WILMA: Web Information-List Maintenance Agent (version 1.xMN)
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     Copyright 1997 by Mark Nottingham
     This is derivative software; see wilma.license for more information.

     Original Copyright © 1995 by E-Doc
     WILMA Development Team: Andrew Williams and Daniel K. Appelquist
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Overview

WILMA (Web Information-List Maintenance Agent) is a set of Perl CGI scripts
that allow anyone to maintain a list on that can accept contributions from
anyone on the Web, while keeping editorial control.

This release of WILMA, 1.xMN, is a derivative work based on the original
WILMA by e-doc; in no way is it supported or endorsed by them. That said,
previous users of WILMA should find transition to this version very easy,
as it only requires changing the configuration file (see below). 

The original WILMA distribution can be found at 
http://www.edoc.com/wilma/wilma.html

I'd like to thank Andrew and Daniel for their generosity, both in
releasing the original WILMA, and allowing me to re-release my
modification.


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Structure

Interface
WILMA is somewhat rigid in the structure of its interface. A user is
usually presented with a main index screen, which can be automatically or
manually generated. From that, they can select a category (and be
presented with a further listing of items in that category, and finally an
item) or they can select to submit a new item into the database. 

This three-tier structure (main index - category index - item listing)
cannot be seamlessly extended, but a clever sysadmin should be able to
tailor it to his or her needs.


Scripts
WILMA uses several Perl scripts to accept submissions, administer them,
and list both individual items as well as indexes of items or categories.
It stores actual submissions in a database.


The WILMA Database
The database is built from several fields:

   * Name
   * URL (optional)
   * One-line (short) description
   * E-mail address of submitter
   * Category 
   * Long description (optional)
   * Date submitted

The full description for each item is kept in a separate dbm file
which is accessed through the script so that header and footer information
may be added automatically upon retrieval. This information is kept in the
data directory defined by the wilma.conf file.