[kramed]

Does Lemonstand support via plugins any other authentication backends such as OpenID, Facebook, etc? I ask because a client is very interested in these options for their site (which is easy as there are already libraries to do it) but integrating that authentication into Lemonstand is a big issue I can foresee. Any suggestions?

[reddbridgemark]

I don't think anyone has yet made any plugins to do oAuth etc login yet, but it shouldn't be a big deal to integrate any login API.

Using these APIs to handle login revolves around a. initially retrieving information about a logging in user from the service in question (which saves the user from having to fill in their name etc, and enables you to grab their email address), and then b. on future visits being able to pass their login details to the service in question and accepting a successful response from said service to log that person in.

As you'll only ever use these services to augment, rather than replace, the core LemonStand logging in process (since inevitably some customers either won't have, or won't want to use, Facebook, Twitter, OpenID etc credentials to log in), any plugin would only need to provide additional functionality rather than there being any need to hack the core - which I'd guess is what probably makes you think it could be problematic.

I'd suggest having a read through the docs for and having a play with the API of your chosen service.