[pmwiki-users] Fields

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Sun, Nov 05, 2006 at 03:48:26PM -0500, The Editor wrote:
> Hagan Fox wrote:
> > On 11/5/06, Mark Trumpold <mark at ruthtrumpold.id.au> wrote:
> > > How can I have people register (through a form) themselves and not go
> > > through me or someone else sp then they can edit.
> >
> > By far the easiest way is to use a shared password, a.k.a.
> > "password-based access control".  That way if an author knows the
> > password, they're "registered".  :-)
> >
> > The Most Experienced PmWiki Administrator On Earth has written
> > persuasively that even for large wiki sites this is the easiest way to
> > go and it's much more effective and trouble-free that you might
> > imagine.  It's at least worth trying first, then if it doesn't work
> > out you can switch to a more complex identity-based solution.
> 
> I think Pm is right that the above is best if you want an authentic
> wiki.  If you want to use PmWiki as a CMS (it knocks the socks off the
> competitors here too) you probably want something more.

Actually, it has nothing to do with being an "authentic wiki"
versus a CMS -- it really depends on the type of control that is
needed.  In my experience with creating and maintaining websites,
there just hasn't been much advantage to setting up identity-based 
authorization over shared-passwords; certainly not enough to justify
the overhead that comes from maintaining username+password pairs.

Pm