CoWiki
Encyclopedia
coWiki is an inactive wiki engine
implemented in PHP 5
and using a MySQL
database. It is licenced under the GNU General Public License
. coWiki uses a markup language similar to that of TWiki
.
It is notable because it was one of the largest projects being developed while PHP 5 was still in early development.
Distinguishing features:
The first release (0.2.0) was in March 2002 for the BLUE MARS GmbH intranet.
Daniel began to look for new maintainers for the project on January 3, 2005.http://develnet.org/324.html New maintainers were found on January 12, 2005, led by Paul Hanchett.
Development soon moved into the open source software host tigris.org, where the 0.3.4 maintenance release was completed by the new staff on February 24, 2005.
By April 2006, the maintainers did not have the personal time to spend on the project, and on June 13, 2006, maintainer status was changed to include some new people. By November 2006 there was no development activity and very little mailing list activity.
On November 7, 2006, it was announced that the cowiki.org website would be taken down and archived, awaiting a new team for the project.
As of November 2006, coWiki is still used in a production capacity on personal and corporate websites and intranets. Daniel and a handful of other developers still offer consultation services and custom-programming focused around coWiki installations.
Commentary from the website on 13 December 2006: After almost five years of evolvement of the coWiki web collaboration software project, the development has been discontinued. The project passed away... Alas, all I must now sadly say is: R.I.P. coWiki.
A page would roll back to an earlier version. No references could be seen in the site or page history/changelogs. Edits would simply vanish. This was most notably seen on the homepage and it is possible (but not confirmed) that it could have happened on other pages.
At first, it was theorized that this bug would happen on installations which are heavily-trafficked and allowed public editing, as Sy's installation allowed. However, the coWiki.org website did not allow public editing of or commenting on its main page. Even after significant research and rewriting, this mysterious problem could still not be eliminated. It was a major blow to the project.
Wiki software
Wiki software is collaborative software that runs a wiki, i.e., a website that allows users to create and collaboratively edit web pages via a web browser. A wiki system is usually a web application that runs on one or more web servers...
implemented in PHP 5
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
and using a MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
database. It is licenced under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
. coWiki uses a markup language similar to that of TWiki
TWiki
TWiki is a Perl-based structured wiki application, typically used to run a collaboration platform, knowledge or document management system, a knowledge base, or team portal...
.
It is notable because it was one of the largest projects being developed while PHP 5 was still in early development.
Distinguishing features:
- UnixUnixUnix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
-style access controlFile system permissionsMost current file systems have methods of administering permissions or access rights to specific users and groups of users. These systems control the ability of the users to view or make changes to the contents of the filesystem.... - Database back-end
- Pseudo-hierarchical file system
coWiki history
The creator, Daniel T. Gorski, began development of coWiki in December 2001 as a weekend study to learn how a wiki works.The first release (0.2.0) was in March 2002 for the BLUE MARS GmbH intranet.
Daniel began to look for new maintainers for the project on January 3, 2005.http://develnet.org/324.html New maintainers were found on January 12, 2005, led by Paul Hanchett.
Development soon moved into the open source software host tigris.org, where the 0.3.4 maintenance release was completed by the new staff on February 24, 2005.
By April 2006, the maintainers did not have the personal time to spend on the project, and on June 13, 2006, maintainer status was changed to include some new people. By November 2006 there was no development activity and very little mailing list activity.
On November 7, 2006, it was announced that the cowiki.org website would be taken down and archived, awaiting a new team for the project.
As of November 2006, coWiki is still used in a production capacity on personal and corporate websites and intranets. Daniel and a handful of other developers still offer consultation services and custom-programming focused around coWiki installations.
Commentary from the website on 13 December 2006: After almost five years of evolvement of the coWiki web collaboration software project, the development has been discontinued. The project passed away... Alas, all I must now sadly say is: R.I.P. coWiki.
The "bad magic" bug
The website says If you find it, do not install it - it is evil and will destroy you data sooner or later.. This problem was dubbed "bad magic".A page would roll back to an earlier version. No references could be seen in the site or page history/changelogs. Edits would simply vanish. This was most notably seen on the homepage and it is possible (but not confirmed) that it could have happened on other pages.
At first, it was theorized that this bug would happen on installations which are heavily-trafficked and allowed public editing, as Sy's installation allowed. However, the coWiki.org website did not allow public editing of or commenting on its main page. Even after significant research and rewriting, this mysterious problem could still not be eliminated. It was a major blow to the project.