[pmwiki-users] neverending registration question

[Sandy]

Marguerite Floyd wrote:
> WHERE can I find the recipe or option that displays a registration
> form?  You've been great about showing me how to set passwords and
> display login boxes, but WHERE is the page I can link to that requires
> the user to put in their name???  It's not much use to display a box
> asking for a password when there's no display anywhere asking for a
> user name to begin with.
> 
> When you register with sites there's a page where you have to put in
> your name, userid, chosen password, etc.  Where in pmwiki.org can I
> find this page OR if there is no page like that, where's a recipe or
> code to connect up a designed page with the pmwiki system?
> 
> Thanks!

I can see how you'd be frustrated. So close,...

First of all, the core does not support user self-registration. It's 
often requested, and there are some recipes, but it's not in the core 
... yet. (I suspect Pm's work on forms will eventually lead to this, as 
well as other nifty things.)

Second, the default installation does not support user names. All access 
is by password, and it's on the honour system that people sign their 
changes. Under that system, registration consists of sharing a password, 
so self-registration is over-kill.

The core has AuthUser, which adds the usual name/password pair, and user 
groups. I tried logging in to your site. (I like the layout!) It asks 
for a password but not a user name. This means that you have not 
activated AuthUser. It still does not have self-registration.

The Crisses have just written a how-to for the basic AuthUser, where the 
database is maintained by the wiki in Site.AuthUser .
http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/QuickStartForAuthUser
Yes, the procedure seems rather round-about, having to set temporary 
access to set the permanent access, but that's the way it works at the 
moment.

Warning: I don't know how the other user registration and authentication 
recipes work, but I do know some of them don't coexist nicely with 
AuthUser, especially the ones which were originally written before AuthUser.

Anticipating your next question, How do I ensure people sign their 
contributions honestly?
After the line in config.php that turns on AuthUser, add the following:
$Author = $AuthId;

htpasswordform requires that you use .htpasswd and .htgroup files for 
storing the passwords, and add a line to Site.AuthUser to tell it to get 
the info from .htpasswd and .htgroup. There may be more to it -- I 
haven't done it myself but others have.
http://pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/AuthUser

Hope this helps,

Sandy