View page permissions

Summary:

Add ability to hide page categories

View page permissions

pieterh 01 Sep 2006 10:26

In one scenario I want to hide a category of pages from visitors until the pages are all ready. There is no permissions option to cover the visibility of pages.

I think this would be useful, also to allow people to make fully or partially private wikis.

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Portfolio

Re: View page permissions

michal frackowiak 01 Sep 2006 10:38

Well, I know this… But it is not currently possible to implement in an "easy" way. The reasonalbe solution would be to hide particular categories and (when ready) "unhide" it or move pages to visible locations…

I have been thinking about this before and even some of the code is implemented. But this would require more work and (what is more important) would complicate the internal queries.

But ok, this should be implemented and would be useful. I agree. But sorry - not right now… fortunately some recent changes to the data structures here make it closer.

cheers - michal

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Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me

Re: View page permissions

explanation mark 21 Mar 2007 15:10

i would like this too… right now i'm planning on just opening up two wikis, one internal, one public…
but then you run into the problem of the user limit, and its just kind of annoying… sorry if there is a
more recent thread for this, it's what i found!

mark

Re: View page permissions

Aleksandar Krajnalic 28 Mar 2007 15:11

Hiding pages would be a great feature. One way to use it is when I don't want to expose all the pages to the anonimous visitors and some of the pages should be available only to the site members.

Re: View page permissions

Aleksandar Krajnalic 28 Mar 2007 15:21

There is a feature that could help a bit about this. Would it be possible to make the system pages available only to the members (or admins)? I mean, pages like "system:list-all-pages". Also, maybe it would be possible to have a new type of pages, like "private:pagename" or "private-pagename"?

Re: View page permissions

(account deleted) 30 Mar 2007 17:30

A work-around for the time being would be this:

1. assign all "hidden" pages to a category called hidden. So the pagename would be hidden:pagename.
2. remove the system:list-all-pages from the menu and sidebar
3. create an index-page, that contains a Page-module, selecting the default-category only ([[module Page category="_default"]]
4. add a link to the index-page to the sidebar
5. this way, a user can list all default-pages, but not the special pages such as admin or system-pages
6. if you use a "difficult" category name (e.q. "xwk3") it will be terribly hard to guess the pagenames
7. to reduce all risks, set the permissions for this category to none, so that only you can edit them (better be safe than sorry)
8. one disadvantage: if you want to publish the pages, you have to rename them all ( so leave out the category from the links, or you will have to change them too).

I have worked along these lines on Beautiful Beta Wiki, to make a difference between contentpages and administrative pages (see the Page Manager and Index).

Re: View page permissions

Aleksandar Krajnalic 06 Apr 2007 19:22

OK, it's a lot of usable info. I'll surely use some of those tips. Also, it's still possible to get to the "system:list-all-pages" if anyone types it in the address bar. So, my page names will be exposed once again?

Re: View page permissions

explanation mark 07 Apr 2007 06:30

ya i'm alittle confused why we can't assign admin:manage type priveledges to whatever we please, the permission category obviously exists

Re: View page permissions

Aleksandar Krajnalic 11 Apr 2007 10:03

What if we also move the page "system:list-all-pages" to "xwk3:list-all-pages", so that there is no list of pages for the people that doesn't know about "xwk3"? I think that might help.

Re: View page permissions

Aleksandar Krajnalic 11 Apr 2007 10:08

I think that we can assign the permissions to any category, even custom category. But, why can't we assign the permission to "see/not see" the page, like admin:manage has? Is it because it's the feature built in the admin:manage module itself?

Re: View page permissions

explanation mark 09 May 2007 05:24

any progress?

Re: View page permissions

khankhan 19 May 2007 14:40

any progress? [2] ?

I need a better solution to make a restrict access in my wiki.

Re: View page permissions

michal frackowiak 28 May 2007 10:19

Such a customizable permission system is quite challenging at the moment — however I would include it in the next major revision to Wikidot (v2). Quite a lot of people ask about it. And it would be also nice to e.g. have a private wiki (workspace), but show just one page so someone else and allow him/her edit it without starting a separate wiki.

So it is on a big TODO list.

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Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me

Re: View page permissions

erlend_sh 30 May 2007 18:39

Permissions is a pretty wide topic, with many possible outcomes and solutions. Will you be opening this topic to the public, or do you feel that you're already on to the optimal way of doing this in terms of both userfriendlyness, customizability and coding?

Re: View page permissions

michal frackowiak 30 May 2007 21:17

I was thinking about making it possible to create groups within a wiki (as Admins and Moderators are now) and set per-action permissions to specific groups AND individual users.

E.g. you could set the following permissions
cat1 can be viewed by all, editable only by groups: g1, g2 and user u1,
cat2 can be viewed and edited only by group g3
page1 can be viewed only by user u6
group g4 can view all pages
group g5 can view and edit all pages
page1 can be viewed only by user u6

More or less I know how to do it and how to make a better interface to set permissions. But we are not implementing it now so there is still some time left ;-)

Many users have assured me that such a flexible system would work much better than the current one. I think it would be a nice compromise between complexity, flexibility and easy of use.

Do you think this would be fine?

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Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me

Re: View page permissions

erlend_sh 02 Jun 2007 08:48

The permissions you can set are looking good. You still have to put a lot of thought in to user-friendlyness though, and not to mention good overview. It's a pain in the ass when you've set all these different permissions to a range of groups and individual users, but suddenly you don't even know who can do what anymore.

Re: View page permissions

cfloren 24 Jan 2009 11:56

Dear Michal,

Congratulations for the wonderful work with wikidot! I apreciate your willingness to implement the useful feature: view permitions per page.

Best,
Carlos.

Last edited on 24 Jan 2009 11:58 by cfloren + Show more

Re: View page permissions

Phil Chett 02 Jun 2007 12:11

E.g. you could set the following permissions
cat1 can be viewed by all, editable only by groups: g1, g2 and user u1,
cat2 can be viewed and edited only by group g3
page1 can be viewed only by user u6
group g4 can view all pages
group g5 can view and edit all pages
page1 can be viewed only by user u6

This would do me very nicely. It would make a vast difference. So yes please :-)

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.Goal NHGC

Re: View page permissions

JohnB 03 Jun 2007 07:46

Yep - that works really well for me too.

Re: View page permissions

Craig Macomber 23 Aug 2007 05:34

Yes, it would be great, but another great feature would be a way to test the permissions for each group my temporarily transferring yourself into it. The only issue is escaping form your reduced permissions, but I'm sure there is a good way to implement it. I have wondered how my site looks to people of different groups and I would rather not another account just to see (That might even be against the policy; I don't remember).

Re: View page permissions

Educare 15 Dec 2007 07:25

This would be the perfect solution for my problems with controlling student access for my classes. Any idea when this might appear?