Spaniel News Server v1.003c - by Jon Winters

For the last several years I have been hosting web sites from my OS/2 based web server. I have also installed an HTML Forum similar the one OS/2 e-Zine uses. Interactive discussion forums are great for getting feedback and promoting a sense of 'online community' amongst my web site visitors. People posting to the discussion forums have added a lot of valuable information and created a reason to return.

Knowing that OS/2 has a good Java Virtual Machine, I regularly check the Java Directory over at Developer.Com for things that I might want to try out. Recently I was surprised to find a News Server written in Java.

What is a News server?

If you have used the Internet for any length of time you have probably read news articles posted in newsgroups. Newsgroups allow like-minded users to discuss topics on almost any subject; there are currently upward of 40,000 topics. Before you can read these articles you have to connect to a News Server - a program that supplies the news to you. As well as allowing you to read articles, the News Server usually lets you post your own articles. One further role of the News Server is to pass your messages on to other News Servers allowing other users around the world to read your articles. A News Server supplying the most common newsgroups needs masses of disk space.

What is the Spaniel News Server?

The Spaniel News Server empowers your web site or Intranet with newsgroups. Using any standard news client (such as Netscape News, ProNews/2, PMINews and so on) your users can access the newsgroups YOU create. This news server is special because it works in isolation - it does not connect to other news servers and therefore you only need disk storage capacity for the messages posted by your users.

I was very excited by this! For years I have been reading different newsgroups on Usenet and I was aware of how powerful the NNTP protocol could be as a communications tool.

I chose the Spaniel News Server for the following reasons:

• OS/2 compatible (100% pure Java)
• Easy to set up and administrate my own newsgroups
• Isolated from Spam
• Compatible with all Newsreaders

Confession: I went into this thinking that a server in Java would be buggy, slow, and difficult to install and configure.

I am happy to report that the developers at Spaniel Software have delivered a fantastic product. Installation was straightforward and took less time than downloading the latest version of Java 1.1.4 for OS/2.

I did need to write a little REXX script to start the server, however. My server needs to run all the time so I put a shadow of newskicker.cmd (.GIF, 7K) in my startup folder

Making newsgroups (.GIF, 8K) is as easy as making new directories. NOTE: New groups are not recognized until the server is restarted. I have created a group called spaniel.news.test so you can see how the server is working on Obscura.

Spaniel News Administrators have the option of setting messages to expire after a set number of days or leaving them on the server as an archive. Currently I am archiving everything. If I get a really popular group I will probably start expiring articles over one year old.

I have not found any problems with Spaniel News Server, and as a result it has changed my opinion of software written in Java. In addition, I have received several 'thank you' letters from users who like it better than the old HTML based system. Testers on the west coast have commented that it is "a lot faster" than The Ceilidh or Hypernews, plus I like knowing that my users are free to choose the newsreader that they are comfortable with.

Therefore, if you are running a web server on an OS/2 machine and you would like to host your own newsgroups, I recommend the Spaniel News Server.

Spaniel News Server v1.003c

by Spaniel Software
download from the Spaniel Software Web Site (ZIP, 14k)
Registration: Freeware

Jon Winters is the owner and operator of Obscura! With the help of a few good friends he is up to all kinds of mischief on the web.

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ISSN 1203-5696