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tags: cleaning-up news open-source projects
The fact, this site is inactive doesn't mean we don't work on open source release of Wikidot software. In fact almost every day I do some cleaning in code, that makes it less specific to wikidot.com and more universal. We run Wikidot.com software on several servers in different paths, with different operating systems (CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, Mac OS X) and under different domains (both local and global). This software begins to be customizable again :-).
Recently I entirely removed the $GLOBALS['site'] variable from source, moved all Wikidot persistent files (beside database) to data/ directory (for easier backups and clarity), improved without-SSL configurations, worked hard on page saving internal API. In my free time I'm working on enabling INI configuration instead of old-bad conf/GlobalProperties.php which is hard to maintain.
We added HMAC-based hashing to saved passwords (instead of plain MD5, which might be simple to break for some silly passwords if one has database access), we do more things in background than before, we optimized user interface, fixed text label and enabled cross-site-includes which lets regular users share their wiki code snippets, just as they were included by other sites. It's been long time since we moved our closed software to Git, and this makes developing it pretty nice. We're using branches (many of them) and a nicely described process to organize work nicely without breaking to many things and thus to produce high quality code. Oh, and we use Wikidot daily. As our issue-tracker, blog engine, chat room, personal file space and more, more, more.
Pieter made Wikidot development more open, predictable and user-driven. He created at least the following successful projects at Wikidot (for Wikidot): http://blog.wikidot.com/, http://projects.wikidot.com/ and many templates of sites (or even full-blown applications) that are instantly-ready-to-use by simply cloning them. The central place for those templates is http://iron-giant.wikidot.com/.
Having all of this done and being done, we're all getting this project to a point where we can (once again) open its source to other people and let them fix (or at least find) bugs, improve code quality and performance, add features and contribute to our outstanding wiki service. This time, we would like to continue open-developing, in contrast to the last opening of the source, which was basically forking the closed sourced and not merging changes in open-source back to Wikidot.com.
I have over the past few weeks created my first wiki on wikidot.com (I had used wowwiki.com but never edited/updated a wiki) so have gotten use to how it works and what I can and can't do with it. Recently it occurred to me that if we used a wiki for our documentation for code changes (in our in-house system) this would be MUCH more versatile than loads of word documents…
So when I started digging to find a free wiki we could install in the security of our own system and found you have already opened the source to wikidot.com and are about(ish) to open it again from the current branch and everything I have come to understand on wikidot.com I was so please. There will be no relearning the changes and anything I learn from my wiki on wikidot.com could be applied straight to using our local copy and all of our documentation.
Thanks for all the hard work and keep it up! I can’t wait until you manager to release the new version!
Regards,
Zas
Wait — did I read that CSIs are available in the open source version? This is closer to the wikidot.com version than I expected. I thought .org was at least a year behind! :D
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)