I can't speak to the general availability of PHP skills on the net, except to say I've seen statistics that show that PHP the single most common Mod for Apache with an 850,000 server installed base -- which is about over three times mod pearl's 250,000. Those statistics come form www.secutityspace.com. The exact web site is:

http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.200107/apachemods.html

I have some basic skills with PHP and MySQL, and some experience with PosgreSQL. I'm no uberhacker, but I can throw together PHP code a lot faster than pearl CGI, so I think PHP is a reasonable way to go.

I'll look into it, but I seem to remember seeing another PHP based WikiWiki project out there, so we may have an existing code base to work with. (Though it looks like Magnus may have done this for us as well...)

I think MySQL will be fine for a project like this, no matter whether we choose PHP or Mod Pearl, but we should take a look at what we are likely to need in the future before making a commitment to a particular database backend.

-----Original Message----- From: Jimmy Wales [mailto:jwales@bomis.com] Sent: Friday, August 24, 2001 5:30 PM To: wikipedia-l@nupedia.com Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] PHP Wikipedia

How difficult do you think it will be to import all the existing wikipedia data into your version?

What's your take on the general availability of PHP skills on the net, versus Perl skills?

I've been talking to Clifford Adams about the future of Wikipedia and UseModWiki, and he's given his blessing to a Wikipedia-centric fork of his code. Some of the design goals for UseModWiki, namely that it be easy to install, etc., aren't necessarily consistent with some of the more highly specialized needs of Wikipedia. He suggests that we find someone (Magnus? :-)) to take over the forked version, and that we could set up a modern CVS, etc.

I'm reluctant to go the PHP route, partially because I don't personally know much about PHP, but if you can convince me that it's sufficiently superior to a mod_perl or perl fastcgi solution, I'm thinking that we could go your route. Your code could be wikipedia-centric, and we could all learn to help you with it.

--Jimbo

Magnus Manske wrote:

Hi all,

as a few of you might know, I just wrote a complete (well, almost)

Wikipedia

software as a PHP script!

It has all essential wiki features like article editing, version

management,

user management, subpages, etc. Additionally, its data storage is completely MySQL (fast!), it has a file upload tool, some other goodies soon. Maybe best of all, script and database are prepared to support some kind

of

editor/superuser functionality for "locking" pages, as it is currently discussed.

Now to the bad sides (yes, there are some...)

• I don't have a server to host it yet. Maybe I can run it on the Nupedia

server sometimes. So, no trying yet, sorry.

• The parser (to convert the source text into readable stuff) is very

basic.

I copied the HomePage and the SandBox from wikipedia, and they look about the same, but this is wherte the bugs will be.

• Currently, I don't have a means to convert wikipedia to MySQL

automatically, which is what would have to be done if (IF!) this script

ever

gets used.

Just letting you know there's an early but working alternative ready...

Magnus

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