I first encountered KBPublisher in 2006 when I was looking for a program that would allow me to store computer-related technical notes, articles, tips and tid-bits that I had been collecting for many years. Being a network administrator it was important that I had a place to store various articles, links to other support knowledgebases, how-to articles complete with screen shots. Most of the other free or inexpensive programs out there at the time were either not what I was looking for or were orphaned open source projects. The original KBPublisher proved to be exactly the program I needed to organize my technical notes and it worked well. Although multi-user features are a strong point of this program, most of them were not relevant at the time, so my usage is primarily that of a personal technical repository. In this I have found it to be excellent.

For whatever reason the developers moved away from maintaining the open-source version of KBPublisher and created a newer, more advanced program starting with the 3.0 version. Not willing to be left with an orphaned open-source project, I took the plunge and purchased the 3.0 version in early 2009. I was not disappointed.

KBPublisher 3.0 was a great advance over 2.0. The same basic program structure and interfaced remained, but there were many improvements in both the public and admin areas. An improved FCKEditor was first featured in the 3.0 version. Drop boxes for fonts made it easier to control the look and feel of the an article. I found that I needed to look at the HTML source code less, and it less necessary to modify the underlying code to get the appearance that I wanted.

Being able to create categories of articles has allowed me to segregate articles into a several distinct areas. For example I have two groups of categories, one for configuration and the other for issues. Most of the time I am either documenting how to do something or troubleshooting something. Within each I have such categories for Microsoft, Novell, Linux, Applications, Virtualization and Hardware.

The KBPublisher’s search function is vital for wading through thousands of articles and it has the ability to search through everything in the database. Locating an article rapidly when I am having an a technical issue with something is most important.

The installation and/or upgrade process is a little difficult. I spent over an hour trying to get the 3.0 version installed and it was only moderately easier with the 3.5 version. Most of the problem come with installing PHP and MySQL. It is important to have MySQL 5.x and PHP 5.x fully functional in either Apache or IIS. To make life easier in this area I heartily recommend a package like Xampp or Vertrigo for Windows systems. LAMP packages are available for Linux. For the purpose of my evaluation, I chose to install PHP 5.x and MySQL 5.1 the manual way. I was able to successfully import my 3.0 database and convert it to the new 3.5 format without too much trouble. After that getting the database to work right is a matter of making the necessary adjustments to CONFIG.INC.PHP.

In short I would recommend KBPublisher 3.5 as a great product to implement a modest sized technical knowledgebase. My personal knowledgebase has nearly 1000 articles and continues to grow. As a network administrator for a large company keeping notes on any and everything is extremely important! My job would not be nearly as easy if I did not have a place to store technical and troubleshooting knowledge.

Recently I have had several offers to host software reviews of programs that I have used and currently used. Watch this space for reviews coming on specific programs.

Due to a hard drive failure in my XenServer that took out one of my virtual servers, the Darkscape software was disabled and remove. We are not hosting Darkscape until further notice.

The Darkscape forums are hosted here.

Updated January 30, 2010.

Two unique sub-sites present my photo display and commentary on the ever widening list of locations I have visited in New Jersey’s vast Wharton Tract. For those who think the pinelands are just trees and sugar sand roads, think again. The entire area is a motherload of steadily vanishing history. Hidden off the narrow sand roads are cellar holes and foundations of lost towns from the bog-iron and cranberry industries spanning back to the early 1700s. The remains of numerous saw mills lie in often difficult to reach places, while once active cranberry bogs are now reverting to the wilds. There is much to see and discover in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens.

Friendship, NJ is a long abandoned company cranberry town. Other nearby ruins include the Alloway Homestead and Sandy Ridge.

Hampton Furnace, NJ was the site of a former bog iron furnace that closed in the 1860s. Nothing is left of the furnace today, except an iron slag pile. The property was acquired in the 1880s and became a cranberry business. Nearby sites include Deep Run Bog, Rider’s Switch and Springer’s Brook.