[pmwiki-users] RSS feeds and read-protected groups

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Fri, Oct 21, 2005 at 01:41:37PM -0400, Kerim Friedman wrote:
> I seem to have hit a snafu in what was otherwise looking like the
> perfect solution for me. I have a number of projects that all need
> wikis and I love the ability of PM Wiki to create group-level
> passwords to block reading and/or editing a portion of the site.
> However, when I implement this it seems it prevents those groups from
> having readable RSS feeds as well! Earlier I was using Instiki which
> offered title-only RSS feeds for protected wikis, this would suit my
> needs OK, although ideally I'd like to have some ability to enter a
> password in the URL and access the full feed for that group's recent
> changes.
> 
> Any suggestions/workarounds/alternatives? Thanks for your help!

Over the years the predominate opinion from admins has been that 
placing a 'read' password on a page should prevent any information
from that page from getting out in any form (including RSS feeds).

I expect that the new version of ?action=rss slated for PmWiki 2.1.0 
will make possible for read-protected pages to appear in an RSS
feed in a limited form, but that's still being worked out.

If you want to allow a url to contain a password, you can do 
something like this in config.php:

    if ($action == 'rss' && @$_GET['authpw']) 
      $_POST['authpw'] = $_GET['authpw'];

Then you can add '?authpw=<readpw>' to the end of an ?action=rss
url and PmWiki will use <readpw> as the password for accessing
pages in the RSS feed.

If you really need special access for RSS feeds separate from
read access, it's possible to configure PmWiki with a special
'rss' access level and then use that.  Let me know if you need
to this route and I'll try to write up the details.

> PS: I recently gave PM wiki a great writeup here:
> 
> <http://savageminds.org/2005/10/21/info-tech-aaa-panels-and-how-to-start-your-own-wiki/>

Wow, thanks for the writeup!  I just added a comment that
points out that PmWiki can also be used to host multiple
independent wikis (via WikiFarms) and be run in a standalone
mode from a USB device (via the Standalone recipe).
(Unfortunately I somehow messed up the links in my comment -- 
oh well.)

Thanks again,

Pm