About The WPI Acronym Dictionary
Contact Information
This Web site is the personal work of William L. Herbert '05. You are encouraged to contact him at acronym@meadowbrook.li with all of your questions, comments, and errors (of omission).
Timeline Of The Dictionary
The dictionary started one night while I was on RA Duty during my sophomore year. I was bored. Having an advanced knowledge of the University's Web site allowed me to quickly hit all the pages on the Web site that mentioned acronyms. The first listing, which was nothing more than an unorganized list with several hundred "li" tags, was released in late 2002.
As The Dictionary grew, sections were added listing special types of acronyms. The first three special sections were major codes, building abbreviations, and course designations. These special sections now include historic acronyms, student organizations, conferences, and professional organizations.
The Dictionary remained an unorganized list for roughly 18 months until the summer of 2004. At that time, the dictionary contents were entered manually into an Excel spreadsheet which was later imported into the mySQL database where it still resides. The dictionary's contents were displayed using PHP.
In December, 2004, WPI announced that the new Web server would no longer support PHP. For eight months starting in January 2005, the WPI Acronym Dictionary was unavailable. Finally, during the summer of 2005 The Dictionary was rewritten in Perl. Concurrently, the dictionary was moved from WPI's users server to its alum server.
Technical Info
This site is hosted by BlueHost. The site was written by hand in TextPad 4.7.3.
RSS 2.0 is used for all feeds. The RSS icon on the homepage was provided courtesy of RSS-ICONS.com.
Although The WPI Acronym Dictionary works in many browsers, Firefox is our recommended browser (but only because that's what I use).
Public Relations
The Dictionary's public relations are handled by Adam Epstein. Media inquiries should be directed to adam@alum.wpi.edu.
Special Thanks and Honorable Mentions
The staff of the Web Development Office have always been able to provide expert advice on how to make the Dictionary shine. Seriously, Alex, Nick, and James were extremely helpful as different Perl scripts were written.
Honorable mentions to Adam for his hawk eye for errors and new acronyms and to AEJ and Josh for making sure everything is running up to snuff under the hood.
Be sure to check out the Dictionary's sister site, Signs You're a Geek at WPI, moderated by Jocelyn Lally '05.
A Special Gift For Troy Thompson
