Admin Guide

An Otter Wiki can be configured by Admin users who can find Application Preferences, User management etc. in the sidebar menu of their Settings.

Branding

In the Application Preferences the Site Name, which is displayed in the navigation bar on the top of the site and in emails, can be configured.

The Site Logo is displayed next to the site name, while the Site Icon (or favicon) is displayed in the browser tab and in bookmarks. Both Site Logo and Site Icon can be attachments. An Otter Wikis logo is the default for both.

The Site Description is used in the <meta name="description"> tag.

To hide the logo of An Otter Wiki, check Hide logo of an An Otter Wiki n the sidebar. A menu item linking the about information will be added to the menu.

User management

All users are listed in a table under User management. You can update the flags of the users by checking and unchecking the checkboxes, where means the flag is set and means the flag is not set. A set flag grants a privilege to a user.

Privileges granted per user add to the general permissions. For example, if in general only users with the Admin flag are allowed to upload attachments, the user@example.org can be allowed to Upload without being flagged as Admin.

A user with a in the Admin column has Admin permissions. The changes are applied with Update Privileges.

Edit a user

With you can open up a single user for editing. Here you can update Name and eMail of a user, and set flags and permissions. Changing a users name or email does not change the commit history and only affects future commits.

Like in the User management table you can control the users flags using the checkboxes.

The changes will be applied with Update.

Delete a user

On the Edit user page you can remove a user from the wiki's database. Check the box and hit Delete. Note that this will not change any edit history or prevent the user from signing up again.

The Sidebar can be configured to display the Page Index in different modes. You can display pages and directories either alphabetical, or with directories first, or only the directories. Alternatively you choose to not display the Page Index at all.

Content and Editing Preferences

Per default An Otter Wiki requires users to add commit messages when updating a page. You can configure this with the Commit Message setting. Setting this to optional will allow empty commit messages.

An Otter Wiki stores pages in files with names of all lowercase names. To retain the upper and lower case of the filenames, check Retain page name case.

With Enable Git Server allow users with the permission to READ to clone and pull the wiki content via git and users with UPLOAD/Attachment management permissions to push content. HTTP Basic authentication is used for non anonymous access. There is no option for using git via ssh.

Access Permissions and Registration Preferences

What is necessary for a user to be able to Read/Write pages or upload and modify attachments is controlled in the Permissions and Registration Preferences.

  • Read Access enables users to display pages and attachments. Including the history and every single commit.
  • Write Access enables users to edit pages.
  • Attachments Access enables users to upload and modify attachments.

Who can access what is defined via

  • Anonymous - Everyone can access the wiki without being logged in.
  • Registered - Users need an account and have to be logged in.
  • Approved - Users have to be logged in and the Approved flag has to be set.
  • Admin - Users have to be logged in and the Admin flag has to be set.

Additionally, you can configure privileges per user. The privileges granted per user add to the general permissions. See User Management above.

With Disable registration you can disable that anyone can sign up for a new account.

Configure Registration requires email confirmation, to ask users to confirm their email address, before their account is enabled. This is supposed to prevent users to register with a typo in their address or even using a fake mail address.

If a user needs to be approved, an admin user either needs to set the flag manually or enable Auto approve of newly registered users. When admins need to approve users, Notify admins on new user registration helps with that. For more convenience, enable Notify users when their account has been approved so that users are notified automatically and there is no need to notify them yourself.

Mail Preferences

To enable An Otter Wiki to send mails to users registering, resetting their lost password and notify admins about new users, configure the Mail Preferences. See the flask-mail documentation for configuration details.

You can test the configuration using Send Test Mail. Per default the test mail is sent to yourself.