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

[Todd L. M. <tm...@ha...>]

> 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).

	Maybe.  I've always found page-per-function vaguely irritating for
some reason.  Maybe all user.php, but with the op=... changing how the
page looks...

> 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'm going to check what exactly the difference between the static
and dynamic headers/footers actually are.  Since adding login status to a
pre-rendered page will require some processing on views anyway, I think I
might eliminate the static/dynamic distinction, and just include the
static around every page, eliminating the dynamic in the database.  This
will let me do what I want, which is put user operations in the left-hand
menu bar for JOS.

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

	True. :)  Maybe in the menu bar, I'll underlined 'User'
section change to underlined <UserName> section when logged in (color
change, too?) and the links underneath shift appropriately.

> 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...

	Yeah, probably.  I'm not sure /where/ the tab is coming from, but
I'll hammer away at it for a while.

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

	Doh!  Not really.  I should also check and make sure that what the
WikiRenderer recognizes as an e-mail is placed in the e-mail field.

> 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?

	Yes.  For some reason, Netscape did this by itself when I tested
it locally, but not remotely.  I think it's a header-cache thing.  (It
only checks the database right now, but it should also check the POSTed
information.)

> 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.

	It certainly wasn't because I donn't know how to make password
fields!  (Hint, hint. :))


	So for new users, automagically dump them into editing their
WikiHomePage?  Should I put the please-subscribe message into the default
body text, or send an e-mail?  ("Your account 'IainShig' with password
'IHaventCompletedMyHalfOfTheDealYet' and this e-mail address has been
confirmed.  $wikiGreetingText"?)

> To do that you really need to watch for high speed edits coming from
> the same address and auto-refuse them.

	Hm.  This may be decidedly non-trivial.  You got any ideas on
coding it?

> I think its good if the wiki gets spidered and we get into search
> engines but only if its done nicely.

	Yeah.  Right now, both wiki.jos.org and sfwiki.sourceforge.net
have robots.txt files disallowing all sfWiki links except view.php3; the
Janurary webalizer data should be up pretty soon, and hopefully we'll see
how much that cut down on the spidering.  Google-ing 'MainWebHome' is
interesting, though...
 
> Whew.  That's quite a list.  Sorry about that.

	S'okay.  I'm just the developer here. :)

> Looks great though.

	Thanks. :)

> I can already feel the sigh of relief from my metamech server when the
> wiki is moved off of there!  :)

	But then you will groan in terror when you realize that you need
to clean up the jos.org site (and do that other stuph you mentioned)!

-_Quinn