WN is a server for the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1). Its primary design goals are security and functionality usually available only with complex CGI scripts without the necessity of writing or using these scripts. This includes extensive security checks, full text searching and conditionally served text.
Despite this extensive functionality the WN executable is substantially smaller than the CERN or NCSA servers. Both a stand-alone daemon and a version intended for use under inetd are provided. The inetd version is designed to minimize the use of system resources and it is appropriate for moderate or lightly loaded servers which cannot be totally dedicated to Web serving.
WN's security model is based on the use of a small flat database in each directory with information about the files in that directory. Fields associated with a file include its title, and may include keywords, expiration date and any user defined fields like author or document id. Unlike other servers, the default action for WN is to deny access to a file. A file can only be served if explicit permission to do so has been granted by entering it in this database.
John Franks <john@math.nwu.edu> is the primary author. Jean Pierre LeJacq <jplejacq@quoininc.com> is the Debian package maintainer and contributed the man pages.