How do you make FlexWiki readonly to Anonymous Users ?

I've been asked to add a wiki to my sites to enable collaboration -- sounds like a great idea.  I have downloaded and played around a little with FlexWiki -- but I have one issue.  Is there any way to make it readable to anonymous users and editable only by authenticated users?  I've seen others asking this question also, but the suggested web.config solutions completely lockout anonymous users from viewing.  I'd appreciate any options, even if its another wiki solution since I see nothing special about FlexWiki.  Note that my users are in a MS Sql database and already authenticated in my main ASP.NET app -- so whatever I do should ideally work with my current users.  Thanks.

8 Comments

  • Off the top of my head, you might need to get into the source and put a call to Context.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated before committing any changes. Probably not what you wanted, but it would be cool to have a feature. You could make it a config setting and everyone would be happy.

  • That actually goes against the concept of a Wiki, and more into a CMS type solution. Of course, I'm not saying that you can't do it, it's just... odd.

  • Well you know me -- I'm an odd one. :)

  • I think that the forums are fine for collaboration. A Wiki is fine for some things; but, I do not really see the necessity for it on www.WilsonDotNet.com right now. That is just my opinion. That said, all that I can do is underscore what others have said-- that is, in my experience, some Wiki implementations support authentication and some do not however using authentication does go against the the "ideals" of the Wiki itself, or so would claim the purist. HTH.

  • Authentication is becoming a matter of life for web based applications, especially Wiki's, now.



    The first problem is spam bots. Anonymous posting allows the spam bots in, and any defense mechanism will eventually be defeated.



    The second problem is that in the abscence of spam bots, you have to resort to some variety of human intervention to clean up all the stuff that l33t h4x0r types do to pages, or totally off topic, etc. comments.



    With registered accounts, you at least have a shallow layer of defense. You know who posted it, etc.



    This has been one thing hurting the legitimacy of sites like wikipedia, in fact. Allowing anyone to update and correct is fine, but it becomes difficult to verify what information is accurate and what information is not in a given entry.

  • I've used "location" tags in the web.config file to allow access to the viewer page and not to the edit page the details are in the FlexWiki FAQ, can't find them now, but I hope that helps.

  • Eh, I don't see anything anti-wiki about authenticating your users. So long as registration is free and really easy. Plus, if the other users can't see their IP, you are still pretty anonymous.



    When you have authenticated users updating the site, you can track a specific individual's modifications, and even ban an IP if that person is abusive of the wiki.



    I'm sorry I don't have anyting useful to say! :/ I myself am very interested in .Net wikis, so thanks for posting about this shortcoming of FlexWiki.

  • Have a look at Mambo. It is a full CMS system, and maybe more than you want, but it is trivial to install and administer. Unfortunately, for you, it is a LAMP solution which you may not be looking for judging from your blog.

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