title: Is OpenID too complicated?
body: <p>I'm beginning to seriously doubt the OpenID community despite that fact that it works.</p>
  
  <p>I'm in the process of currently evaluating OpenID as an authentication service for 'this' site and while the promises are great, I just can't get it to work. And I'm really lost.</p>
  
  <p>I ask of the SO community to help me out here. Give me answers and show me examples so I can leverage this in the way it was meant to be.</p>
  
  <p>My scenario is very typical. I want to authenticate users through a specific Google Apps domain. If you have access to this Google Apps domain, then you have access to my web application.</p>
  
  <p>Where I get lost, is all the prerequisites and dependencies involved.</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>What is XRD?  </li>
  <li>What is Yadis?</li>
  <li>Why do I need XRD and Yadis?</li>
  <li>What do I need to do to deploy OpenID authentication on my website?</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Also, this is really important to me.</p>
  
  <p>When I login to SO, I use my Google Account. When I click the login button I'm presented with this confirmation page. Where I'm granting SO the right to use my Google Account credentials.</p>
  
  <p>Somehow, Google knows that it's "Stackoverflow.com" that's asking me if it's okay to login. And I wish to know what manner of control I have over this little text. I intend to deploy OpenID on several different domains but I would prefer if they would all work without having to be individually configured with special parameters, such as secret API keys and what not. However, I don't know for sure if this is a prerequisite of OpenID, that or the Federated Login API that Google provides.</p>