Private wikis

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Private wikis
Miraheze offers private wikis in addition to public ones. Uses include for internal documentation, personal notes, private communities and more. Testing of features may take place as well, but should not be the primary purpose (using the Public Test Wiki is encouraged instead).

A private wiki is a wiki that cannot be readable by all users. By default, only users in the local sysop and member user group can see and/or edit private wikis. (Certain in select global user groups (Stewards, Trust and Safety, and SRE) also have access to private wikis, to respond to local wikis' requests that they can't otherwise affect themselves, enforce global policies, or resolve technical issues with wikis, respectively.) The Main Page (as defined in your wiki's MediaWiki:Mainpage page; by default "Main Page") on these wikis, and a few other pages (for technical reasons), are whitelisted (so they can be read by everyone).

If a bureaucrat wants to make their public wiki private (or vice versa), they may do so at Special:ManageWiki (on their wiki) and check/uncheck the "private" box.

When requesting a wiki, you can tick the "Private wiki" to request it be private. If you later want to make it private (or public), follow the steps above.

Add users to private wiki[edit | edit source]

To add a user to your private wiki so that they can edit and read, please do the following:

  1. Make sure the user visited your wiki first.
  2. Go to Special:UserRights on your wiki.
  3. Enter the users' username.
  4. Add them to the member group.

Hiding the Main Page from view[edit | edit source]

As the Main Page (by default /wiki/Main_Page but can be whatever as defined in your MediaWiki:Mainpage) is not private, you may find it an inconvenience to have such an important page world readable. A workaround of this is to create a new page (for example, Home), then place a redirect from the Main Page to Home; this can be done by writing #REDIRECT [[Home]] as the complete contents of the page.

By doing so, MediaWiki will redirect to another page and then prompt users to login before seeing the page.

Whitelisting pages[edit | edit source]

To allow some pages to be read without requiring login, you'll need to whitelist them. To do so, go to Special:ManageWiki/settings -> Permissions on your wiki and set the pages you want to be whitelisted in the Whitelist Read ($wmgWhitelistRead) section. Once you do that, anyone can read the pages you've whitelisted without needing special rights or to login.

Links[edit | edit source]
https://meta.miraheze.org/wiki/Private_wikis
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