Does anyone know of any decent web interfaces for NNTP out there? Preferably open source that we could host ourselves. There appear to be a LOT of them, so what I’m really asking is, which of all of those are actually any good, and would work for what we need? :) (or be close enough that we could modify it to get the rest of the way there easily)
Currently, Mozilla’s newsgroups are gatewayed to Google Groups, so we can use that as the web interface. Unfortunately, we’ve had continuous problems with spam originating via Google Groups, and there’s very little we can do about it. Google’s policies prevent messages from being deleted unless there’s legal violations (i.e. DMCA notices), so we can’t clean up after it, and as much as they try to fight the spam from happening in the first place, they’re a big target. For the sanity of our newsgroups, we really need to move elsewhere, and hosting it ourselves would really make our lives a lot easier.
Related: bug 425122
http://gmane.org/ is a mailing-list-to-nntp gateway that also has a good web interface and aggressive spam fighting.
It doesn’t handle Usenet groups, but the code is available for download, including the Loom web interface. Alternatively, perhaps the Gmane administrators would agree to carry your groups (despite a policy of not carrying Usenet proper).
Who needs a web interface to NNTP when you’ve got not one but two Mozilla projects that support it 😉
Gmane does seem like it might be worth more investigation. Note that Mozilla newsgroups are not Usenet proper, so that in and of itself shouldn’t be an issue.
Perhaps this issue should be split into two:
– Developer newsgroups
– support newsgroups
Developers don’t need a web interface for NNTP, so let’s create a nntp server for the developer newsgroups ASAP to improve usability and get away from Google.
The simplest solution is vbulletin