Newsletter content

In this newsletter

1. TWiki 4.2.0 beta versions released
2. TWiki installation benefits from installer
3. Expiry and ETags improve your TWiki performance
4. Case Study: KQED's QUEST Program Managed by TWiki
5. "Two TWiki Applications under my belt, Going for the Third"
6. Status of 4.2.0 from the release manager
7. TWiki Stand Alone Project: Do You Want Flexibility?

1. TWiki 4.2.0 beta versions released

We have begun the count down to a new TWiki Release. As a first, a release branch has been forked off the MAIN development branch. For people wanting to help test the releases, there are nightly builds uploaded to nightly build area. Also, two beta versions have been released and can be downloaded from TWiki.org. To make 4.2 a quality release a lot of testing is needed. Please download the latest beta, and report any bugs you notice, even ones you can't quite reproduce, to TWiki bugs system and mark as Urgent.

https://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Blog/2007-10-02-twiki-420-beta-2-released-including-installers-for-windows-and-mac-osx
https://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Blog/2007-09-20-codevtwikirelease04x02-branched-and-beta-1-released

2. TWiki installation benefits from installer

TWiki 4.2 will be a much easier Wiki to install - with fully integrated native installers that will update your Computer with perl, apache and other tools needed to run TWiki. Installers are available for windows, MacOS and a few flavours of linux. Over the last month, there have been approximatly 2,000 downloads of the 4.2 beta installers, with the strongest showing from the 2 Windows installers. There seems to also have been a matching increase in bug reports from newer users.

https://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Blog/2007-09-22-twiki-42-beta-now-has-a-windows-installer https://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Blog/2007-10-02-twiki-420-beta-2-released-including-installers-for-windows-and-mac-osx

3. Expiry and ETags improve your TWiki performance

TWiki uses a lot of static files. You can reduce the load on your apache server, and increase the aparent speed of your user's experience, by setting the Expires HTTP header for static files to 'quite large'. This change was implemented on the TWiki.org web server, resulting in a much more consistent speed in the server, and noticably reducing the impact of those of us opening the days topics from WebChanges in tabs.

https://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Blog/2007-09-27-set-expiry-and-etags-to-improve-your-twiki-performance

4. Case Study: KQED's QUEST Program Managed by TWiki

Pether Thoeny went to a presentation by KQED, the Public Radio/TV for Northern California, on how they use TWiki in a structured way to manage the program. "QUEST is a TV, radio, web, and education series by KQED that explores science, environment and nature in Northern California." The program runs for 3 years and will produce 60 TV features and 48 radio features per year, as well as daily blogs and photo albums on Flickr. Craig Rosa, the interactive producer of QUEST, and Lauren Sommer, the wiki champion first gave an overview of QUEST, and then explained how their structured wiki approach solved their needs.

https://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Blog/2007-10-05-case-study-kqed

5. "Two TWiki Applications under my belt, Going for the Third"

Neil is a systems administrator and programmer at a non for profit working closely with civilian agencies in the US. The organization as a whole is interested in Wikis. Neil has been able to successfully champion wikis (specifically TWiki) within his division and among the people he works with. The first successful TWiki deployment was a large survey application for a government agency.

https://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Blog/2007-10-12-two-twiki-applications-under-my-belt-going-for-the-third

6. Status of 4.2.0 from the release manager

Kenneth Lavrsen is release manager for TWiki 4.2.0, the next TWiki release that is packed with exciting new features and improvements of existing features. Together with Sven Dowideit, he is responsible for getting 4.2.0 ready to release. But without your help, his task becomes impossible! Read about how you can help in this article.

https://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Blog/2007-10-13-status-of-420-from-the-release-manager

7. TWiki Stand Alone Project: Do You Want Flexibility?

Gilmar Santos Jr., frustrated with the overhead and other problems common webservers and CGI frameworks such as Apache and SpeedyCGI incur on a TWiki site, started the TWiki stand-alone project. His work has progressed steadily in the past months, culminating in a first release in recent days. His work started from the MAIN branch right before TWiki 4.2.0 branched, and is thus reasonably close to the upcoming new release of TWiki.

https://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Blog/2007-10-26-twiki-stand-alone-project

-- Contributors: KoenMartens - 28 Oct 2007

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