[pmwiki-users] General Farming Questions

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud at pobox.com
Tue Oct 11 13:06:56 CDT 2005


On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 01:40:29PM -0400, Neil Herber wrote:
> At 2005-10-11  09:25 AM -0800, Chris Lott is rumored to have said:
> > My plan has been to use a wiki farm, with each faculty member
> >(who desires it) having a wiki for each class they teach. Is that the
> >best solution to give individuals their own wikis that are as
> >customizable as possible?
> 
> I use a PmWiki farms to completely isolate different sets of users 
> from each other. Each set of users has their own field and some of 
> those fields are password protected, while others are not.
> 
> Depending on your requirements, this may be a good way to go, but the 
> other mechanism in PmWiki that accommodates different sets of users 
> is Wiki Groups. Everybody uses the same wiki (or field), but has 
> their own group. Groups have the big advantage that they are visible 
> to each other. You can still control access via passwords if you need to.

The other big advantage of groups is that authors can create
and protect new groups without having to coordinate with the wikiadmin.  
Creating a new field in a farm requires a wikiadmin to set it up,
creating a new group is as simple as creating a page in that group.

In fact, the original poster's requirement is why I created
wikigroups in the first place -- I wanted my faculty colleagues to be
able to create separate areas for each course or project, but I didn't 
want them to have to coordinate with me every time a new one
needed to be established.  A faculty member could just create a new
group, use the GroupHeader and GroupFooter pages to customize the
look if desired, and use GroupAttributes to control access to the
group, all without ever having to know a shred of PHP or contact
me for help.  (Of course some did ask for help, but the point
is that once they were showed the basic steps they could repeat
it on their own and instruct others without having to contact me.)

Pm




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