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23 - Private Categories
Created on 13 Oct 2009 10:43
By pieterh

rating: +2+x
This is the Redirect module that redirects the browser directly to the "http://projects.wikidot.com/thread:130" page.

This is a design sketch for private categories on public wikis.

The goal of this design is to make the simplest possible working solution: we can improve and extend that over time.

Goals and use-cases

The reason for making this feature is to allow a single group of users (members of a site) to work privately and publicly without needing two structures. Today we typically create a private wiki to act as the work area for the public one. This causes extra work, and extra complexity for users. In many cases it causes the private wiki to become abandoned.

Configuration

Private categories are configured in the site manager as an extra row in the Permissions table:

Pages are visible to:  [_] Anonymous  [_] Registered users [_]  Site members

If none are checked, then only mods and admins can see pages in the category. It is valid to give users the right to create pages in a category but not view the results.

By convention in the Iron Giant templates we would create a category 'private:' with this option.

How it works

  • When a non-member tries to see any page (existing or not) in this category, they are shown a pop-up error ("Login and/or join this site to access this category"), and redirected to the site's start page.
  • Files attached to pages in private categories cannot be accessed by non-members.
  • Notifications on pages in private categories go to site members only.
  • The Search module will not show private pages to non-members.
  • The Clone module would not copy private categories but the Site Manager clone function would.
  • In the initial version, there is no further security.
  • In a further version, modules that show or link to pages create a boundary between public and private categories as follows: if they are used on a public page, they never show private pages. If they are used on a private page, they can show all pages. This affects these modules:
CountPages
TagCloud
PageCalendar
PageTree
Backlinks
WantedPages
OrphanedPages
Categories
RecentPosts
MiniRecentPosts
RatedPages
Pages
ChildPages
PagesByTag

Other use cases

Data forms can be used instead of the MailForm module, and submissions can be commented on by those with access to the private category, as well as using the existing 'watch this category' notifications structure to let people know about a new page creation.

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