Question

Scenario: I first logged in to the SE site "A Curious Home" and associated my Google ID via the stackexchange.com-based URL of http://acurioushome.stackexchange.com.

However, when I try to login with my Google account via http://www.acurioushome.com, which I expect is to be the real/final URL, the site doesn't actually recognize me as the user I created originally via the SE-based URL. Instead, it shows "unknown (google)" at the top of the page.

Considering that, should StackExchange site URLs be published with both types of URLs as this site has (probably not?), or just one, or the other?

It seems the way Google's Open ID implementation works that it's best to launch and keep just one URL.

Answer 1

Did you find a good workaround? I created an administrator account at mysite.stackexchange.com and I'd rather have it work on mysite.com than create a new user.

I tried making a new user and merging the two users, but that didn't work.

Edit: here's my workaround. I made a secondary openid (with myopenid; I was using google before) on mysite.stackexchange.com, logged out, went to mysite.com and logged in with the myopenid account.

Answer 2

Although there is a workaround (as mentioned by Anton), I think this is going to be a huge problem for average users. I think OpenID is already confusing enough for most users and it makes matters worse when they log in and are immediately directed to a site that says they are not logged in. Or if they come to a site one day, build up some reputation or earns some badges, and then comes back the next day and ends up on a different domain and is confused as to why all of their progress is gone.

Does this problem have something to do with the fact that this is in Beta? Ideally, if a Stack Exchange site has a registered domain of its own, users should never have to see xxx.stackexchange.com.

Answer 3

These are pretty much what you could see in the location bar when you log in right now through SE and OpenID:

example.com
www.example.com
example.stackexchange.com

Thing is that they're all considered different domains and the cookies/sessions won't really stick across without a little hand wringing in the location bar itself.

This is tricky using an OpenID like Google who do a per-domain hash. According the bounce-around, that's three hashses and not matching up.

That could be a problem with users who don't realise why that is, or why they're at a different but similarly looking domain.