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Content Tagged with Announcements + WikkaWiki

This release is a maintenance release that includes no new functionality. The release addresses a couple of minor issues in 1.1.6.4, including:

• Some PHP5 compatibility issues;
• Cleanup of error and informational messages in several actions;
• More robust cookie handling;
• A simplified installer; and
• Valid XHTML output.

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We are planning to build a base of official testers for WikkaWiki, this post is to announce the launch of our beta-testing programme and the availability of (unstable) nightly builds from our code repository.
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The old say “when it rains it pours” has been very applicable to Wikka the last week or so…

We were just recovering from the shock of about a day downtime as a result of our DNS problems (about a day outage 11-12 November, see DNS problem solved: wikkawiki.org is back!) and traffic was picking up again but not quite back to its old level even on the 13th, due to the common delay in worldwide DNS propagation (a change can take 72 hours to reach all DNS servers in the world)…

And then another disaster struck. While throughout the DNS problems we were still reachable from some locations (due to the propagation delay), as of the 14th we suddenly were not reachable at all. Not even via our IP address. Our host (through an obviously very junior tech support person) wasn’t very helpful in initially diagnosing the problem as a domain expiration citing from obviously still outdated data instead of going to the authoritative DNS server to check. Finally we got the real diagnosis: another domain hosted on the same IP address had been hacked, and now had a page used for that most abominable of Internet scams: phishing. Our host’s “upstream” (the service provider they get their connectivity from) had - after receiving an abuse report about it - null-routed the IP address.

Surely that was the right action to take. But we were victims in that we were not only not able to right the wrong, but our sites were as cut off from the world as the hacked domain was. And our host wasn’t exactly forthcoming with information.

In the midst of the panic (what do you do when you’re helpless?) we took some emergency measures: we started by grabbing all installed Wikkas (the main domain and the subdomains) and the corresponding databases, which luckily we could still access via an administrative login. A temporary location was found to put up all this data. During the scare of the DNS problems we had also already registered a few extra domains. The plan is to set up a system where - should disaster strike again - we can have a mirror up and running with a recent version of the databases, practically at the drop of a hat.

Throughout the disaster we took turns in feeling depressed, or very angry, and while we feverishly worked on setting up an alternative, Olivier kept us sane by stolidly continuing to work on the new WikkaEdit. Like the last bit of stability in the midst of an earthquake.

Luckily the offending phishing site has now been removed and our connectivity restored. Phew! All in all we were completely unreachable for about 109 hours: more than 4.5 days.

The access graph below - around 12:30 on the server, and excluding bots - shows the effect of it all: greatly reduced traffic throughout the DNS problems, though it never completely stopped and was picking up again when we were null-routed on the 14th.

Now visitors are clearly finding us again, and the search engine bots are catching up. We’ll have to watch closely to see if we get back to normal levels though.

Meanwhile we continue to work on our backup plan - we were not ready yet, it’s a somewhat complicated operation - so we will be able to quickly migrate to another server should anything happen to our main domain, or our connectivity on our main host. We will also set up an independent “information page” where you can go for information should anything seem amiss with our site.

We hope we’ll never need our backup plan!

Many thanks to our members who quickly alerted us of the problems, and to all of you for your patience. We’re still alive and kicking!

At WikkaWiki we love wiki markup. Wiki markup is a simple and fast way to generate well structured XHTML output using a light, plain-text format that you can safely copy and paste. This is the reason why we all tend to prefer editor toolbars (or directly writing wiki markup) over feature-bloated and unaccessible WYSIWYG plugins that produce ill-structured XHTML.

Following this idea, Olivier–who recently joined the Wikka Developer Team–has done a tremendous work and rewritten the editor toolbar from scratch. The result is truly amazing and is called: “WikkaEdit”.

WikkaEdit is a new streamlined Wikka editor toolbar with more user-friendly features and a new and improved look-and-feel. It replaces the WikiEdit toolbar by Roman Ivanov, bundled with Wikka since the very first release and currently discontinued.

The basic version of WikkaEdit is included in the development branch of WikkaWiki 1.1.6.4 and features the following improvements:

• lighter and more performant code;
• improved cross-browser compatibility;
• self-resizing editor;
• additional buttons;
• improved search and replace functionality;
• indent/unindent using tab;
• new keyboard shortcuts;

But–guess what–this is just the beginning! If 1.1.6.4 introduces the basic functionality of WikkaEdit, 1.1.7 features an advanced version of the editor toolbar with a nifty inline helper for Wikka actions. The advanced version of WikkaEdit can be previewed on a demo server and is already available for testing in the nightly builds.

I’ll post separately a review of the advanced version of WikkaEdit. But first please join me in thanking Olivier for the great job he has done!

The Wikka development team has made Wikka 1.1.6.4, release candidate 1 (RC1) available for download and testing. Please download from the WikkaWiki home page. Additional links to the release notes and issue tracker can be found there as well. While this release candidate has been thoroughly vetted by the development team, we do not recommend its use in a production environment. We anticipate the final release of Wikka 1.1.6.4 to occur at the end of the month.

Thank you so much for your patience. We believe this release will be well worth the time to upgrade to, as it addresses several spam-related issues that have cropped up with earlier Wikka versions over the past few months.

We are planning to build a base of official testers for WikkaWiki, this post is to announce the launch of our beta-testing programme and the availability of (unstable) nightly builds from our code repository.
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At WikkaWiki we love wiki markup. Wiki markup is a simple and fast way to generate well structured XHTML output using a light, plain-text format that you can safely copy and paste. This is the reason why we all tend to prefer editor toolbars (or directly writing wiki markup) over feature-bloated and unaccessible WYSIWYG plugins that produce ill-structured XHTML.

Following this idea, Olivier–who recently joined the Wikka Developer Team–has done a tremendous work and rewritten the editor toolbar from scratch. The result is truly amazing and is called: “WikkaEdit”.

WikkaEdit is a new streamlined Wikka editor toolbar with more user-friendly features and a new and improved look-and-feel. It replaces the WikiEdit toolbar by Roman Ivanov, bundled with Wikka since the very first release and currently discontinued.

The basic version of WikkaEdit is included in the development branch of WikkaWiki 1.1.6.4 and features the following improvements:

• lighter and more performant code;
• improved cross-browser compatibility;
• self-resizing editor;
• additional buttons;
• improved search and replace functionality;
• indent/unindent using tab;
• new keyboard shortcuts;

But–guess what–this is just the beginning! If 1.1.6.4 introduces the basic functionality of WikkaEdit, 1.1.7 features an advanced version of the editor toolbar with a nifty inline helper for Wikka actions. The advanced version of WikkaEdit can be previewed on a demo server and is already available for testing in the nightly builds.

I’ll post separately a review of the advanced version of WikkaEdit. But first please join me in thanking Olivier for the great job he has done!

Due to the recent upswing in autogenerated wiki spam, the Wikka development team has decided that an interim security release would be in the best interests of Wikka users. While some of the security/antispam features we’ll be introducing have always been available in the Wikka trunk, we realize that many users would rather install Wikka from a stable distribution. In addition, we have been beta-testing some features on the main site that have not yet made it to trunk. We are preparing an upcoming release (1.1.6.4) that will address several security, spam, and ease-of-use issues.

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We’ve been experiencing some annoying downtime since Sunday due to a problem with our DNS servers. As I write this wikkawiki.org and all its subdomains work as usual. If you still can’t access the WikkaWiki website, this may be due to some minor delay in the propagation of the DNS configuration, so make sure you check back in a few hours time. Many thanks to all the users who promptly got in touch to report the problem, Wikka and its development team are alive and well again

Over the last month we have been experiencing persistent spam attacks against the Wikka tracker. As a result, the tracker has been locked down as read-only until today.

I’m happy to announce that today the tracker reopens with user registration.
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