Windows Live Authentication only working if "Allow New Users to Register?" is true?

If you have questions about using mojoPortal, you can post them here.

You may want to first review our site administration documentation to see if your question is answered there.

This thread is closed to new posts. You must sign in to post in the forums.
5/13/2009 10:47:42 PM
Gravatar
Total Posts 31
There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who know binary, and those who don't

Windows Live Authentication only working if "Allow New Users to Register?" is true?

When I disable the "Allow New Users to Register" for the site, and I at the same time enable Windows Live authentication, I have this strange behavior:

1. The user sees the login page on my site
2. They click the link for "Sign In" with your Windows Live ID
3. They see the MSN sign-in page, and type their password
4. They are redirected back to the page (the return URL is set correctly to .../WindowsLiveAuthHandler.aspx).
5. The system still says "Sign In" in the corner --- mojoPortal does not recognize the log-in!
6. When I click "Sign In", the link to Windows Live ID sign-in has changed to say "Sign Out" (even though mojoPortal is not signed in)

But, when I enable the "Allow New Users to Register" for the site, I instead have a different result at step 5:

5. The users are asked to enter a user name and e-mail
6. Registration succeeds, and they are now authenticated to mojoPortal correctly

Is it a requirement that I must allow new registrations to enable Windows Live ID authentication?
Would that imply, in order to be able to pre-authenticate users before using the site, that I need to create a new user group and then manually add newly joined users to this group through the administration console?
(Referring to this link: http://www.mojoportal.com/Forums/Thread.aspx?pageid=5&mid=34&ItemID=5&thread=2094&postid=8660)

I tried to create a new account with the same e-mail address as the Windows Live ID e-mail address but the system still did not recognize the user, no matter whether the "Allow New Users to Register" was enabled or not.
(Referring to this link: http://www.mojoportal.com/Forums/Thread.aspx?pageid=5&mid=34&ItemID=5&thread=2342&postid=9884)

Hope this can be solved.

5/14/2009 5:42:36 AM
Gravatar
Total Posts 18439

Re: Windows Live Authentication only working if "Allow New Users to Register?" is true?

Its kind of problematic to not allow new registration and still allow windows live authentication. When a user registers on the site with windows live id there is an actual unique id from widndows live service stored on the user data. So unless the user registers in the site using windows live id the id does not get stored right away.

If registration is allowed we make it easy, even if the user is not already registered, if he tries to sign in with windows live and authenitcaiton succeeeds we register him automatically and store the id.

Hope it helps,

Joe

5/17/2009 9:52:21 PM
Gravatar
Total Posts 31
There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who know binary, and those who don't

Re: Windows Live Authentication only working if "Allow New Users to Register?" is true?

Granted, but I think it should be stated near these options that the combination of these two selections will create strange results (it was not directly obvious to me, at least ).

 

5/19/2009 5:14:23 AM
Gravatar
Total Posts 18439

Re: Windows Live Authentication only working if "Allow New Users to Register?" is true?

Actually after reviewing it, if new registration is disabled users cannot register by windows live or any other means.

But there is no way to just let  them automatically register by signing in to the live account if registration is disabled.

The Windows Live sign on the login page is is enabled because you have Windows Live Auth enabled in the site but it only will work for existing users if you have registration disabled. There is nothing to be done about the existing behavior. If an unregistered user clicks the sign in to windows live they will get signed into windows live but they will not get signed into mojoportal. The sign in for windows live is in an iframe hosting a page from windows live, so that page correctly shows that the user is signed into windows live, but snce he did not have a site account he did not get sign in to the site. That is correct behavior.

So, yes Windows Live authentication is a service geared towards sites that do allow new user registration (or allow anyone with a live account to sign in), trying to squeeze other scenarios out of it ends up with awkward user experience.

Best,

Joe

9/26/2010 10:49:04 AM
Gravatar
Total Posts 2

Re: Windows Live Authentication only working if "Allow New Users to Register?" is true?

I have configured everything for using Live ID, however if existing user (User that registered prior to my enabling Live ID) tries to log on using Live ID, they get directed to the new user registration page.  If they enter username and email, they get error telling them that the user email address is already in use.

I think I'm missing something here.  Any idea.

9/27/2010 7:48:05 AM
Gravatar
Total Posts 18439

Re: Windows Live Authentication only working if "Allow New Users to Register?" is true?

Sorry but it does not currently associate a windows live account with an existing registered email account. Users who already registered have to use the main login system. I will add an item in my project tracker to look into making it possible to associate a windows live id with an existing account but my recollection was that there was a reason that this could not be done.

10/4/2010 1:53:04 PM
Gravatar
Total Posts 18439

Re: Windows Live Authentication only working if "Allow New Users to Register?" is true?

I looked into this today and now remember why we cannot associate a windows live id with an existing user based on email. When we use Windows Live Authentication, the authentication service does not provide us an email address for the user, if it did we could then trust that an existing user in the database with the same email address is the same user, and it would be ok to associate the live id identifier with the existing user account. 

since the service does not provide an email address but we do require one, we prompt the user to enter one. However if the email address entered matches an existing user we cannot assume that the user entering the email address really owns the email address. If we did that it would be possible to hijack an existing user account very easily. So for security reasons, if the user wants to use windows live id he should use it from the beginning and not register first directly with his email address. You could potentially also delete the original account and let the user register with windows live id if it is someone you know.

Best,

Joe

You must sign in to post in the forums. This thread is closed to new posts.