Implement RPXNow? (openid, google, facebook, etc)
 

After reading a few blogs i have become aware of http://rpxnow.com/

It is a paid service, but as far as i can tell, the standard free service should be fine for most people.

What it is, is a standard API that wraps many providers - openid, myspace, google, facebook, windows live, yahoo.

The API for RPX should never change, so as changes come through for any 3rd party provider they will be upgraded with no code changes needed on the forum side of things.

Free service offers 6 providers (that should handle all the main ones), profile data (name, email, birthday, d.o.b, profile pic) and 1 admin which should be fine for 99% of people. Only thing it doesnt offer is mapping.

This also off-loads development and changes from vbulletin to the rpx provider, so there wont need to be time wasted following up changes with all the providers.