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Here is the place to find official developer kits from Galacticomm.

The SDK is now free of charge, a huge change from the old days when it cost thousands of dollars to become a Worldgroup developer.

How To Develop With Worldgroup

Worldgroup is a BBS/web social computing product. It is a standalone program that has built into it a web server, bulletin boards, chat rooms, polls, email, SMTP server, POP3 server, FTP server, telnet, rlogin, DNS, and many more services. There is a main baseline that handles the user management. It is a C & C++ program. The services such as chat, email, etc. plug into the main service by being compiled as separate DLLs. The programs are currently compiled using older technology (Borland Cpp) though portions do use Visual Cpp. The user database is a product called BTrieve.

Download and Install Worldgroup

Download the Worldgroup 3.3 Installation (WG33CD.ZIP) and unzip and install this to C:\WGSERV. If you do not have an activation code yet, get in touch with us. While installing, do not choose the option to run it as a service. This way, you can see the console when its running. There are help files installed in the Worldgroup Server program group - Worldgroup Reference Guide.

After installation, start Worldgroup Server in the Worldgroup Server program group. After it comes up, shut it down.

Make some registry changes:

1. Start registry editor (regedt32.exe)
2. Select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SOFTWARE, Galacticomm, Worldgroup Server, CurrentVersion
3. Change useConsoleWindow and set the value to 1
4. Select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SOFTWARE, Btrieve Technologies, Microkernel Workstation Engine, Version 6.15, Settings
5. Change Max Files to 1000 (hex, it's 4096 decimal), and change Max Handles to 1000 (hex, it's again 4096 decimal). Ensure Max Locks is ff (255)

After this, you should be able to bring the BBS back up and see the Major BBS/Worldgroup 1&2 style console! Try telnetting into the computer's IP address, and visiting the computer's IP address in a web browser. You can configure the number of channels by going to Offline Utilities in the Worldgroup Server program group and choosing Hardware Setup. Note that your license limits the number of channels you can have.

Download and Install the SDKs and Compilers

Download SOURCE33.ZIP below. Expand it. We recommend C:\WGDEV as the root directory for this kit. Create C:\WGDEV and copy source33.zip there and extract the archive.

Download BC501.ZIP. This is the Borland C 5.01 compiler. Extract BC501.ZIP and install it.

Documentation

Within the WGDEV folder there will now be a HELP subdirectory with several helpful documents.

Development Setup Batch File

We created a handy batch file that we run just before starting to compile the DLLs. It sets the environment up nicely. We call it wg33s.bat.

@echo off
SET CONFIG=WG3DEV
SET WGDEV=C:\WGDEV
SET BC50=C:\BC5
SET COMPILER=C:\BC5
SET DOSEXT=C:\RUN286
SET WGDOS=C:\WGSERV2
SET WGNT=C:\WGSERV33
SET BUDOS=
SET VB3=C:\VB
SET LIB=C:\WGDEV\INC;C:\WGDEV\ENTSRC;C:\RUN286\BC5\LIB;C:\BC5\LIB
SET CMP=BC50-32
SET OS=WNT
SET WGPATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\BC5\BIN;C:\;C:\RUN286\BIN;C:\WGDEV\BIN;C:\TASM\BIN;C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM;C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32
SET PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\BC5\BIN;C:\;C:\RUN286\BIN;C:\WGDEV\BIN;C:\TASM\BIN;C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM;C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32;C:\WGDEV\WGTOOLS\BTRIEVE;C:\PROGRA~1\IDMCOM~1\ULTRAE~1;C:\PROGRA~1\UNIXUT~1\

Downloads

Older Versions

If you're looking for older versions, let us know!