Colas.Nahaboo.net - foswiki

Foswiki update script

2026-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

Although I have migrated my public site to zola</a> which was on Foswiki</a>, I have decided for now to keep my private family wiki on Foswiki for now.

So I needed to upgrade it to 2.1.11, it was still in 2.1.6, and since the upgrade is not exactly intuitive, I made a bash script to automatise the upgrade.

You can find it on GitHub</a>.

How the Script Works 🔗</a></h2>
This script supposes a modern version of Foswiki (v2+): it blindly overwrites the files that should not have been modified, so when customizing your wiki be sure to never directly modify distributed files.
The script however will not overwrite blindly any topic file that has been edited via Foswiki itself, by checking the author metadata. It will perform a 3-way merge, as automated as possible.
It also works only on a local copy of the site. You will have to download yourself a copy of your site, upgrade, and then re-upload it in place. This keeps the script simpler and safer.
It works on linux, but should work in linux-like layers on top of other OSes, such as cygwin, WSL, Homebrew, ...
Why staying on Foswiki?🔗</a></h2>
My private wiki is used by me, but also my wife, who is not really fluent in wiki or markdown editing, so an excellent WYSIWYG is a must. And personnaly, I hate databases and strive for stability and simple architecture. Foswiki has all these qualities... and I would have a lot of content to convert.
But I will probably switch to an open source markdown-based wiki with a very good WYSIWYG editor and flat file storage, and easy to maintain. For now I see 3 potential candidates:

SilverBullet</a>, still evolving but very promising</li>
OtterWiki</a>, minimal but seems powerful enough</li>
Wiki.js</a> the current leader, but I will wait for the v3 as the v2 to v3 migration do not seem automatic, and the development seems to have slowed greatly</a></li> </ul>

A New version of the site for 2021

2020-12-27T00:00:00+00:00

A big change is planned for this site in 2021: I am going to abandon the Foswiki engine for it, to pursue my recent goal of going back to the web roots. Basically, it a quest that relies more on:

A New Version of the site for 2020

2020-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

After 10 years of neglect, it is time for a new start of this site, because:

I am going to retire in early 2021 (in 6 months), and I will have now time to properly maintain a personal site</li>
I am feeling the need to archive in a central place all the contents I scatter in various different places, if only for the selfish reason to be able to retreive them more easily</li>
I was toying with the idea of going to a static web site, as it is now in vogue, and it has a kind of nostalgia for me as I started my web sites as static sites anyways. But by looking at the existing solutions, I was not convinced by them, as a lot seemed to naively solve the 80% easy part of the problem, and them struggle without any clear vision on how to solve the 20% hard part... a classic situation.</li> </ul>
I thus decided to keep on using Foswiki</a> (v2.1.6), as it is now quite mature, and thus stable: I like building on solid, time-tested fundations that will not change every month. And let's be honest, it is both extremely powerful and incredibly reliable. I am just tweaking it for using it as a public site (one author with all admin rights, and read-only viewers), rather than the standard wiki setup of many authors, all able to edit contents, with some able to also admin rights. My postulate is that a dynamic web site like a wiki, with proper caching, has all the advantages of a static web site, but is more practical to maintain (although more complex to implement).
I will detail my views on how to website-ize a wiki in future posts, but for now, on 2020-07-26 at noon French time, let go live!
Welcome to my (new) world!
Colas.

Migration to Foswiki

2015-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

At last, I found the motivation to work again on this site that I have left dormant since 2009. And I start with a long deserved migration of the engine from the old TWiki system to the superb Foswiki WIki engine.
Just installing a new Foswiki, and copying the data seem to provide a working base, I will then work on fixing the minor bugs and designing a new look in the following weeks.

My work on TWiki

2008-12-20T00:00:00+00:00

I discovered the wiki concept in 2000, and quickly decided that this was the future of the web site building tools, after many attempts at trying various methods of Web development. Doing some research made me choose the TWiki engine</a>, and since then I have been part of the TWiki community, providing some work and enhancements on it. For more detailed info, the best place is to go look at my page on the TWiki site</a>, and my personal goals</a> for it.
Of course, since the brutal TWiki fork, I have folowed the whole TWiki community into the new great Foswiki</a> wiki project.
I was working on: (latest first)

TWiki "koala" pattern skin A system to properly customize the pattern skin. This is the one I use on this site</li>
Enhancements to the Vote Plugin</li>
TWiki misc enhancements for freetown</li> </ul>

Colas.Nahaboo.net - foswiki

Foswiki update script

A New version of the site for 2021

Later...🔗</a></h2> And I may even at some time create a totally new web engine system, who knows?</p> Or code a wiki replacement: a collaborative editing site based on the concepts learned via this experiment.</p>

A New Version of the site for 2020

Migration to Foswiki

My work on TWiki

Later...🔗</a></h2>
And I may even at some time create a totally new web engine system, who knows?</p>
Or code a wiki replacement: a collaborative editing site based on the concepts learned via this experiment.</p>