[See our past Previews of PBwiki 2.0: Overview]

We’ve received hundreds of notes from users who want to control access to specific pages on their wikis. We’re happy to announce that PBwiki 2.0 will include page-level access. Today we’re taking you on a preview tour of how page-level access controls will work.

In PBwiki 2.0, each page has a tab with relevant information, including “Page security.”
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A closer view
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By default, pages have the same security settings as the rest of your wiki (if your wiki is private, your pages will be private).
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New! Administrators can override default security and choose who has access to specific pages.
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Here, you select from a list of your wiki’s users and assign them the appropriate level of access. Note that we’ve slightly changed the levels of access to “Reader,” “Writer,” and “Editor.” (We’ll cover our new individual logins in an upcoming preview post.)

Why is this useful?
When we started PBwiki, we didn’t see the need for detailed access controls. But as we’ve grown, we’ve been hearing from users who want controls over who can access specific pages. Sometimes they want to add access, like inviting someone outside the company to one specific page (without exposing the rest of the wiki). Other times, they want to restrict access, such as preventing engineers from seeing marketing plans and having a premature heart attack.

By adding page-level access, you can control exactly who sees your content. This feature will be released in some limited fashion for free users.

Examples of using page-level access

  • A private business wiki. If you use a private wiki for business purposes, imagine managing your external vendors on your PBwiki. Create a page for each vendor and grant them access to that page only.
  • An educational wiki. If you’re running a classroom PBwiki, you may want to limit certain students to certain pages. Take your syllabus, for example — it may be different for your 3rd-period and 6th-period English classes. Use page-level access to restrict students to their appropriate page. Or create a page for each student and let them upload their homework directly to the page.
  • A personal wiki. I have a private wiki with various projects, and I’d love to be able to invite others to participate. But until now, I couldn’t, because they’d be able to see private information I have (like account numbers and passwords). Now, using page-level access, I can create specific pages and invite outside people to have access to that page only.

Coming up: More previews
Stay tuned for more previews on new features like individual logins and folders.

Golden Tickets: Get beta access to PBwiki 2.0
We have a limited amount of Golden Tickets to try out PBwiki 2.0 as a beta user. If you’re interested in trying out PBwiki 2.0 and giving us feedback, sign up for PBwiki 2.0 beta access.