<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>I can imagine three features that would allow administrators to combine user-authentication and page passwords in very powerful ways:</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><div>1) a <b>wildcard authorization group</b>, where belonging to any <b>authentication group</b> that matches the wildcard means belonging to the larger group. For example, anyone who belongs to @Ustudents or @Ulecturers would be a member of @U* automatically.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>2) a <b>password group,</b> where you could change the password for the password group and it will affect all pages that contain the password group as a password. For example, if a page called SubscriberPage has a password &SecretPassword - where & indicates a password group - and if the &SecretPassword password is set to DecemberPassword, then anyone who enters DecemberPassword would be allowed access to SubscriberPage. This allows changing passwords on groups of pages without requiring accounts for the users. (The members of a password group would not be "authenticated users", since they haven't authenticated their name. It's just a level of indirection for passwords.) I recently added this suggested feature (not the syntax) at <a href="http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PITS/00998">http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PITS/00998.</a></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>3) a <b>password-only</b> login form or option for the standard login, which pops up in two circumstances: (a) when a password-only attribute is set to On for the page or (b) when the user has already authenticated identity. Then authenticated users could add additional passwords without being confused by seeing user name on the form. This option would also be used for pages of a guest section of the wiki, where the presence of Name on the login form only confuses the user.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Does anyone else think these features would be useful? Has all this already been considered?</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>A relatively new PmWiki-fan,</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Randy</div></div></body></html>