How do I create my own custom group in mediawiki?

Question

I have been reading carefully through the mediawiki documentation but I have not been able to find out how to create new groups.

When I look at Special:Userrights, I see only 3 groups : Bots, Sysops, Bureaycrats

I would like to create my own custom groups, so I can use some extensions like the http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Group_Based_Access_Control.

Can someone tell me how it's done, or point me to some documentation?

Answer 1

You can add permissions for new groups to your LocalSettings.php file and they will automatically appear in the Special:UserRights page.

For example, I wanted to disallow editing by regular users but create a "Trusted" group that was allowed to edit. The following code creates a "Trusted" group that is equal to the "user" group, except that "Trusted" users can edit but "user" users cannot.

$wgGroupPermissions['Trusted'] = $wgGroupPermissions['user']; $wgGroupPermissions['user'   ]['edit']          = false; $wgGroupPermissions['Trusted']['edit']          = true; $wgGroupPermissions['sysop'  ]['edit']          = true; 

On the Special:UserRights page, I can now check the "Trusted" box to make users trusted.

Answer 2

You can alter the appearance of the group name by creating the following messages: (For a group named ninja:)

• MediaWiki:Group-ninja (content: Ninjas)
• MediaWiki:Group-ninja-member (content: ninja)
• MediaWiki:Grouppage-ninja (content: Project:Ninjas)

This will insure that the group will be referred to as "Ninjas" throughout the interface, and a member will be referred to as a "ninja", and overviews will link the groupname to Project:Ninjas.

(source: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:User_rights#Examples)