Web Web Two

WebWebX (formerly known as WebWebTwo) is an extension of WebWeb (originally written by DavidMcNicol). It provides the following extensions:

• Toolbar switchable between icons and text links per administrator's preference.
• Support for limited access by 'anonymous' users (viewing but not editing, deleting, etc.)
• The WebWebX administrator can choose from a range of security possibilities:
  • completely open (anyone may edit pages)
  • partially open (anonymous users may read and append, but not edit)
  • "fishbowl" mode (anonymous users can read, but cannot make any changes)
  • completely closed (no one but the administrator can edit pages)
• Append-only mode
  • Anonymous users can be limited to only adding text (automatically timestamped to denote it as an anonymous append) to existing pages.
• "Sign-in" option to enable 'anonymous' users to log in at any time
  • WebWeb requires users to already be signed in when they access the server. WebWebX adds a special link which can be clicked on at any time to bring up a sign-in dialog.
• New page archive management scheme which does not depend on DBM files
  • A principal problem when moving WebWebX to other platforms (other than Unix) was a dependency on code which was frequently not ported to those platforms. WebWebX's PageArchive class provides both the edit history management and a page "database" which requires only that the system being ported to handle the creation of arbitrary-length file names.
• "Back to previous page" support in all out-of-line functions (e.g., edit links, administration, purge, etc.)
  • WebWebX provides a link on most out-of-line pages which will return you to the page from which you came.
• Extended page locking
  • Pages can be locked to prevent problems with simultaneous updates. Information about who has the page locked and how long they've had it is displayed for anyone else reading the page. The Recent Pages report also shows pages that are currently being edited.
• Inside-the-system account management
  • WebWebX can now add IDs to its htpasswd file directly - no more fiddling with htpasswd! (This is of course limited to the administrator.)

WebWebX has been changed to use my new PageArchive package, getting rid of dependencies on a properly-working DBM package. A number of bugs have been corrected as well.

I think that WikiWiki itself could be made to use PageArchive, too, if Ward is interested. I know there were others interested in a replacement directory/file package for their own needs - they can check out PageArchive and let me know if it would be useful to them.

It's now possible to install WebWebX without having to have your webmaster set up anything other than a CGI-capable directory. You now have the option to make it as open or as closed (even read-only!) as you like.

Source code for WebWebX is available from http://www.ibiblio.org/emusic-bin/webwebx.cgi (was _http://prtims.stx.com/webwebx/_). I'm in the process of making the license a little more concrete, but I think it can be open-sourced without a problem.

-- JoeMcMahon

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Dear JoeMcMahon.

 Via the link in TragedyOfTheCommons, I found your source download link for  
 WebWebX, but I couldn't get a connection to your page
 { page not found error, 10/7/99 20:40 MET {mean European time} :-}.
 Your protection mechanism makes it suited for an EcommerceWiki = Shared
 income  for shared work, with author specific protected areas for 
 their ''product {[description|sell-link|download-page]{s} with{out} external 
 ecommerce servers''
 and of course a ''{more or less protected} boiler-plate for public interaction
 {including the wider {Web|Usenet} community}''. 

 Your Wiki could be a good infrastructure for a WorkingLikeaFarrierCommunity.

-- FridemarPache

A quick note: we are now using WebWebX to track our large (250K+ lines) Web gateway at http://harp.gsfc.nasa.gov/~imswww/pub/imswelcome (take a look at the WebWebX installation itself at http://lyta.gsfc.nasa.gov/imsdev-bin/whiteboard/webwebx.cgi, and see my thoughts on how it's worked for us at WebWebEksPerience). We're finding it invaluable to be able to save the design discussions and bug tracking wiki-style.

-- anon (JoeMcMahon?)

The above link to the source seems to be bad. The home site for webwebx seems to be http://www.ibiblio.org/emusic-bin/webwebx.cgi or http://ibiblio.org/webwebx.

-- AlanGrover?

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CategoryWikiImplementation