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Notes on Steve's for of mod_virgule:

This is not the "classic" mod_virgule code. Mod_virgule classic was
used to run Advogato.org from it's creation until Oct 1, 2006. I created
this fork for my robots.net website and have maintained it since about 2000.
On Oct 1, 2006, Advogato was transitioned to this codebase as well. So I 
think this version is at least "semi-official" at this point. :-)

The main difference is that this code is much closer to being usable
out of the box for a new site. There are no hard coded references to URLs
or site names, etc. Everything like that can be configured in a handy XML
file at run time.  Here are a few of the other improvements found in this
codebase over the original mod_virgule:

-RSS 2.0 support
-FOAF support
-Built-in RSS/Atom aggregator
-Person pages are template based
-Diary pages are template based
-Project pages are template based
-User accounts may be deleted by the administrator
-A built in admin page now exists
-Function names now follows Apache module guidelines
-Compiles against Apache 2.0 (roughly based on James Henstridge's patch)
-User list is configurable, paged, and sorted by cert level
-Article index page is a configurable template
-The sitemap (main navigation menu) is configurable instead of hard-coded.
-Forgotten password feature (based on Steve Kemp's patch)
-Headers include link elements for RSS discovery (James Henstridge's patch)
-Compiles against current libxml2 (Martijn van Beers' libxml2 patch)
-Usernames may have spaces, dashes, underscores, and dots
-Articles can have topic/icons like slash or scoop sites
-Article titles are links to articles
-Headers include link element for favicons
-RSS exports 15 (the RSS max) rather than 10 headlines
-User account page has consistent, easy to read menu layout
-Users cannot certify themselves
-Project list is alphabetized
-Improved, detailed diagnostic info on test page
-Posting, replying, and project creation authorized independently based
user certification level
-Comments added to code to explain purpose
-Several compiler warnings fixed
-Underlying code now has the ability to delete as well as add db entries
-Removed certs are actually deleted
-Removed project relations are actually deleted
-XML tag for an externally updated field

Features that have also been integrated into the "official" codebase:
-Permalinks for diary entries
-Usernames are passed to Apache and logged
-Configurable pass-through directories
-XML tag that renders differently based on user login state
-Code to prevent duplicate replies to articles
-External CSS used to configure color scheme
-External CSS used to configure cert colors
-Cert levels are configurable
-Trust metric seeds are configurable
-Removed much illegal HTML
-DoS vulnerability in cookie parsing fixed


What follows is the original mod_virgule readme file
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This is mod_virgule, the source code to Advogato,
http://www.advogato.org/ . I am releasing it under GPL with the hope
that members of the free software community will:

* Enhance Advogato.

* Develop mod_virgule as a generic tool for creating community web
  sites.

* Learn from mod_virgule's design and implementation, which is unusual
  in a number of respects.

mod_virgule is implemented as an Apache C module, using gnome-xml to
store the state as a XML files in the filesystem. There is an
abstraction layer, however, which means that using a different backend
(such as a "real" database) should be possible.

Right now, there's quite a bit of stuff in the C code that's specific
to Advogato. A medium-term goal is to push most of that stuff into the
XML, so the code itself is more generic. There are a fair number of
core changes here, so it's probably not a good place to hack in
without coordinating with me.

Raph Levien
13 Nov 1999

Development continues slowly. There's a new canonical home for
mod_virgule in ghostscript cvs. You can access it thus:

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:[email protected]:/cvs/mod_virgule login
[just press 'enter' if asked for a password]
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:[email protected]:/cvs/mod_virgule \
	checkout mod_virgule

There's also a discussion mailing list (virgule-dev) hosted at zork.net.
You can sign up in the usual way, or visit the web interface at

http://zork.net/mailman/listinfo/virgule-dev

Happy Hacking,
rillian
2002 March 25