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Distributed authentication

One of the more tedious moments in visiting a new website is filling out the registration form. Here at Alphasite, 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 Drupal, the software which powers Alphasite, fully supports it.

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 Alphasite. 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 Alphasite. 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 Alphasite account for Joe and log him into it. Joe may keep on logging into Alphasite in the same manner, and he will always be logged into the same account.

Drupal

Drupal is the name of the software that powers Alphasite. There are Drupal websites all over the world, and many of them share their registration databases so that users may freely log in to any Drupal site using a single Drupal ID.

So please feel free to log in to your account here at Alphasite with a username from another Drupal site. The format of a Drupal ID is similar to an e-mail address: username@server. An example of a valid Drupal ID is mwlily@drupal.org.