contacts the remote.delphiforums.com server behind the scenes (usually using XML-RPC, HTTP POST, or SOAP) and asks: "Is the password for user Joe correct?". If Delphi replies yes, then we create a new FamilyTimes.com - Online Journals account for Joe and log him into it. Joe may keep on logging into FamilyTimes.com - Online Journals in the same manner, and he will always be logged into the same account.

Drupal

Drupal is the name of the software which powers FamilyTimes.com - Online Journals. There are Drupal web sites all over the world, and many of them share their registration databases so that users may freely login to any Drupal site using a single Drupal ID.

So please feel free to login to your account here at FamilyTimes.com - Online Journals with a username from another Drupal site. The format of a Drupal ID is similar to an email address: username@server. An example of valid Drupal ID is mwlily@www.drupal.org.