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Features / Usability

Features / Usability


Create Private Wiki

posts: 4

I'm a beginner with TikiWiki. I need to create a private Wiki which unregistered people cannot even read. I've installed the Collaborative Community Profile, but I now need to modify it so:

  1. Unregistered or un-logged-on people can't even see the Wiki pages
  2. Users in the Registered group can do what unregistered users can currently do
  3. Users in a new Collaborators group can do what Registered users can currently do


I see that there's a facility to copy and paste permissions, but I can't seem to get this to do what I need. Can someone give me a blow by blow account of how to do this, or direct me to some helpful documentation?

Thanks - Rowan

posts: 289 United States
Quick question: Do you need the Collaborators user group? I'm guessing that if you want a simple Wiki with registered users that can access the Wiki and public/anonymous that can't, then the whole collaborative profile thing is superfluous to requirements and just confuses matters.
posts: 4

Well - right now I need anonyomous people to be able to do nothing at all, registered people to be able to read but not edit, collaborators to be able to create, comment on and edit pages, and admins to be able to do everything. I can foresee the need for an "editor" style role, and others, so I don't want to throw away the whole concept of role based permissions.

I have now actually achieved what I wanted to do, but by directly editing the database - not the safest way of doing things. It would of course be much better to understand how do do this via the admin pages...

Thanks - Rowan

posts: 289 United States

That does sound dangerous! eek but if it works for you...

So your solution is fine, the extra Collaborators user group is perfectly valid, sitting between registered and administrative users. I just wanted to be sure you didn't have more than you needed.

Did you know that you can set up user groups such that they are children of other user groups, and as such they inherent the permissions of the parent group?

For example Registered users inherit permissions from Anonymous users. Now, in your case I haven't used the "profiles" but it would make sense to me that Collaborators inherit permissions from Registered users, and then you refine the permissions further as needed. Admins are a kind of special case so best to leave them well alone. ;)

I wish I could help you with the copy permissions but I don't understand how it works either, I've never got it to work. I generally use the cascading model described above so that means I don't have to set every single permission for every single group.


posts: 257 United States

This is all done with groups and permissions.

There are default groups for "Anonymous"(unregistered-unlogged-in), "Registered" (Registered and logged in) and Admin (you). You will want to create a "Collaborators" group in the "Groups" admin area.

Click the key icon on one of the groups. You'll end up in the "Assign Global Permissions" area.

You'll see a list of features. Click the dropdown triangle dealie next to feature you'd like to assign permissions for.

You'll see a list of that area's features with the ability to manage permissions for each group by individual feature. For example, in the "Wiki" section you may choose to allow anyone (Anonymous) to "participate in rating of wiki pages" but allow only "Collaborators" to "can edit pages".

This very granular approach to permissions is a great feature of Tiki!

Now, in answer to items 2 and 3, yes, groups can inherit permissions from "lower" groups. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but there is a hierarchy to these groups. Anonymous is lowest, Registered is next, any you create are higher still, and finally Admins, who can do whatever the heck they please anywhere the want to (so admins don't even show up as a choice).

If, for example you enable Registered users to post comments on blog posts, any group above (Collaborators) inherits that permission when you check the Registered box. If only Collaborators can post comments then neither registered users or anonymous can post because Collaborator are higher up the food chain.

Tiki has some common sense permissions preloaded. EX: "can edit pages" is defaulted to Registered users while "view rating of pages" is default enabled for everyone (Anonymous).

So, you can see that if you do not let "Anonymous" view the wiki at all, then they can't see it. (if they somehow get to the URL, they'll get an error message). Likewise if you don't let Registered users see Trackers, then they can't.

Taking it a step further, when you initially create (or edit) a group, you can assign groups their own default home page.

So, you might want to create a page for Anonymous users that say's "Keep out, ya buggers!". When registered users log in they see the wiki and when collaborators log in they see the wiki -and they can edit it.

Tiki is complex and deep and because of that, you, the admin, have a great deal of control over the most minute details and because you can selectively assign some admin functions like approving forum posts to, for example, "Collaborators", you won't have to do it all!

posts: 4

Thanks for your explanation. Very helpful. I thnk I understand roughly how this works (apart from copy and paste permissions).

Another related question - if I want to have one wiki (or a section of one) accessible to one group of people, and another wiki or section accessible to a different group, how do I do this? Let's say I have one section for discussion of things concerning my job, and another section for things concerning the bowls club that I run, I don't want one set of users to have access to the other discussion, apart from any individuals who happen to be members of both groups.

Thanks - Rowan

posts: 289 United States
Categories is probably the best/easiest way to do this. You can place Wiki pages for each user group into separate categories such that the other groups won't see those pages. The category permissions will override the global permissions.

posts: 289 United States

I've never really played with it but I think "Profiles" essentially creates additional default user groups for the Tiki user with pertinent permissions already applied according to what profile you picked.

I personally must be a bit anal or something because I prefer to do it by hand.

The only question mark is, is the Collaborator group a sub group of Registered or it's own group. It's times like this I wish I had a sandbox Tiki to mess around with and break at my leisure. I really should set one up somewhere, somehow.


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