New subject: [Mediawiki-l] One wiki, multiple private sections (or a wiki farm?)

14 Dec 2008

I want to set up a wiki which will contain a series of private sections, where each
section will only be accessible to a specific set of users. When someone registers as a
user they're given their own private section: one or more pages that only they and
their friends can read and edit.

Then, to give a friend read/write access to their private section, they'd fill out a
form with a username and email address. An automatically generated password would be sent
to their friend's email, and that user will then be given read/write access to the
section.

I want there to be a common section that everyone can see, and the admin should be able to
see all the sections.

I don't want users of one section to know about the other sections. But, security that
specifically relates to this setup isn't that big of an issue: one user probably
isn't going to try hacking into another user's section. This is also probably not
going to be a high-traffic site.

I was thinking of using categories and it looks like there are extensions that limit
access to categories that I can use or modify. I can hack the core code if necessary, but
I'd prefer not to do that. Also, this will be on shared hosting.

Are categories the best way to do this? Are their extensions that would make this easier?
Are there tutorials already showing how to set something like this up?

I'd prefer to avoid creating a wiki family because it seems like that would make
administration more difficult. With just one wiki the admin would be able to see
everything without going to Special:Allpages for each of the wikis in the wiki farm.

I currently run a basic MW wiki, but I'm not familiar with all of MW's features.
Can someone suggest the best way to do this, bearing in mind that security between the
various sections isn't that much of a concern and also that I want to make
administration as easy as possible (unless it will require much more work)?