Web-based usenet reader
Pnews is a web based usenet reader, supporting standard NNTP, and coded in PHP. Pop it on your webserver, go through a config file, and there you are. Its interface is nothing to write home about but it’s functional, and took all of about 10 minutes to set up. What’s more, it’s Open Source and uses CSS, so I should be able to integrate it with my website if I wish.
It also has a mass of different possible authentication modules, with the ability to add your own. So Raven authentication might be coming soon. Until then I’m not telling where the installation is; because this site is wholly hosted within the UCam bubble, I suspect I’ll be able to read my newsgroups from anywhere in the world now. This is not normally possible without VPD (which I’ve previously experimented with and found to be far more trouble than it’s worth) and I don’t think the Computing Service really like anybody and everybody having access to their ucam.* heirarchy, or the Cambridge news server at all, for that matter!
To protect it a little but more, stick a quick and dirty .htaccess file:
Order allow,deny
Allow from .cam.ac.uk
AuthType Ucam-WebAuth
Require valid-user
Satisfy any
It appears what I said previously is wrong:
RewriteEngine Off
Options Indexes
Order allow,deny
Allow from .cam.ac.uk
AuthType Ucam-WebAuth
Require valid-user
WorksForMe, the Options Indexes line is optional, but I think the RewriteEngine line is reqquired.