OpenID - Mustfindit Open to Anyone with an OpenID

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One thing I really hate about sites is that you typically have to register and go through all the steps of activating a new account.  When I look for something to buy, I usually prefer sites which have Google Checkout enabled so I don't have to re-enter all my information again.

Of course, you have to trust the service provider -- in this case Google -- with your private information. Never the less, there an inherent trust in existing providers that you already have given your information to.

But what about Mustfindit?  Our early prototype had a login system which allowed account creation, activation, password recovery and profile management.  With some extent, an OpenID system would have been a better choice where Mustfindit would have been an Id provider.

So how does this play into our site's feature set.  Well, we prefer to use an OpenID provider and allow them to manage authorization.  This allows anyone access to our site while we only have to manage a subset of the users's profile which is pertinent to our system.

Much simpler solution don't you think?

If you recall that we were trying to decide which framework to use, web2py has a very nice authorization class built into the framework.  You enable an the authorization system and that's that.  But you can extend the class so you can integrate with RPX.   This should take the hassle out of signing up new contributors.

Which Framework to Use?

Welcome to the Official Mustfindit Blog!

Developing software is sometimes trial and error.  Sometimes you just need to experiment to optimize and get the best performance for the application.  One of the biggest improvements this week was to switch over to the Web Server Gateway Interface (WSGI).

We were using mod_python with great success but the response time and memory foot print were better with WSGI so we switched to the later.  We lost our 404 page configuration, but that will be worked out later as we do additional testing.

We're also looking into using web2py as the application framework instead of using Django.  Both have really powerful features so it's difficult to choose.  Our python development is mostly using the Django framework, but change is good especially if we can pull in the development schedule.

Change and Focus is Good

Welcome to the Official Mustfindit Blog!

Progress is slow, but we are slowly making progress.Never mind how stupid that statement is, but sometimes software development is a slow but steady process with iterations building upon the previous.

Our original prototype of Mustfindit, built upon a PHP Framework offered a great solution, but it was not scalable.  Just the processing of the dynamic content brought our servers to their knees.

As we came to the understanding that Mustfindit would not work, Google announced Google App Engine which allowed developers to run software services on Google's servers. The GAE also included user authentication which both virtually reduced our operations and support costs to nil.

The main drawback with GAE is that is Python based where our prototype was written in PHP...

Don't get me wrong, Python is a powerful language, but when our developers background are in PHP and C/C++, you get a strange look from them when they are asked to switch.  No complaints though.


So where are we taking Mustfindit?

The original scope of Mustfindit was an eBay alternative. This is a rather overwhelming development task given that there are very well established competitors include the big E.  While it is not an impossible task to build an eBay alternative, it was not fit for our Corporation.

Today, the scope of Mustfindit is has changed to a management system which facilitates the creation and publication of unique content by Users. Users will have the opportunity to share a percentage of the revenue generated on the Google AdSense Network.

-Howard

President/CEO
ClknGo Software Corporation