Description

This is the complete NatsWiki engine running the NatsWeb, including a modified TWiki engine and the NatSkin / NatSkinPlugin / NatCachePlugin suite. This software will only be provided for convenience as long as the NatsWiki modifications are incompatible with the current mainstream TWiki engine. So the NatsWiki is a kind of friendly fork of the TWiki Beijing release, so to say. In other words: using the NatSkin / NatSkinPlugin / NatCachePlugin isn't granted to work on TWiki Cairo or on the upcoming Dakar release of TWiki.

Differences

Here's a list of differences between TWiki (Beijing) and the NatsWiki. Note, that this is rather incomplete

• Cascading Style Sheets: I've removed hardcoded html formatting attributes in many places and replaced them with CSS class names. The original engine was coupled much too tight to the default skin.

• Authentification: in short - I don't like realm-based authentification. This is done purely on a cockie based scheme in the NatsWiki, based on the SessionPlugin found somewhere on TWiki.org

• Wiki Caching: this is realy mandatory for every CMS online system. To make this work on TWiki, some of its special dependencies have to be taken into account, especially in combination with a stricter access controll, i.e. every TWikiUser has its own cache set. and invalidation of cache pages is done during write not during read. Alas, this is still an incomplete solution as a dependency API is missing. Right every page can add a Set CACHEABLE = no to disable caching per topic. To get a freshly rendered of a topic add ?refresh=on to the url, or see the More link of the NatSkin.

• Security: NatsWiki will switch to an ssl encrypted connection whenever you logon. TWikiGuest will default to an unencrypted connection by default.

• Security (again): the cgi scripts in /bin have been audited to be realy secure, that is control accecss control asap.

• Security (again): the complete NatsWiki engine is runnig using strictness + warnings in its perl scripts (uuh)

• Security (again): all known security issues in the original TWiki engine are patched in. CAUTION: please register your installation on TWiki.org to get security-related announcement mails directly. But anyway will NatsWiki maintained with respect to all upcoming issues.

• Obfuscating Email Addresses: the default way of fighting spam in TWiki was to put a STOPSPAM word somewhere in the middle of the address. Alas, this is an incomplete approach where most of the crawlers are still able to extract email addresses from the TWiki content. So I added a mechanism to replace the at-symbol with an at-image . Better don't supply any at-symbol.

• ...

Installation

The NatSkin is package is downloadable below. Note, that it comes with a default content stripped down to a minimum to give you a good startingpoint.

You might first read the TWikiInstallationGuide for general information on how to install TWiki in the normal case and do the following steps:

   mkdir twiki
   cd twiki
   unzip NatsWiki.zip
   vi twiki.conf # make some changes
   vi bin/setup.cfg # make some changes
   vi lib/TWiki.cfg # make some changes
   vi bin/.htaccess # make some changes
   su - # become root
   chown -R www-data.www-data data pub # set the file permissions for the apache user
   cp twiki.conf /etc/apache/conf.d # add twiki params to your apache
   /etc/init.d/apache reload # notify apache of you twiki engine
   exit # logout root 
   mozilla http://localhost/edit/TWiki/TWikiPreferences # fix some site preferences 

There's a default AdminUser preinstalled with the password set to admin. You should login and change the password a soon as possible!

Feedback & Discussion

Leave your comments here.

Change History

2005-03-17: initial release