[pmwiki-users] 404 Not Found

[H. Fox]

On 1/25/06, christian.ridderstrom at gmail.com
<christian.ridderstrom at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Jan 2006, H. Fox wrote:
>
> > > Ok, seriously. I agree with you, it's not such a great idea to by default
> > > list all the pages in the "current" group, nor all groups.
> > >
> > > What if we added these as possibilites instead? I.e. something like
> > >
> > >         ...
> > >
> > >         If none of the alternatives above is right, you may want to:
> > >         * [[List all groups of wiki pages -> (magic-link-here)]]
> > >         * [[List all pages in the group {$Group} -> (magic-link-here)]]
> > >
> > >         Or you may want to do a search for the wiki page:
> > >         (:searchform:)
> > >
> > > Maybe this would reduce the confusion?
> >
> > At this point you've offered at least five choices, which IMHO is far
> > too many.  I think we disagree about where PmWiki Philosophy #1 kicks
> > in, particularly for inexperienced authors.
>
> I thought I *had* reduced the n:o choices since in my mind the page
> contained a list of all the groups on the wiki (which could be a lot).
>
> > I'm proposing one offering *one* choice (aside from hitting the Back
> > button or the Site Logo or a SideBar navigation link) when possible.
>
> Which choice is this? (Or you could change pmwiki.org to illustrate?)

It depends on the context.

First, let's define terms:
A complete pagename is e.g. "SomeGroup.SomePage".
An incomplete pagename is e.g. "Something" (with no ".").


Wiki or CMS-type site with Edit Authorization:

For a complete pagename, the One Choice would be to create the page.

Actually, there are choices-a-plenty besides that one.

* The browser's Back button
* The Home Link (logo)
* The page header's search box, if there is one
* Any of the links in the SideBar

For an incomplete pagename where the group exists, the One Choice
would be to create the group's home page.

For an incomplete page name where the group *doesn't* exist, the Two
Choices would be to create the group's home page or navigate to an
existing group's home page (covering your misspelled-groupname
possibility).

I think this is the most author-friendly solution.


CMS-type site without Edit Authorization:

No choices; just a page-not-found or page-gone message.


Hagan