Hi Patrick, as long as the access rights management hasn't changed too much since 8.4.3, this should be relatively easy. First, remember this: once a permission is set, it is denied to everyone else, so even if you set one page to be invisible to unregistered users, that page will also be invisible to all other users, unless you explicitly state that others may see it. The group problem should be simple: Unless the top page is the "Main" page, go to the page, go Settings -> Administer Page -> Rights: Page & Children There you can explicitly set group access rights. If your top page is "Main" or another page containing technical subpages, only set the Viewing permissions to the Page, NOT its children. No anonymous access can be set on Administer Wiki -> Users & Groups -> Rights in a checkbox labeled "Prevent unregistered users from viewing pages..." To remove the Sandbox, simply set the top pages viewing permissions to "denied" on unregistered users, that should remove it from the view of all others as well. For the rest, check Administer Wiki -> Extension Manager -> Installed Extensions for the etension you want to remove, and remove it with "uninstall". Word of warning, though, this CAN break your layout, as some extensions seem to have a greater effect on the default pages than expected. Good Luck ;)

Hi Patrick, [snip]

Thanks, Stefan. Could anyone explain the reasons why spaces were removed? I mean, what better way to keep seperate projects neatly separated while having them all indexed and searchable in the same wiki?

Just replying to this part, there are some info at http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Features/ContentOrganization/ and especially in http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Features/ContentOrganization/Nested... which is linked from the first URL. In short: * Spaces are still there in the model (and you can see it surface in the APIs you use in scripts in wiki pages) * However in the UI (i.e. for end users) we’re trying to only expose the concept of Pages and we’re implementing Nested Pages with Nested Spaces Thanks -Vincent

Kind regards, Patrick

On 15 Mar 2017, at 21:40, Patrick M. Hausen <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi all,

I'm still trying to move a private Wiki from Confluence to Xwiki, now 9.1.2. I just cannot find my way to the access rights system.

What I need:

A page tree like this:

A A.1 A.1.1 A.1.2 A.2 A.2.1 B B.1 B.1.1 B.1.2 B.2 B.2.1 C C.1 ...

And the following mechanics:

No anonymous access, only logged in users. Users belong in group A, B or C - possibly more than one of them. Users of Group A should see the top page A and subpages in the navigation panel. Users of Group B should see the top page B ... Users of more than one group should see all corresponding pages.

Beneath the top pages all users should have full create/edit/comment/delete rights.

Simply speaking: I'm trying to achieve what can easily be done with Confluence spaces, now that Xwiki removed them for some reason.

They’re still there, see http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Features/ContentOrganization/

Users working on project X should see only pages (and navigation tree) of project X, while the board of directors should be able to see and work on all projects.

That’s possible.

Subwikis won't do because of the "multiple group memberships/board of directors" requirement, if I read that part of the documentation correctly.

I don’t understand what you mean by "multiple group memberships/board of directors” and why it’s an issue with multi-wiki. You can have as many groups you want on the main wiki for example and then set permissions on each sub-wiki. You don’t need to create local users if that’s your worry. See http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Features/WikiVsNestedPages (which is linked from http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Features/ContentOrganization/) if you need to know the detailed differences between nested pages and multi-wikis.

So I need nested pages. Any hints on how to configure this would be greatly appreciated!

Yes, there’s nothing to configure, you just click the + button to add a page under the current one (or specify any location in the Add page dialog that opens).

Second, I want all applications, blog, sandbox, ... gone from what users see.

You still want these apps in the wiki but only visible to some users or completely gone and removed?

When I try to delete these pages I get the warning that I should instead remove the extension …

Yes that’s good. What’s the problem you faced? We recently introduced a protection to avoid users deleting application pages by mistake, see http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/ReleaseNotes/Data/XWiki/9.1/ Note that we currently have a limitation that we need to fix ASAP: http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-8608 Thus in the meantime you can disregard the warning and delete the pages of those apps you don’t need instead of uninstalling them.

Users should see a hierarchical navigation panel on the left and the page on the right and rest of the area in the browser. Simple and clean. Nothing (!) else.

Possible?

Sure. Thanks -Vincent

Many many thanks in advance! I don't want to complain about free software and of course I could "just buy Confluence" instead. Unfortunately a regular license is way out of budget for our small organisation and we have outgrown the 10 users you get for the "almost free" starter license from Atlassian. When I first found Xwiki I was so excited it would support spaces, only to learn that they were removed again ...

Thanks in advance! Patrick

On 16 Mar 2017, at 09:51, Patrick M. Hausen <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Vincent,

...

Am 16.03.2017 um 08:28 schrieb Vincent Massol <[email protected]>:

No it wasn’t removed. It’s actually the complete opposite: it’s been improved. You now have the ability to create unlimited depth of hierarchies and with the ability to set cascading permissions at all levels.

It’s just that we’re now calling this feature Nested Pages and no longer spaces (previous spaces were only 1 level deep BTW).

And you still have the additional possibility of creating sub-wikis.

Where did you find this info? I’d like to correct it if you found it in the documentation.

I got it from you on this list IIRC ;-)

Ok then you must have extracted it without the context. So the doc is correct probably.

I understand the technical similarity of concepts. Yet, from a UI perspective I would prefer to have the topmost hierachy level called "spaces" or "projects" or "what-have-you" and a separate "spaces" menue to create, select, delete these.

Having one concept is much simper than having two. However I can understand that coming from windows and file systems you’re more used to folder and files. XWiki has chosen to have only folders (or only files depending on how you view it). The reason is that in xwiki a “folder” can have content so it’s not different from a “file”.

Obviously the navigation panel on the left should show only the page tree contained in that "space" as long as I'm "in that space”.

I disagree here. This is far from obvious and the reason we’re displaying by default all pages is because there’s a need for a visible global navigation panel. Now nothing prevents you from editing this panel and changing this behavior by adjusting the macro parameters. See http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Document%20Tree%20Macro...

...

I don’t understand what you mean by "multiple group memberships/board of directors” and why it’s an issue with multi-wiki.

I read that Wiki vs Nested Pages docs - multiple times ;-)

Ok then I don’t understand how you could have inferred that we lost the ability to have nested content. Could you explain what we need to improve in this doc that would have helped you not be confused?

It's the "Ability to easily query data across instances" that multi-wikis are missing.

Depends. You can use the SOLR search for that to a large extent. I don’t see what this has to do with "multiple group memberships/board of directors” , could you explain?

I'm repeating myself, sorry - coming from Confluence we have just one big wiki but with multiple project related containers Confluence calls "spaces". But you can still search across all of them you have access to, link from one to another, include content snippets from one space in a page in another space and more.

I’m repeating myself and yes that’s the default of xwiki too. There’s nothing to do to have this, it’s builtin! And again it’s documented and I’ve also explained how to do that in my previous reply. So once more you just create your page hierarchy using the “+” button.

I just want to emulate that as closely as possible because that's how we are used to work.

You don’t need to emulate. That’s how xwiki works too.

Using the topmost level of the nested pages hierarchy for spaces e.g. creates an odd looking navigation panel with just one entry at the top level for users that are only in one project/group.

You have 2 options: - option 1: modify the navigation panel to set the root to be the current page - option 2: create another nav panel to keep the global one at the root and set that other nav Panel in subpage roots for your various projects/groups.

It would be more convenient to select the space/project as a separate operation and have all the second level pages at the top of the navigation panel.

Thanks for your help - as Stefan pointed out my main mistake probably was to restrict access to "Main plus children". I can live with the different UI, if there is really no way to get that "spaces" menue back that you had in 7.x (?).

Nothing has been lost. In 7.4.x the home page had a dashboard gadget called “Pages” listing all pages of the wiki in a tree. Exactly the same as we have now in the Navigation Panel on the left (we just moved it there so that it’s available by default from all pages for easier navigation). So I’m not sure what you are referring to.

Side note: another "concept" thing that I think Confluence gets right and a lot of others don't - not quite sure about Xwiki, yet - in Confluence every page has a parent. Except for the space home that is the top of the hierarchy, of course.

Same in xwiki.

In Mediawiki et. al. you can just create a page named "bazong" in the middle of nowhere and nobody will ever see it unless they use the search or the list of all pages. I personally consider it mandatory that *all* content has a *defined place* in a hierarchy of pages that is accessable through a menue that folds out and in. But others may think different.

Ok then you should like xwiki :) Thanks -Vincent

Kind regards Patrick

On 16 Mar 2017, at 10:44, Patrick M. Hausen <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi!

...

Am 16.03.2017 um 10:14 schrieb Vincent Massol <[email protected]>: Ok then I don’t understand how you could have inferred that we lost the ability to have nested content. Could you explain what we need to improve in this doc that would have helped you not be confused?

I didn't. I just got the impression that once you had a separate "spaces" menue including a "create space" option and now it's gone. It's more of a user interface question. I'm missing that separate namespace.

...

It's the "Ability to easily query data across instances" that multi-wikis are missing.

Depends. You can use the SOLR search for that to a large extent. I don’t see what this has to do with "multiple group memberships/board of directors” , could you explain?

In Confluence a search query searches all spaces I have access to. Not so woth Subwikis unless you implement Solr. - Correct?

Confluence doesn’t support multi wiki… so you can’t compare at all. Actually even worse, confluence doesn’t support nested spaces, see https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-1095 If you’re talking about search only, then whether you’re in a single wiki or multi wiki you can have the search look everywhere. Try it on xwiki.org and you’ll see you’ll get results for sub wikis too.

So once more you just create your page hierarchy using the “+” button.

Great. And if a parent page is mandatory, that's even better.

...

You have 2 options: - option 1: modify the navigation panel to set the root to be the current page - option 2: create another nav panel to keep the global one at the root and set that other nav Panel in subpage roots for your various projects/groups.

I'll probably start with getting the access rights for the top level correct try to learn about modifying panels in the next couple of days.

...

Nothing has been lost. In 7.4.x the home page had a dashboard gadget called “Pages” listing all pages of the wiki in a tree. Exactly the same as we have now in the Navigation Panel on the left (we just moved it there so that it’s available by default from all pages for easier navigation).

I'm not claiming anything about nested pages was lost.

I started with Xwiki with version 8.something and Google referred me to this document when I was searching for wikis that had spaces:

http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Features/Spaces

Ok that was a leftover page. This page was no longer referenced from the navigation. I’ve now removed it to avoid confusion. Thanks -Vincent

It really is that simple: I (it's just me, Xwiki is fine, really) want the first level of the page hierarchy to be called something different than "page" and a separate way of creating these entities only available to administrators and the navigation panel to only show pages below the currently active "space". Just like Confluence does. If that is not possible with Xwiki I'll have to find a different way of organising things if I want to replace Confluence with free software. And all in all Xwiki really looks like the strongest contender here.

Only remark: I really wonder why that "Spaces" documentation I linked above is still there. I was searching for hours for that "Add -> Space" menu. And I would still prefer to have it ;-)

Thanks again Patrick