OpenID is the hot topic for 2009. Believe me, if you don't have an OpenID login yet, you'll be picking one up soon. More and more web services will be using them for authentication.

If you have an AIM, Yahoo or several other accounts, you can already use OpenID, but what if you run your own domain and you would rather authenticate against your own server? No problem! There's several OpenID solutions available that you can run yourself.

If you only need to authenticate yourself and not a ton of users, there's a great little script called PHPMyID. It's really pretty darn simple to configure and install, is very bare-bones and gets the job done.

With those scripts you can use your own OpenID URL of http://www.mydomain.com/openid (or whatever you want.) If you move your domain from server to server you can easily carry it with you as long as you still hold the domain name. You're no longer dependent on an OpenID provider like Yahoo not deciding to change their mind on their authentication methods or flat out dropping the service.

The hardest part is that the author includes no method of hashing your password server-side, so you must generate your own md5 hash before uploading the script. Not a problem in Linux, probably a bit more of a challenge in Windows.