[pmwiki-users] Questions from a first PM Wiki user

[Hans]

Thursday, September 22, 2005, 6:47:27 PM, Jaap wrote:
> 1. It is made very clear how to do group specific headers and footers, but to do
> site wide global headers and footers is hidden away in a cookbook item
> (http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/AllGroupHeader). Why is this?

We often document specific advice given on this list in form of
a cookbook page, in order not to loose it. Eventually it may migrate
into the distributed pmwiki documentation. Maybe this is a good
candidate, since the questions comes up again and again.

> 2. Where do I set the default page that is loaded on startup? It seems to be
> Main.HomePage but I like to rename it to something else (mostly because I don't
> like the big "Home Page" title on my frontpage.

in config.php:
$DefaultPage = 'AnotherName';

see also http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/BasicVariables

> 3. I changed my config.php to include a site-wide password to edit pages (which
> I intend to only distribute to a select group of content-suppliers and editors).
> This works for most pages. However, my site-bar on the left had a edit-sitebar
> link, and that was still accessible and editable without a password. Was this a
> bug? The solution was to change the attributes of the Site.SiteBar to require a
> password for editing. Why are all the other pages protected by default, but the
> Site.SiteBar page not? Is this a bug or a feature?

all pages in the Site group are locked by default, with the exception
of Site.SideBar, which is set with NOPASS, meaning no password is
required. this make sit possible to have pmwiki working "out of the
box", with the Sidebar being open for editing. Setting a sitewide edit
password does not overrule the page attributes set for individual
pages (or groups), so you need to clear the NOPASS edit attribute for
Site.SideBar.

> 4. I want to change the look of the website, but the available skins and the
> available themes in FixFlow are not sufficient. Do I just copy paste an existing
> FixFlow .css file, rename it to something else, make my changes in there, then
> update the fixflow php file to refer to that one by default?

yes that is the easiest way to create new color and font schemes for
Fixflow. And include them in the list in skin.php in the fixflow
folder.

> 5. The FixFlow rightbar works great for me on both IE and FireFox, both on XP.
> However, my friend was running the site on FireFox on XP as well (might be a
> different FireFox version though) and he had bullets next to each item in the
> RightBar (even though I don't see those bullets). The bullets themselves aren't
> necessarily a problem, except that the bullets are drawn outside of the sidebar,
> left of it. I can send a screenshot if you're interested.

I have not seen this before, so I am interested as the designer of
Fixflow to see this.

> 6. What is the best way to make moderation options available? I made a
> moderators webpage
> (http://www.basewiki.com/wiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Moderators)
> that includes links to the things that people will want to edit, but has to be
> hidden for the average reader. Is this the recommended way? Or do most of you
> expert PM Wiki users know the names of those pages and do you just type it in
> the address bar?

I would keep a site's config page in the Site group. to hide a link to
it use (:if auth edit:)*[[Site/Moderators]](:if:)
which will only show the link if you are logged in with  edit
permissions.

Hope this helps for a start.

Best, 
~Hans