I am making progress with the new website that handles registrations, player associations, etc.  Currently, I am accepting logins via OpenID from any provider that supports SSL/TLS on the channel between our web server and it (e.g. Yahoo, AOL, Google, MyOpenID, most others), as well as via Windows Cardspace.  A single account can have as many OpenID and CardSpace cards associated with it as the user wants, and the CardSpace stuff should magically disappear for users that don't support it.

Groups, including groups with start/end times (e.g. subscriptions) are fully functional, and I have activation codes approximately 10% done.  I hope to get those done this weekend, but may/may not get to it and it may have to wait until next week.

When I get it done, we'll need to re-establish the accounts.  I'm going to do that by e-mailing activation codes, and letting people who should have access enter the code and activate.

Note: there is also support for OAuth, and that is how I will be providing third party websites with access.  OAuth works similarly to Facebook applications, when an app wants to use information from us, it asks.  You go to your profile here, and you approve it.  Until it's approved here, the app gets nothing.  From a control panel here, on the account management screen, you can control the access -- including revoking it.  OAuth is an open standard, and there are multiple available implementations, and so it should work well for this application.

Note: I also have an XMPP server close as well.

Forgot your password?  Since we don't have passwords, that can be an issue -- so keep the account key around.  The account key and information on the account can be used to re-establish with a new OpenID or CardSpace provider, in order to reconnect to the account. 

As part of testing with Windows Azure, I will be moving the blog from Blog Engine to Azure sometime this week most likely.  I will be bringing the account management services up around the same time.

Due to continued spamming after I enabled comment moderation, I've installed a plug in to check against a shared database.  We'll see if that cuts it down a bit.