PmWiki has built-in support for password-protecting various areas of the wiki site. Authors generally want to be able to apply passwords to individual pages or to WikiGroups. Wiki Administrators can apply passwords to individual pages, to WikiGroups, or to the entire wiki site. As with any access control system, the password protection mechanisms described here are only a small part of overall system and wiki security. PmWiki.Security? will contain a more thorough discussion of possible issues.

As an author editing pages...

You will generally use 3 types of passwords:

1. to control who can see a page or group, use read passwords
2. to control who can edit a page or group, use edit passwords
3. to control who can alter the passwords used to protect a page or group, use attr passwords

Note that if an attr password isn't set, then anyone can alter the read and edit passwords.

To set a password on an individual wiki page, add ?action=attr to the page's URL (address) to access its attributes. (You may be prompted for a username and password; the username field usually isn't used by PmWiki.) Using the small form on the attributes page, you can set or clear the read, edit, or attr passwords on the page. In the form you enter the passwords as cleartext; PmWiki encrypts them for you automatically.

To set a password on a wiki group is slightly more difficult--you just set the passwords on a special page in each group called "GroupAttributes". You can get to the attributes page for GroupAttributes by entering a URL (address) like http://www.example.com/pmwiki?n=GroupName.GroupAttributes?action=attr. Then, using the small form on the attributes page, you can set or clear the read, edit, or attr passwords for the entire group. In the form you enter the passwords as cleartext; PmWiki encrypts them for you automatically.

As an administrator ...

You can set passwords on pages and groups exactly as described above for authors. You can also:

1. set site-wide passwords for pages and groups that do not have passwords set
2. use attr passwords to control who is able to set passwords on pages (and potentially other future attributes)
3. use upload passwords to control access to the file upload capabilities (if uploads are enabled)
4. use an admin password to override the passwords set for any individual page or group

For more information on password options available to administrators, see PmWiki.PasswordsAdmin.

Which password wins?

In PmWiki, page passwords override group passwords, group passwords override the default passwords, and the admin password overrides all passwords. This gives a great deal of flexibility in controlling access to wiki pages in PmWiki.

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