This is the second post of a series that covers the new Forem Passport service provider, which integrates with the Forem open source software behind DEV and other communities.

Upcoming Forem Passport Projects

This service provider is such an exciting project in my view, because of the power and flexibility baked into the OAuth protocol. Not only does it help solve a problem we had (i.e. compliance and support across different platforms), it also interacts with many different core and ecosystem projects.

Some of the projects that relate to Forem Passport in one way or another are:

Android Mobile App

We just released the first few versions of our beta Android app!

Are you interested in being part of the closed beta? Do you want to be notified when the open beta rolls out? Drop a comment below and we’ll contact you.

iOS Mobile App

Version 1.2.2 includes the Passport integration already! Try it out now

Better Tooling for Creators to Fight Abuse

In a network of Forem sites, smaller instances might benefit from abuse control measures taken in bigger instances, like DEV. This could include propagation of banished users (at least to flag as likely abusers) throughout the network, making everyone safer.

⚠️ Abuse in this case refers to anything that doesn’t adhere to the Forem's code of conduct or terms and conditions.

Please note that this is still in ideation and hasn’t yet been discussed in great depth.

Better Integration Between the Passport and the /admin Dash for Creators

We can automate the process of enabling the Forem authentication for a creator (directly from their /admin dashboard) a lot more than its current form.

This idea has definitely been discussed and it’s actually a high priority goal. We want to make it as easy as possible for creators to enable the Forem passport integration so more users can benefit from it across the ecosystem.

Push Notifications for Mobile Apps on Self-Hosted Forems

We can’t openly give out our PN certificates to deliver push notifications to self hosted Forems. So, in order to overcome this we could rely on the authorization and not authentication aspect of the OAuth protocol.

The objective of this project is to implement a mechanism relay PN delivery to the Passport via API calls if the certificates aren’t available (self hosted sites).

This would only work for users that have connected their accounts with the Passport, because that’s the key part of how we would avoid abuse from any bad actor if they happen to spam their users.

Allowing for Social login within Forem Passport itself

We heard you like service providers, so we’re planning to integrate service providers on our service provider 😆

In all seriousness, since we have more control over Forem Passport, we could implement many customized authentication providers and make them compatible with our whole ecosystem (i.e. mobile apps).

Easier account management across many Forem sites

You could in theory propagate a new profile picture across many Forem sites at once, directly from Forem Passport.

This isn’t implemented and hasn’t even been discussed in depth either, but OAuth should allows us to make some of these integrations possible.

Open sourcing the Passport codebase

The core Forem software has been open source for a while now, and we want to open source this project as well in the near future for many reasons.

Our intention is to solidify the Passport project a bit more (i.e. have better abuse control) and other details sorted out before publishing the repo. We’ll be sure to communicate when this happens!

Invitations & Closing Note

Phew! We've covered a lot in this series so far. 😄

Invitations:

• We’re interested in your feedback on all of the above, so please share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
• Do you already have an account on https://passport.forem.com? Please leave us a comment below! What are your thoughts? Which upcoming project from the list above interests you most? Any other crazy ideas you might think would be cool to integrate with the Passport project?
• Try it out Version 1.2.2 of the Forem iOS app, which includes the Passport integration
• Reminder that you can comment below if you'd like to be part of our closed beta test for the Forem Android app

Closing Note:

We’re actively working on Forem Passport (i.e. design overhaul, abuse control features, new integrations, etc) so expect changes, big and small, to roll out on a weekly basis.

In the next post in this series, I’m going to explain how we managed to implement the Passport project from a technical perspective. Keep an eye out for it in the next few days.