Given that I’m still working out what Hippo actually is, it was quite tricky to explain it in my Sourceforge project application. Here’s my attempt:
“Hippo is a content management system with an emphasis on microcontent and metacontent. Hippo’s focus is on community information sharing, and by default it is configured to act as a community portal. It is not another Slash/Nuke clone. Hippo’s greatest influence was Metadot.
Hippo is built around the concept of “Hippolet” objects. Hippolet objects are responsible for Hippo’s “backend” and handling mundane tasks, but also for handling the presentation and processing of content. Hippo is extended by installing additional hippolets.
At this stage there are hippolets for presenting XML blocks and RSS files, but hippolet for dozens of other content types are planned. All parts of the application can viewed in the same way, from DB modules to the page rendering engine.
Hippo is built around the REST concept and should produce valid xHTML. All layout is done by CSS. Hippo should (hopefully) be easily extended in the future to use email, Jabber and SOAP interfaces too.
Hippo exports information in a number of different formats, and has an easy to use permissions system to allow information to be shared between users, or limited to private use.
Hippo is written in Perl, and currently depends on Apache, MySQL, Mod_Perl and and an increasinly large part of CPAN. It should run on any UNIX system.”
The name “Hippo” is derived from the original project name: “Home/Intranet Peer Portal” -> “H/IPP” -> “Hippo”. Much nicer.
