Re: [sfWiki-devel] Re: user authentication, sessions, and editing

[Iain S. <iai...@ya...>]

At 09:18 PM 2/21/2001 -0500, Todd L. Miller wrote:
>         http://sfwiki.sourceforge.net is running the new authentication
>(et al) code, so go beat on it for a while.  I /know/ the user page is

Cool.

>ugly; please donate pretty PHP.  I also know that only having the user

Details details.  :)  Yeah. I think it should be broken into multiple pages 
one for each function when you get the chance (except login and logout 
which can be moved to the nav bar or header/footer).

>edit/logout | create/logout stuff at the bottom of the view pages is a
>horrible place to put it, but it was /much/ easier that way for this test
>run.  (I would like to put in the JOS menu when I do that, but that could
>get tricky, because of the pre-rendering.)  While I haven't bothered to
>migrate the topics from release 2-0-x into the sfWiki Wiki yet, I haven't
>deleted them, and the migration should be a simple SELECT INTO; I don't
>think I've changed the topics table format.  (May want to include a
>last-edited-by, and then a %AUTHORSHIP% variable for UserPages.)

Yeah.  Cool.  I have some small nits to pick.  I realize this is a 
functional demo so I'm only mentioning them here so I make sure its 
integrated into the final version rather than going another review 
round...  :)  I'm sure most of these you already know about:

The logged in or logged out status needs to be better indicated so its 
clear if you are or are not logged in.  Perhaps a color change in a menu 
bar or a highlighted button/area to indicate login status.  Probably 
something to do with header/footer/navbar after you figure out how to 
integrate this with the prerendered stuff.

I also think that being able to see who you are logged in as would be nice.

When I create an account (actually anytime i get the login screen) the user 
and email fields have a tab appended to the data (a blank form has a single 
tab in there.  I'm not sure what this does when you update an account (i 
imagine it at least appends things to the email.  Anyhow, you may want to 
fix that...

Your error checking is pretty good.  However, i could create accounts 
without an email.  Is this proper?

When a form has bad data and you re-present the form, could you refill the 
fields with the entered data so I don't have to reenter it?

The password fields should be made password fields rather than text.  I 
assume this is only done this way right now to make it easier to test.

When I create an account, it provides a very useful line saying "Please 
edit your user page" that is excellent.  I would also add a, please 
subcribe to our mailing lists (or just take my wiki reg boiler plate 
appended to the bottom of this email).  This informational info is very 
useful.  However, the link for editing your wiki page doesn't have the 
topic (my wiki name) filled in.  And I think it should actually point to an 
edit page not the view page.  As it is right now, it goes to the default 
webhome which confused me for a bit (I thought it was my page for a second).

>         Since the registration is done automagically, I'm thinking we may
>want to put a delay of some kind in there to get graffiti artists
>bored.  Maybe /force/ a UserPage edit first?

Yes.  Force them to edit a user page (perhaps boilerplate in basic info 
about the person based on what they entered in the registration 
form).  This will not prevent graffiti artists though.  To do that you 
really need to watch for high speed edits coming from the same address and 
auto-refuse them.  It may not be a bad idea to try and get that kind of 
capability in there anyhow for other improper usage.  Otherwise, we run the 
risk of getting spider bombed (the reason we got kicked off helmut's 
machine).  I think its good if the wiki gets spidered and we get into 
search engines but only if its done nicely.

Whew.  That's quite a list.  Sorry about that.  Looks great though.  I can 
already feel the sigh of relief from my metamech server when the wiki is 
moved off of there!  :)

-iain