authentication management module
I am planning to create an authentication management for drupal.
From my own experience, drupal does not provide a centralized authentication so that it is not very convenient to create external login,and some developers from the drupal forum requested for help of external login.
working with moodle i found moodle provides a user-friendly authentication interface for developers or administrators to configure.
refer to http://www.geocities.com/juanchengrong/moodle.JPG
i would like to create a similar module for drupal so that drupal users will not have to amend the source code for different authentications
The interface will be rather similar and under each authentication there is settings for the authentication
refer to http://www.geocities.com/juanchengrong/database.JPG
Hm
We already have openID integration, as well as ldap integration; why do you feel that anything further is needed?
Yup, there are some
Yup, there are some authentication related module(i believe someone is working at the integration google apps also?) however, it does not provide a centralized management interface for users to configure. so I felt it is not very convenient as developers have to search for each module corresponding to the authentication method. Also for people who are not so good at drupal, they can quickly integrate the system using the system rather search around for the support. From my own experience, last time i was asked to integrate moodle with google apps account, it can be set up very fast using the POP3 authenticaion under its authentication module.
Also, you can not set the order of the authentication to take place.
hmmm, I did not find any module which support external database login(are there any?). I found this is used quite often.
I think such a module will make drupal easier to deploy. I felt although drupal has already had some of the support drupal does not organize them in a fool-proof way. Thus it makes the drupal learning curve steep. That's why i feel i need to implement such a module. It certainly helps in user-freindliness
Flattening the drupal
Flattening the drupal learning curve is a noble cause, But I'm afraid that your topic is not sexy enough to get you the support to be one of the elected projects. Are you married to the authentication subject or do you have any other ideas?
IMAP authentication
It would be nice to have support for other authentication methods. Such as authenticating against an IMAP or POP3 server.
This would be useful for schools, for example (which is why moodle already supports it).