NNTP server!

[trombettworks]

Do you know what would be great?

Allowing the Hostrocket customers to set up a NNTP server with a few newsgroups on it!

No need to be connected to the Usenet.

The data transfer of the nntp server could be added to the http server transfer and the mail server transfer as usual.

I would really need a newsgroup to provide technical support for my programs. At the moment I'm striving with forums but I only see forums as a bad clone of newsgroups.

Also the Hostrocket support forum should become a set of newsgroups imho. (Again, not connected with the Usenet).

I have searched for a private third party NNTP service provider on the Internet for a long time but I had no success up to now. Anyone knows a place where I can set up one or two low traffic newsgroups?

Thanks in advance.

[Jeff]

OMG, don't use a newsgroup. I hate newsgroups because they are filled with spam and obscene posts. On forums those posts can be edited or deleted. Also, anyone can post on a newsgroup, while on most forums members need to register, thus discouraging people who were only going to post to make trouble. Newsgroups are a thing of the past, forums have replaced them. Just look at all the big sites on the web, do they use forums or newsgroups?

[trombettworks]

100% disagree.
You are thinking about the Usenet newsgroups, you have probably never seen a private news server with private newsgroups.

If you are the administrator of the news server you can edit/remove posts and even require username/password for people who access it if you want. You have a server instead of a CGI, why should you think that you are more limited!?

But I don't ask so much: a flat server where I can set the expiry time for messages, the max number of stored messages and the max size for each post would be enough for me.

E.g.: Jordan Russel, the programmer of Inno Setup, has lately moved from a forum to private newsgroups in order to provide support for his programs.
He has set up his own NNTP server with 7 groups: one for each one of his programs. Very wise choice.

Look at his page here http://www.jrsoftware.org/newsgroups.htm and have a look at his newsgroups: Can you see ANY spam there?
NEVER seem spam at all; and that server does NOT require authentication.

Also the big Stardivision, creator of Star Office used newsgroups to provide technical support.

Newsgroups are much faster to download, much faster to parse, respect the threading, stay in your news client cache, you can post attachments, you can set message rules/filters with your news client, you can do local searches, you can download for offline browsing, you can decide your cache expiration time, newsgroups have much less traffic than heavy html forums because you always download new messages only, you can sort messages in your mail client according to sender, subject or date with just a click, you can flag messages to find them more easily later, you can instruct your news client to "follow" or "ignore" a thread, and many many other things I cannot even tell now.

See the HostRocket forums: they have just born and they are already so big that finding back a message I remember I had seen in the past requires 3 to 5 minutes to me! And luckily there is a search engine! (which obviously cannot compete with the search engine of a news client)

[pestilence]

my isp blueyonder uses newsgroups for tech support and they have become a playground for teenage spammers not saying that would happen here but i find forums much nicer news groups seem very old hat to me back to the days of lynx and the text based web...my opinion but i prefer the more interactive and graphical look of forums as people can customise a message and add a little bit of their own personality to it...a tag line just dont look the same made up of alphanumeric characters

[DarkWizard]

Newsgroups are much faster to download, much faster to parse, respect the threading, stay in your news client cache, you can post attachments

To have a NNTP service would also require a seperate server due to system resources and disk space needed to run it and I can say that from past experience. Newsgroups always attracts spammers and will never stop private or not! This site (HostRocket) is looked at every day by prospective customers and anyone just wandering through and it will get hammered, trust me! If you allow attachments then you are going to get Warez and such since these guys are always looking to place their stuff somewhere. The forum is a more controlled environment and it is far better and faster in my opinion than any news server!

[JordanTLClive]

Newsgroups are for people who are still stuck in computing 5 years ago. There are advantages to it, yes, but consider the idea that most people feel more comfertable using the forum interface. For the purpose, its just so much more complecated to use newsgroups than a forum such as this.

[geeknik]

I don't see how you can say that newsgroups are for people stuck in computing 5 years ago. There are hundreds of thousands of people using usenet, besides the idiots who think of usenet as a huge advertising cesspool. It's easy to implement a news server that is spam free. Using newsgroups is no harder then reading your email..

Brian



Originally posted by JordanTLClive
Newsgroups are for people who are still stuck in computing 5 years ago. There are advantages to it, yes, but consider the idea that most people feel more comfertable using the forum interface. For the purpose, its just so much more complecated to use newsgroups than a forum such as this.

[JCR]

I also greatly prefer newsgroup format for things like discussion fora.

News readers (clients) are a pretty mature technology, and generally are very efficient to use.

Yes, it's true that they aren't as bell-and-whistle-filled as this sort of forum, and it doesn't support pretty smiley icons (very well), but it is a lot easier to search for information and much quicker to scan and read. I personally find this sort of web-forum interface awkward and constantly getting in my way.

Like the previous poster noted, a private NNTP server is not to be confused with the Usenet newsgroups, which are public fora that have (sadly) been overrun with spam. People who remember how useful and personable Usenet used to be before spam came mourn its passing (it was in many ways like the hostrocket forum, although on a larger scale). I still find certain Usenet newsgroups useful and irreplaceable for some purposes, however.

[JCR]

Also (sorry) every Web-based forum software and even separate implementations of the same software have their own different interfaces. You can spend a lot of time learning all these different tweaks for each system. And you are a slave to that interface--you can't switch to a different client that works more like you prefer to work.

With Newsgroups, like with email, you use your same familiar client from forum to forum and server to server, so you only learn it once, and you can tweak all the settings until you get everything just the way you like it. This makes you much more effecient, and means you can spend more time reading and posting instead of trying to remember whether this particular implementation of vBulletin supports attachments or not!

[spyres]

Well, the main boards out there being used like vb, UBB and so on are most certainly not hard to learn! In fact, they put a much friendlier face to the public than usenet does.

[Brian Asselin]

HI! Are you still searching?

[Odium]

Ok, well all you pro-newsgroup guys can pay HR for the extra support person they have to hire to monitor the newsgroups to ensure there's no abuse...as well as foot the bill for your own special NG server. Leave me out of it.

[Angelus]

i think vbullein, & UBB are a much more professional looking system, its easy for newbies & experts to learn, more people have access to browser then a news program, not everybody even knows how to work a news client, or even to setup one. With vbulletin & forums, its all there, you can tell on everypage what the rules are... in my experience for slow connections this is much faster, much easier, and for fast connections this is much faster, looks better, and provides a better sense of community then other groups, I run a Entertainment community forum (for cahtting about tv shows and such) and i looked into adding a usenet via an addon to vbulletin, no one, its hard to fond a decent server, everysingle server i looked into had spam, every newsgroup i looked into had Spam. then i left it up to my members 90% of them said whats a newsgroup, the rest were against it, because they dont want spam.

I guess im saying is im for Forums, and againsts newsgroups,

newsgroups used properly can be good, but i beleive forums are simply better & more professional