Problem:

Users need to be able to get to twiki ASAP to promote adoption. Also decreasing the barriers to typing in a URL that's useful is VERY helpful.

I don't know about the competitive Wiki implementations, but users naturally are getting used to using my.* domain names. It uses their knowledge to their advantage! A prime example is http://my.yahoo.com and other portals.

This request is inspired by ShorterURLs and knowing something about how cookies work.

Solution:

Going to http://my.twiki.org automatically takes you (using twiki.org as an example) http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Main/GrantBow It will know the username and set the URL based on a cookie that's set during login that's persistent across sessions. The cookie will have to contain just the full URL to go to.

Result:

Users can get to their own page more quickly and easily. This promotes using their TWiki page as a bookmark tool, their own play area where they can get used to editing with TWiki on a page that's just for them. This also promotes more interesting content in the Main TWiki web.

-- GrantBow - 16 Jan 2003

Related topics: ShorterURLs TWikiAsABookmarkManager TWikiBookmarklets SupportMoinMoinStyleBookmarks Plugins.RedirectBySubdomainAddOn Plugins.UserCookiePlugin Plugins.SessionPlugin

moved from ShorterURLs

Hmmm, now I'm thinking. How hard would it be to do a http://my.twiki.org? Fundamentally it's just a cookie and a redirect to http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Main/GrantBow right? OK, I don't know all the implementation issues. With the searches that I do to track the topics I contribute to, I have bookmarked this page as "My.twiki.org" in my browser bookmarks already.

-- GrantBow - 10 Jan 2003

A while back I wrote an add on that provides for redirects of this sort.

See RedirectBySubdomainAddOn

-- MartinCleaver - 11 Jan 2003

Setup:

• Apache configured for http://my.twiki.org (as an example)
• Is interaction with any topics necessary?

Use case:

• first (cookie not set) access to http://my.twiki.org
  • request a login
  • set the cookie
    • resulting persistent cookie will contain a value of http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Main/UserName
  • redirect to the cookie value
  • should the cookie be set under any other circumstances?
  • are features to view, change and/or remove the cookie necessary? Yahoo has a feature where it displays the username with a link to use in case you are a different user.
• access to http://my.twiki.org
  • reads the cookie and redirects to value of cookie
  • access to http://my.twiki.org/blah is undefined

-- GrantBow - 19 Jan 2003

Or, if you use the UserCookiePlugin, we could make the default page for http://twiki.org to be your home page (or any other you choose to set a TWIKIVARIABLE to). that way the URL that you go to is visible on your TWikiHomePage, and is easily set-able. then the only 'magic' is the automatic recognition of which user you are. I totally acknowledge that my UserCookiePlugin is very raw, but it was the quickest thing i could do at the time, and its been working now for a number of years. I hope to get back to it soon - now that its in CVS.

This would be implemented by setting the location of http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view to go to either the above TWIKIVARIABLE if you have a UserCookie to authenticate between sessions, or to the TWIkiPreferences valuse of that variable.

-- SvenDowideit - 19 Jan 2003

I'm sorry I haven't followed up, I hope to find more time soon. I use a feature similar to this most times I use TWiki via my GrantBow page already.

-- GrantBow - 21 May 2003

There are quite a few other applications for this - cookie-based user identification would also be very useful for future support of per-user local time display (see TimeZone and SettingCorrectTimeZone) and for future per-user locale settings (see InternationalisationUTF8 and InternationalisationEnhancements). Latter would enable per-user translations of a standard or customised skin to be displayed (requires some skin restructuring and localisation though). Also, user identification would help those who just want their skin selection to be used whenever they use a TWiki site.

-- RichardDonkin - 23 May 2003

A birdie told me there might also be something in a forthcoming plugin release regarding IP # authentication. This applies well to Intranets to help an authentication be cached on the server side. There's another advantage too: if you use LDAP or NIS as a source for your users and passwords, Intranet users don't even need to have a TWiki login in order to use this feature.

-- GrantBow - 23 May 2003