Thread:Project:Support desk/Changing Users & Adding "ConfirmAccount" Extension/reply

Hi!

Where is your wiki located? Things would be easier, if you gave us a URL.

You say you want to change the administrator account. The normal way of making an account, which is not administrator, an administrator, is by using the wiki page Special:UserRights. A bureaucrat can change any member's permissions on that page and so e.g. make a formerly ordinary user an administrator.

How did you change usernames?

By default changing usernames is not possible in MediaWiki. However, even after you changed a username, user permissions should still be unchanged. Reason is that user permissions are not tied to the name, but to a unique number, which every user gets internally, when he registers. Whether the actual user name changes or not, is not relevant for the permissions. You can rename a user as you like; as long as it still is the same account (and not an account, which you have created newly), user permissions should not get lost - as long as you use proper tools to change the name. How did you do that?

I do not know, why you downloaded the MediaWiki package. That is not necessary. Where exactly on your server you find your wiki, is hard to guess for us. You could check the Apache configuration to see, which folders are actually exposed to the public and then check these folders - in which you might again have symlinks pointing to somewhere completely different... Another way might be to check the output of phpinfo, which I am sure also contains some internal paths. The easiest way might be this: If you have someone else, who knows: Ask him!

To fix permissions the way you want, you have to edit the file LocalSettings.php. In that file, near the bottom you should add these three lines:

With these lines, normal users will no longer be able to create accounts. Administrators however will still be; they can then create accounts for others as needed. Installing the extension ConfirmAccount can then be the next step.

And updating MediaWiki can be the step after that one.