“Open Source” is regarded both as a philosophy and a pragmatic methodology. “Open Source” relates to practices in the production of products and ideas which promote access to their sources. Open-source software is built and enhanced through public collaboration. As a matter of principle The School of Architecture uses only open source applications in the development and maintenance of its web presence.

Core Code
PHP
PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.

MySQL
A multithreaded, multi-user, SQL (Structured Query Language) Database Management System (DBMS) with an estimated six million installations.

WordPress
WordPress is the state-of-the-art semantic publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, simple content management and usability.

Plugins
Cookie Timeout by Michael Breland
Sets the amount of time before the login cookie will expire. This allows an added layer of security to the log-in/log out scheme for registered users.

Event Calendar by Alex Tingle
Manage future events as an online calendar. Display upcoming events in a dynamic calendar, on a listings page, or as a list in the sidebar. You can even subscribe to the calendar from iCal (OSX) or Sunbird.

Front Page Categories by Ryan Boren
Custom select which categories are displayed on the front page.

IImage Browser by Martin Chlupáč
This plugin adds an “IImage Browser” button to the Quicktags area which opens an image browser to select from all previously uploaded images and add the appropriate code to the post. It also provides a simple way to upload and manage images from inside the admin area.

Search Pages by David B. Nagle
This makes search queries look at pages and posts instead of only posts.

Theme switcher by Ryan Boren
Allows readers to switch themes. It even remembers your last choice from session to session.

Fold Page List by Rob Schumann
Provides PHP functions to display a folding page tree menu.

Design
Position is Everything by Big John and Holly Bergevin
The gold standard for CSS info. I thought I was going crazy until I learned about the Box Model Hack.

Current Theme
auSoA currently uses a heavily modified theme designed by Marcos Sader called equiX. Both EquiX and this modified version (auSoA v4.0) are open source WordPress Themes released under the GNU GPL License v.2, this gives you the freedom to use it for any purpose, study how it works and adapt it to your needs. You may also redistribute copies or even improve it and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. However, if you distribute the resulting work you should do so under the GNU General Public License as well.

External Services
auSoA uses a few external services for its functionality. For email notifications of post and comment changes, we use Rmail, a service that translates rss feeds into emails that are sent periodically to registered clients. For podcasting we use Talkr, a service that automatically converts text-based RSS feeds into mp3’s and stores them for on-the-fly listening, or downloading via your favorite podcatcher.