History of The Wawasee List

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The Wawasee List was conceived in late 1994 by Greg Hormann (class of 1994). The original version contained the names and email address of 15 people who had graduated with Greg from Wawasee. These names were constructed by searching the online databases of universities which were available in finger and/or gopher formats. (Anybody else know what gopher is/was?) The original list was stored both as a text file on an HP9000 (big old Unix machine) and as a pine (e-mail tool for Unix machines) mailing list. The list was distributed by email on a regular basis as well as by request.
(Members Listed: 15. Lines of Code: 0)

In early 1996, The Wawasee List took a major turn. It had grown quite obvious that the World Wide Web was quickly becoming a very useful (and well publicized) portion of the Internet. To take advantage of this new technology, Greg developed the first Wawasee List Web page. The page was actually just a text file with a few simple formating changes (no color, no images, no thrills). This static page was quickly replaced by a CGI shell script. This 38 line (spaces and comments included!) program added "search by name" capabilities to the Web page.
(Members Listed: between 30 and 60. Lines of Code: 38)

Before the beginning of 1997, the Wawasee List had out grown the old text file and email distribution system created in 1994. (Pine wasn't handling sending the same email message to 100+ people very well.) To combat this problem, the Wawasee List went through its most bold and challenging change ever: moving to an entire WWW distribution system. To accomplish this goal, a new database storage system for the List was build as were multiple CGI programs for retrieving, updated, and adding data. This new system also added many new fields: Graduation Date, Maiden Name, Home Page URL, and the "What I am up to" text area.
(Members Listed: 119. Lines of Code: 1110)

Shortly following the major update, an email based version for accessing the database was added. By sending commands to a special email address, users without decent WWW access (mostly at BSU back then) could retrieve the information as they wished. Also added at this time was a majordomo email distribution system for the announcement of updates.

In late 1997, The Wawasee List got a minor face lift with the addition of frames. Code was also added to help synchronize the majordomo mailing and the Wawasee List database.
(Members Listed: 200. Lines of Code: 994)

In Late February 1999, the next version of the Wawasee List (dubbed version 3) was unveiled. This new version added the following fields: current city, current state, picture link, and last updated field. This version also included many enhancements (e.g. huge user interface work over, new search functionality, and a brand new internal database schema which make the system much easier to maintain). (As a result of the DB changes, database changes started occurring within 24 hours!)
(Members Listed: 319, Lines of Code: 1148)

January 4, 2000, Version 3.5 of the Wawasee List was released. This release added the long awaited Announcement Board (better known as WHS News) functionality to the Wawasee list. This new functionality allowed users to post announcements for events former WHS students might find interesting.
(Members Listed: 419 Lines of Code: 2302)

January 8, 2000, Version 3.5.1 was released. This release added graphical stats along with a popup window for WHS headlines.
(Members Listed: 429 Lines of Code: 2521)

May 20, 2001, Version 3.6 was released. This release added the WHS Webboard. This addition provides a "chat" type forum for users to discuss issues related to Wawasee High School.
(Members Listed: 861 Lines of code: 3801)

April 26, 2002, Version 4.0 was released. The main purpose of this release was relocate the Wawasee List to is own domain. http://www.wawasee-list.net. As part of the move, much of the code was converted from perl to php. This allowed me to clean up the interface a bit (especially the main page), plus add some new features (improved stats, list of recent changes, row display limits, etc.)
(Members Listed: 982 Lines of code: 5604)

May 14, 2011, Version 5.0 was released. This release has a huge number of changes, but many of them are not obvious. First, the backend database was replaced with a technology that supports concurrent updates. As a result changes can now be made to the site immediatly, rather than in an overnight batch process. Key user interface changes include the addtion of Class Pages and the ability to upload pictures to the site. The Wawasee Webboard, which saw little use, was replaced with the ability to add comments to multiple locations on the site.
(Members Listed: 1299 Lines of code: 10249)

This has been a fun project for me and I hope to keep it running for a long time.

Current Maintainer: Greg Hormann
Questions?: maintainer@wawasee-list.net
Main URL: http://www.wawasee-list.net/