Technology of AboutUs
AboutUs.org uses MediaWiki software as the foundation for its web site. MediaWiki is one of many WikiWiki implementations; it's arguably the most popular, as it is used by major sites like Wikipedia. AboutUs, like other wiki sites, has customized the software to meet its own needs; many of the extensions are innovative, and merit some exploration. Notably, Ward Cunningham, who originally came up with the concept of a wiki, presently serves as the Chief Technology Officer of AboutUs.
Technologies
- bot
- AboutUs has a sophisticated "web robot" that auto-generates basic wiki pages for existing web sites.
- related domains
- when the bot creates the page, it determines outgoing and incoming links for that domain and add these as Related Domains
- "discussion" pages don't exist in mainspace
- (to encourage people do discuss right in the article instead of maintaining separate documents)
- Google Maps
- The "Address" section of a wiki page can be used to auto-generate a small Google map, if it's formatted in a standard way, and if the Domain Page header is in place.
- off-wiki images, and YouTube videos
- Simply entering the URL of a photo on another web site will place it on the wiki page. (No way to resize the image) YouTube videos can be included by placing <youtube></youtube> around the video number, copied from the URL.
- automatic portal building
