🌐 Qwiki Manual
Administration Guide / Access Control, Users & Security / Category Locks & Deletion Protection

Category Locks & Deletion Protection

To protect canonical manuals, compliance policies, and published sections from accidental deletion—especially across deep nested hierarchies—Standalone Qwiki provides Document Locks and Category Locks with cascading deletion guards.

Locking a Category

  1. Click the ⚙️ gear icon next to any category or nested folder in the left sidebar.
  2. Switch to the 🔒 Access & Security tab.
  3. Check 🔒 Lock Category (Prevent Deletion) (readOnly: true) and save.

What Happens When a Category Is Locked

  • Visual Indicator: Locked categories display a lock badge (🔒) and a Protected Category notice in the Danger Zone.
  • Deletion Suppression: Both UI deletion and api/publish.php deletion calls refuse to remove a locked category.
  • Cascading Ancestor Protection: Even if a parent category itself is unlocked, if any nested sub-category or document beneath it is locked (locked: true or readOnly: true), Qwiki prevents deleting that parent category until the protected items inside are unlocked or moved.

Locking Individual Documents

Open a chapter's Edit Details modal ➔ 🔗 Sharing & Access tab to enable document lock protection on sensitive chapters so they cannot be accidentally deleted from the toolbar or API.

Note

Category deletion locks protect structure and deletion safety; they are separate from Collaborative Soft Locks, which prevent concurrent editing collisions.