Geeklog Forums

Does anyone have advice about using GeekLog in a public school setting? I'm thinking about using it as an intranet and school newspaper for our 6th through 12th grade schools. I'm worried about some of our students ruining the comments system for everyone (e.g. how do I handle kicking abusers off the system if they can just make a new account (perhaps with a Hotmail account) anyway?) All success and horror stories are appreciated!

Generally speaking Geeklog is very capable of serving a public school setting. If you are really worried about users abusing the comments here are a couple simple things you can do: 1) turn off anonymous postings. This will force users to login making it a bit easier to identify any abusers 2) really make use of the censorship features. In config.php you can add all the words that aren't acceptable in a school setting so they are replaced with something like *censored* 3) what the Geeklog access.log. I'm not sure off-hand if this is works this way yet but it should. Everytime Geeklog users log in we should log the username and IP to access.log. If it doesn't already do this, when the offending user does post something you *should* be able to pull the IP from the sessions table (assuming it hasn't expired). Would that be enough for your needs?

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The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there's only one other choice.

Unfortunately, no. I need to be able to be sure that there is a one-to-one relationship between users and usernames. For example, as far as my testing has shown, GeekLog would currently allow situations like this to occur: 1) Student is kicked off GeekLog for good reasons. Student creates new login using the same email account. 2) Student is kicked off GeekLog for good reasons. Student goes to Hotmail.com and makes a new email address. Student uses that address to register for a new GeekLog account. 3) Student is kicked off GeekLog. A friend allows him/her to use their email address. That student then registers for a new account using their friend's email address. The way that I see it, I need the following two things added. I could be wrong, so please correct me if I overlooked something. 1) _Only_ <username> @schooldomain.org can register for GeekLog accounts. All email addresses that try to register for a GeekLog account that do not end in this domain are rejected. (Preferably at the web interface so that feedback is immediate.) 2) Only one GeekLog account may be held by a given email address at a time. I could see why these would be configuration options, of course. For out- of-the-box defaults, GeekLog could use something like "+\@.+\..+" for account registration requirements and set the multiple-accounts-per-email setting on by default. That will let other GeekLog users continue to use it without a problem. But I (and people in my situation) could still run an effective BBS, intranet, school site, etc. by changing these variables. I hope that made sense. - Jaime

This makes me really wonder if one could configure geeklog to use other authentication methods, e.g. LDAP, NIS. And in addition, tell geeklog to first look in LDAP and then in the geeklog user databaese or only look in LDAP. This would be ideal for controlling access to geeklog (e.g. geeklog in public school). -- Marc

That's easy; in my school we have accounts already set-up in the network, Hence; basically you could have the admin create the accounts for the children.

well of the two things you need to take care of, the second one is already done. You can't create multiple accounts with the same email address. With that said, the only immediate change you need is you want to be able to ensure email addresses submitted for new accounts are from a specific domain. This is what I'd call a custom hack and I'd be willing to add it for you when I get around to it (right now installation scripts are top priority). My hunch is I'd wait for the first post 1.3 release to add it. If you can wait that long great...if not email and we'll see if we can't work something out.

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The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there's only one other choice.

I'd be happy to help someone add LDAP/NIS authentication support but unfortunately I don't know what would be involved. If someone ones to help me implement this then let me know otherwise it will probably stay unimplemented for the foreseeable future.

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The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there's only one other choice.

Has this been done yet? This is what I am looking to do. I would like to allow people from a specific domain to be able to create accts (ie intranet) Thanks Ed