title: Shibboleth login page elegance
body: <p>We have installed a Shibboleth system (OpenAthens LA 2.2) and are seeking a way to integrate the login process with another system, our Virtual Learning Environment.</p>
  
  <p>We have registered our VLE as a service provider and the login process is working, so that users authenticate to the VLE via Shibboleth, thus creating a session which enables the users to access other Shibboleth protected resources without the need to enter their credentials again. This is also working for us.</p>
  
  <p>However, we have 2 requirements:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>We wish to publicise our VLE with a neat and memorable URL such as "http://learn.example.ac.uk". </li>
  <li>We need to send users to the native login page for the VLE in the event of a failure of the Shibboleth system (this is monitored by networking equipment)</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>The URL to trigger the Shibboleth login (to the VLE specifically, by means of a target parameter) is very long, e.g.</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://vle.example.ac.uk/Shibboleth.sso/Login?entityID=https://shib.example.ac.uk/oala/metadata&amp;target=https%3A%2F%2Fvle.example.ac.uk%2FshibbolethSSO%2Flogin" rel="nofollow">https://vle.example.ac.uk/Shibboleth.sso/Login?entityID=https://shib.example.ac.uk/oala/metadata&amp;target=https%3A%2F%2Fvle.example.ac.uk%2FshibbolethSSO%2Flogin</a></p>
  
  <p>We are wondering if we should configure our load balancer to send users to this long URL when they ask for <a href="http://learn.example.ac.uk" rel="nofollow">http://learn.example.ac.uk</a> (and the Shibboleth system is available). If Shibboleth is not available we can divert them to a different URL.</p>
  
  <p>This would be preferable than having to create a landing page which simply says "Click here to login in to the VLE" with the above long link being the URL.</p>
  
  <p>Is what we are hoping for acheivable? I would be very interested to hear how other Shibboleth users steer users to their login page. We are concerned that our users may bookmark a page which means when they return to it, they are diverted to a generic Shibboleth login page that does not return them to the VLE, and simply creates a "session" which would cause confusion.</p>