RAHoo is an open-source attempt to allow schools and libraries to organize the Internet for their own use. It is based and owes almost all of its codebase from PHPLinks by Greg Donald. In fact, the code, at the moment, is only a smidgen modified from Greg's. My intention is to take Greg's work and spread it to schools and libraries along with some additions. To overview the whole project, you could check out the Sourceforge project page.

Why is it needed?

The Internet is an unorganized collection of miscellaneous facts, baby photos, sales brochures and pornographic images. There are some really wonderful things on the Internet, but a ridiculous amount of time is spent in schools and libraries searching for just the right pieces of information. Search engines help, but as anyone knows that works with searching, most searches are lengthy complex things.

Why for Schools?

In a school, the Internet has to work in the context of limited time and resources for both staff and students. For a student, there is only so much time to find the resources, and most students have limited experience searching the Internet within the subject areas that they are assigned, hence a lot of time is wasted.

Staff people at schools and libraries have resorted to lots of ways to organize the Internet. Most of the solutions range between static pages and proprietary solutions. Static pages point toward web pages that move, hence librarians and school staffers are continually updating these pages and checking them for accuracy. Proprietary solutions are too expensive and do not allow people to make adjustments or improvements.

RAHoo is an open source tool built from open source tools(MySQL, Apache and PHP) to create a customizable, self-documenting, self-reporting web directory system. Download a copy of the system, install it, customize it and use it for free for your school. Eventually, that is. For now, you could download a complete PHPLinks here.

Are you willing to get involved in this open source venture? There are lots of ways:

• You could help with the actual development.
• You could help with documentation
• You could install it at your school and train others.
• You could send loads of cash my way. Small unmarked bills will work.

Can you reead this? If you can, you could be a geek too. Find something else to do, will you?

RAHoo is an open sources project under the GNU General Public License.

Site maintained by gregg@pound-bang.com