[pmwiki-users] Announcement: HtpasswordForm recipe major update

[Dominique Faure]

On 10/16/06, The Editor <editor at fast.st> wrote:
>
> One question though...  What is the reasonable limit to the number of
> members you would recommend administering with something like
> htpasswdform?  Hundreds?  Thousands?  More?
>

According to Apache Week[1]:

<< Problems with Large Numbers of Users

Using htpasswd to create a text list of users, and maintaining a list
of groups in a plain text file is relatively easy. However if the
number of users becomes large, the server has a lot of processing to
do to find a user's group and password details. This processing has to
be done for every request inside the protected area (even though the
user only enters their password once, the server has to
re-authenticate them on every request). This can be slow with a lot of
users, and adds to the server load. Much faster access is possible
using DBM format files. This allows the server to do a very quick
lookup of names, without having to read through a large text file.
However managing DBM files is more complex. Apache Week will cover the
use of DBM authentication in a future issue. >>

These considerations fully apply to PmWiki either. IMHO, I wouldn't
use it for more than few dozens of users.

Dom

[1] http://www.apacheweek.com/features/userauth