# Federation features

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/federation-features/18982>\
**Category:** Feature\
**Created:** [August 18, 2014, 2:27am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/federation-features/18982 "2014-08-18T02:27:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![haiku](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/haiku/32/103858_2.png) [@haiku](https://meta.discourse.org/u/haiku)\
**Post date:** [August 18, 2014, 6:58pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/federation-features/18982/2 "2014-08-18T18:58:57Z")

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Can you explain what you mean by federation? I’ve heard the word mean so many different things I’m not clear what it means anymore.

You can write your own authentication for Discourse so if it’s just a case of signing in with Diaspora etc, that should be relatively simple. Check out the [extensibility category](https://meta.discourse.org/category/extensibility) for some examples of custom signin, as well as guides on how to start plugin development in general.

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