UseModWiki is a

wiki software Wiki software (also known as a wiki engine or a wiki application) is collaborative software that runs a wiki, which allows the users to create and collaboratively edit pages or entries via a web browser. A wiki system is usually a web application ...

written in

Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

and licensed under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

. Pages in UseModWiki are stored in ordinary files, not in a

relational database A relational database (RDB) is a database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is a type of database management system that stores data in a structured for ...

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

s in English and many other languages were powered by UseModWiki until switching to

MediaWiki MediaWiki is free and open-source wiki software originally developed by Magnus Manske for use on Wikipedia on January 25, 2002, and further improved by Lee Daniel Crocker,mailarchive:wikipedia-l/2001-August/000382.html, Magnus Manske's announc ...

History

After

Ward Cunningham Howard G. Cunningham (born May 26, 1949) is an American computer programmer who developed the first wiki Excerpt from 2014 book '' The Innovators''. and was a co-author of the '' Manifesto for Agile Software Development''. Called a pioneer, and ...

created the first wiki website

WikiWikiWeb The WikiWikiWeb is the first wiki, or user-editable website. It was launched on 25 March 1995 by programmer Ward Cunningham and has been a read-only archive since 2015. The name ''WikiWikiWeb'' originally also applied to the wiki software that o ...

, there were various "WikiWikiClones" that implemented the functions and design of WikiWikiWeb's engine ("WikiBase"), mainly written in

. Peter Merel developed CVWiki which was an early WikiWikiClone released partially under the

GNU Lesser General Public License The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

, and Markus Denker then developed AtisWiki which was released under the

and based on CVWiki. In the 1990s, Clifford Adams initiated the Usenet Moderation project that would allow users to share rating, editing, and eventually summary/change information about

Usenet Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...

postings. It was replaced by the concept of

wiki A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...

s in 1999, and the development of UseModWiki started on October 11 as a simplified

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods either to h ...

of AtisWiki. From version 0.4 ("WikiFour") in November 1999, more functions and improvements were introduced to UseModWiki. In 2000, the second UseModWiki website MeatballWiki was launched and hosted in ''usemod.com'', along with the official website of UseModWiki. In 2001, as Adams was both of the UseModWiki developer and a

Wikipedian The Wikipedia community, collectively and individually known as Wikipedians, is an online community of volunteers who create and maintain Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. Wikipedians may or may not consider themselves part of the Wikimedia m ...

, he brought many improvements for the usages of an encyclopedia to v0.91 and v0.92, especially " free links" that uses double square-brackets (e.g.,

Wikipedia 






Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

) as an option for linking to another page, supplementing the older functionality of using

camel case The writing format camel case (sometimes stylized autological, autologically as camelCase or CamelCase, also known as camel caps or more formally as medial capitals) is the practice of writing phrases without spaces or punctuation and with cap ...

. In September 2003, after two years of development from the previous version, the release of version 1.0 introduced many new features including CSS,

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many ...

, file uploads,

UTF-8 UTF-8 is a character encoding standard used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode Transformation Format 8-bit''. Almost every webpage is transmitted as UTF-8. UTF-8 supports all 1,112,0 ...

. The development was then halted, and a

cross-site scripting Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a type of security vulnerability that can be found in some web applications. XSS attacks enable attackers to inject client-side scripts into web pages viewed by other users. A cross-site scripting vulnerability may be ...

vulnerability (CVE-2004-1397) was discovered in December 2004. It was patched in July 2007 when Markus Lude took over the project of UseModWiki from Clifford Adams, with the release of version 1.0.1. Only bug fixing versions were released since that. The official domain was moved to ''usemod.org'' in late September 2023, and a minor update for that change was released later in November.

Use by Wikipedia

The wiki software for the

English Wikipedia The English Wikipedia is the primary English-language edition of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15 January 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition. English Wikipedia is hosted alongside o ...

was UseModWiki (phase I, retroactively) since the establishment on January 15, 2001, and as of January 2002, Wikipedias in 22 languages were powered by UseModWiki. The English edition switched to " the PHP script" (phase II) on January 25, 2002, a new wiki software based on UseModWiki but rewritten in

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared towards web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by the PHP Group. ...

. On July 20, "the PHP script" was then replaced by its own rewritten wiki software (phase III), currently known as

, for better performance and functionality. Other language editions gradually switched to MediaWiki afterwards, and as of late 2003, only a few active editions including Catalan Wikipedia were still powered by UseModWiki. In 2004, the last-remaining UseModWiki editions switched to MediaWiki. meta:Wikipedia software upgrade status

References

External links

* *
List of sites running UseModWiki

Introducing UseModWiki
{{Wiki software 1999 software Cross-platform software Free wiki software Free software programmed in Perl History of Wikipedia

History

Use by Wikipedia

See also

References

External links