Question

OK I feel really stupid asking this because I'm sure it's documented somewhere, but I haven't been able to find it. I'm on Windows, and I used the general installer that installs Apache, Perl, and TWiki all in one shot.

When a new user registers, the form doesn't ask them for a password. The system sends the user a registration email asking them to click a link or enter the code in the form provided immediately after they register. After they register, they get another email, and there are links for changing their password and resetting their password. They can go to the link for their home page because they are basically logged in at this point.

But since they didn't specify an initial password, and no password is ever provided in the emails, they have to use 'Reset Password' instead of 'Change Password' which is VERY unintuitive... Is there a default password that is set for new user registrations? I've tried the login name, the WikiName, the email address, 'guest', 'TWikiGuest', , and everything else I can think of... none work.

Am I forced to use 'Reset Password' which ends up sending them ANOTHER email just so they can change their password??

TIA!

Environment

-- MichaelBray - 09 May 2008

Answer

Did you try a blank password?

I had this same problem, actually, and kind of did it the hard way to shield the user from all the mess:

1. Create the userpage, set it up and all that.
2. Set their email to point to my email
3. Use the BulkResetPassword feature to send a bogus password to me
4. Log in as that user with the generated password & change the password to something simple
5. Change the email back
6. Go and tell the user their new login info and ask them to change their password.

-- RedByer - 15 May 2008

Have you administrative access to the server? If so you can go to twiki/data directory and work out with the .htpasswd. Bulkregister everyone and set your own password in everyone accounts. You can use a temporal account with a simpler password. Then notify all users about their account and their password. It doesn’t matters if the passwords are encrypted, you can copy and paste them anyway.

-- EnriqueCadalso - 15 May 2008

So, just copy them (in encrypted form) from .htpassword and send them out and they paste those int? Will that work?

-- RedByer - 15 May 2008

No. The .htpasswd has this structure

RedByer:yourencryptedpassword:redbyer@mydomain.com
OtherUser:otheruserencryptedpassword:otheruser@domain.com

If you know your password you can copy your encrypted password to the otheruserencryptedpassword, so he will be able to log on with your current password. The copy and paste is to be done in the .htpasswd. To the user send your current password. That's why I suggested the creation of a temporary account to do it.

-- EnriqueCadalso - 15 May 2008

Awesome! That's a simple way to do it and never thought of it. Could even create dummy account for that very purpose. Thanks Enrique!

-- RedByer - 16 May 2008

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