[Phpwiki-talk] UserPage: an alternative to the ugly HTTP authorization window

[Joe E. <jo...@or...>]

A few days ago I checked in a plugin that provides an alternate sign-in
mechanism.  It's a clone of the sign-in pages at http://why.clublet.com.


1. WHAT IT DOES

When you click "edit" and you're not signed in, you get a page like:

    Before you can edit PageYouWantToEdit, you need to sign in.

    Please enter your name as WordsStrungTogether (i.e. John Smith as
JohnSmith):

    Sign in:  [                     ]    (Sign In)

And if you type something that isn't a WikiWord in the sign-in box, it gives
you more help.


2. YOU CAN TRY IT

You can try it out on a clean check out by:

(a) creating a new page UserPage with the contents: "<?plugin UserPage?>".
(b) visiting a url like "index.php?UserPage&edit=HomePage" while you're not
signed in.


3. WHERE IT'S GOING

I would like to have UserPage take over preferences, too:  if someone goes
to UserPage who's already signed in, they'll get their preferences page. It
will also collect email addresses and add them as metadata to a user's home
page.  It may also present a line indicating that they should make a wiki
page if they don't have one, and it will probably eventually support
passwords as well.  It will also offer new users a special intro page.
These will all be switchable options changed by editing the plugin call.
The UserPage at clublet.com does all of these things.


4. ISSUES

(a) It currently uses a private method of WikiUser!!!  (_save())   Jeff, can
I make this public?
(b) It needs to be gettext()ified.


5. MIGRATION

If the consensus is that this should be the auth mechanism of PhpWiki
out-of-box, the following things need to be changed:

    (a) templates need to point to it for edit & sign in.
    (b) LinkUnknownWikiWord needs to point to it
    (c) editpage should check auth & a global option and redirect if the
user isn't signed on


Thoughts?