HUBzero is an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

software platform A computing platform or digital platform is an environment in which a piece of software is executed. It may be the hardware or the operating system (OS), even a web browser and associated application programming interfaces, or other underlying s ...

for building websites that support scientific activities.

History

HUBzero was created by researchers at

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money ...

in conjunction with the NSF-sponsored Network for Computational Nanotechnology. It was based on the Purdue University Network Computing Hubs (PUNCH) project that had begun in the 1990s under Mark Lundstrom, Josef Fortes, and Nirav Kapadia. HUBzero allows individuals to create web sites that connect a community in scientific research and educational activities. HUBzero sites combine

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and ...

concepts with middleware that provides access to interactive simulation tools including access to TeraGrid, the Open Science Grid, and other national

grid computing Grid computing is the use of widely distributed computer resources to reach a common goal. A computing grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve many files. Grid computing is distinguished from co ...

resources. The software later became supported by a consortium and used for some other projects. HUBzero is released under various open source licenses.

Services

HUBzero provides free preconfigured virtual machines images that contain the full version of the HUBzero platform. The HUBzero Essential instance is also available through Amazon Web Services. HUBzero also offers two paid services, the HUBzero Foundation and a No Hassle Hosting service. The HUBzero Foundation is a community-based, non-profit organization that promotes the use of HUBzero and ensures ongoing sustainability of the core software. The HUBzero No Hassle Hosting service offers hosting solutions for other non-profit institutions. Through No Hassle Hosting, sites based on the HUBzero platform are maintained and supported by the HUBzero Development Team at Purdue University with better than 99% uptime.

Technology

The website is built from

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

: the

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

operating system, the

Apache web server The Apache HTTP Server ( ) is a free and open-source cross-platform web server software, released under the terms of Apache License 2.0. Apache is developed and maintained by an open community of developers under the auspices of the Apache Soft ...

, the

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database o ...

database, the

Joomla Joomla (), also spelled Joomla! (with an exclamation mark) and sometimes abbreviated as J!, is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing web content on websites. Web content applications include discussion forums, ph ...

content management system, and the

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward 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 ...

web scripting language. The HUBzero software allows individuals to access simulation tools and share information. Sites using the hub infrastructure are standardized with the following modules: *Interactive simulation tools, hosted on the hub cluster and delivered to web browsers *Simulation tool development area, including source code control and bug tracking *Space for teams to collaborate and build communities through Groups and Projects *Video seminars and animated presentations connected to an online course feature *Mechanism for uploading and sharing resources *Built-in user support features *Statistics about users and usage patterns *Integrations with Google Drive, GitHub, and Dropbox

References

External links

*{{Official website, hubzero.org
Website Categorization API
Free web development software Free content management systems