What to use for login ID?

Question

We are in the early design stages of a major rewrite of our product. Right now our customers are mostly businesses. We manage accounts. User names for an account are each on the

Answer 1

OpenID is very slick, and something you should seriously consider as it basically removes the requirement to save local usernames and passwords and worry about authentication.

A lot of sites nowadays are using both OpenID and their own, giving users the option.

If you do decide to roll your own, I'd recommend using the email address. Be careful, though, if you are creating something that groups users by an account (say, a company that has several users). In this case, the email address might be used more than once (if they do work for more than one company, for example), and you should allow that.

HTH!