ChoralWiki:CPDL-ChoralWiki Overview
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General Information
The Choral Public Domain Library (CPDL) is one of the world's largest free sheet music sites. It lists over 8,000 free scores, with midi, and notation files. There are over 300 contributors. It also catalogs 60 affiliated sheet music websites. The manager of CPDL is Rafael Ornes (ornes[at]cpdl.org). In late August 2005, CPDL moved from one software platform to a new 'wiki' site.
Reasons for transition
The CPDL website, which had grown remarkably for several years, experienced several difficulties in 2005. These included:
- Significant downtime
- Security flaws and hacker attacks
- Server overload
- Intensive software development time
- Lack of time to manage the website
- Loss of 6 months' worth of data due to computer crash
Eventually, I decided to look at other solutions for hosting CPDL. This led to the transition to a wiki-based server solution.
Wiki Definition
A 'wiki' is a group of Web pages that allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also permits others to edit the content. Here is an extended definition from Wikipedia, which is the largest wiki project on the internet. It is a very useful protocol for developing collaborative projects.
Transition to ChoralWiki
The transition occurred in late August. While the basic transition was quick, there were some difficulties, and it has taken a few months to fix many issues. One major problem is the basic
Comparison between the old and the new website
Pros:
- Greater collaboration
- Multiple administrators
- Better browsing capabilities
- Scores can be uploaded and added automatically
- Less programming time
- Flexible search capability
- More detailed information about scores and composers
- New features:
Cons:
- Some features no longer exist (survey, requests)
- Advanced search feature has been disabled
- Wiki format is unfamiliar
- Less user-friendly
The new website is still being worked on by many people. Hopefully, some/all of the features of the previous website can be added soon.
Call for more volunteers
The primary strength of a wiki site is the opportunity to add/edit content. With this in mind, all people are encouraged to fix errors, complete entries, and add new information. There is a Volunteer page with some suggestions for helping out. If you have any questions, feel free to check out the Help Section of the website.
