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|date=January 2009
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A number of you (0) have asked why Bookbag uses [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki wiki] software. The simple answer is that the old hand-coded version was becoming too time-consuming for Sue to add new reviews, make any widespread changes and generally maintain. We knew there was a better way, involving some form of database, but none of us were familiar enough with them to be able to create a whole new site from scratch. HTML was pretty much our limit.
We also briefly considered modifying some message board software, but it would have been as much of a kludge as the content management system. [http://www.phpbb.com phpBB] was due to release, or had just released, version 3. A year on, with more mods available, we might have looked a little deeper into it, but at the time it was a non-starter.
[[Image:Apple-touch-icon.png|left]] Many moons ago, before Bookbag was even a glint in Sue's eye, a guy called Jeff had suggested Jill attach a wiki to a message board she was running at the time. (As you can see, we have a long history of using the wrong tools for the job). We all had a bit of a play with it, but didn't have enough use for it. This was back when CamelCase was the main method of linking pages; even if we had a use for a wiki, this would have made it all look rather ugly. CamelCase, for those who don't know, means that pages would have to be called [[Fup by Jim Dodge|FupbyJimdodge]] rather than looking neat and tidy. Anyway, in all our pondering of how to make a new version of Bookbag work, our thoughts returned to Jeff and one of us (it might have been me, but I honestly don't remember) suggested using a wiki.
By now, Jill and I had experience of editing [http://en.wikipedia.org Wikipedia]. Sue I don't think had, but she'd skilfully gone from knowing nothing about HTML to being able to code and maintain a site, so we knew she'd pick it up very quickly. With Wikipedia's Mediawiki software now available, we wouldn't be dealing with ugly CamelCase. We'd be able to use templates to vastly simplify adding reviews, as well as being able to make any widespread changes incredibly quickly. The categories would essentially create and maintain the navigation automatically. There'd be many more ways for people to browse the site and find the reviews they wanted.
