[Mediawiki-l] sidebar and authorities question

[Brion Vibber]

Nicholas Buttle wrote:
> I'm trying to put together a wiki for an Architectural
> firm. 
> 
> 1.  They want categories somewhat like you have in
> Twiki.  However, I've had a look at Twiki and I find
> it pretty difficult to get to grips with so I imagine
> it'll be user unfriendly in the firm.  Is there a way
> of changing the side bar if you navigate to a category
> page?  ie the sidebar becomes the subcategory bar when
> you get to the selected category.

Sorry, you'd have to develop this capability yourself.

Consider using TWiki if that's what your client wants. :)

> 2.  What level of user access control is there in
> mediawiki?  We're after 'locking down' certain pages
> and leaving others open to editing by just about
> everybody.

Very limited capabilities in this regard; MediaWiki is aimed at 
open-access sites. If you need multiple levels of read access or pages 
which can only be read by certain users, for instance, MediaWiki is not 
suitable. There may be third-party hacks to try to support this but they 
are likely to be insecure, and using them may put you or your client's 
data at risk.

If you just want to protect a few pages against editing by 
non-administrators, that's fine.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)