Last year, PBwiki rolled out a neat new feature called PBwiki Identities. The general idea was that PBwiki users within the system would be treated as individuals rather than being connected to a specific wiki. This way, a user could manage multiple wikis without keeping track of all the passwords (there was also more control in wiki-administration).

As a quick note, a PBwiki Identity password is COMPLETELY separate from the password of any wiki you may have created. Here’s the order of how things should usually happen:

1. You create a new wiki, let’s say it’s at totallysweet.pbwiki.com (as of this entry, that wiki is up for grabs, just so you know). Furthermore, we’ll say that the password is abc123.
2. You start contributing in a few wikis, and you hate logging in to each one separately. So you go to http://my.pbwiki.com and create an Identity. Your Identity email is coolguy@someISP.com and your password is zyx987.
3. You enter your Identity page and enter the names and passwords for all the wikis in which you participate. In this case, you would put totallysweet for the wiki name and abc123 for the wiki-wide password.
   1. Alternately, somebody might invite you to participate in his/her wiki, to which you’ll be added as soon as you approve (by e-mail link). In this case, no password will exchange hands.
4. Now, you can login to all your wikis at one time just by going to my.pbwiki.com and logging in to your Identity with your email address (coolguy@someISP.com) and the password zyx987. Note that from this point on, you won’t need to login to totallysweet.pbwiki.com separately, nor do you need to use its specific password, abc123. You will also be automatically logged in to any wikis to which you were officially invited. Awesome huh?

As hinted above, there are two main useful cases:

1. Allow a PBwiki user to simultaneously manage/log-in to multiple wikis using a single password.
2. Allow a wiki administrator to accept (and kick) users on an individual basis (instead of based solely on password levels).

Today, we’ll just focus on creating your PBwiki Identity. Thursday, I’ll show you how to maximize your Identity management.

Creating An Identity

The first step is to go to the Identity login page (clicking the link will open a new window):

http://my.pbwiki.com

Your display will look like the image to the right, so you’ll want to do just like it demonstrates, clicking on “Create a new account.”

Now, you’ll be taken to a second page with three simple fields: your e-mail address, a password, and the password confirmation. The e-mail address will act like your identification for the Identity system.

Once you click the “Create new identity” button, you will be sent a confirmation e-mail. The following image shows the steps up to now:

You’ll get a message that says:

Ok, created user for [your e-mail address] — expect a confirmation email soon.
You can close this window now.

Close the window, and after a few minutes, go to check your mail. You should receive a new e-mail from PBwiki. Follow the directions, clicking the activation link. Once you click that, PBwiki processes your new Identity and takes you directly to your profile page.

Conclusion

Thanks for bearing with me through the past week as we did some restructing of the PBwiki Tip(s) of the Week. I’ve got a new schedule from now on, so expect to see new tips every Monday and Thursday (that’s right, two every week!).

Thursday, we’ll finish up with Identities, maximizing the process from both the perspective of a user/contributer and that of a wiki administrator. Once we’re done, I hope you’ll see the full power of the PBwiki Identities feature.

As always, thanks for your support and feel free to e-mail me at dochuyen84@gmail.com if you have any questions about my tips. Also, if your question is a little ambiguous, please give me some hint in the subject line of the e-mail, so I know the e-mail is PBwiki related. Thanks!

Click here to see all my past tips.

Jason Nguyen