PHP News Reader is a web based News Reader.

It supports the standard NNTP protocol (RFC 977) for reading, posting, deleting, forwarding and replying news articles.

Features:

• Read/Post/Reply/Crosspost/Forward/Delete articles to/from News server(s).
• Multiple News server and multiple categories of news groups.
• Support NNTP over SSL (NNTPS) and NNTP authentication.
• Posting and downloading for uuencoded attachment.
• Easy to install, neither database access nor IMAP is required.
• Authentication is easily configured to work with your existing system.
• Multiple language interface and Traditional/Simplified Chinese coding conversion.

Technical Standards:

• RFC 977 - Network News Transfer Protocol
• RFC 2980 - Common NNTP Extensions
• RFC 2822 - Internet Message Format
• RFC 1036 - Standard for Interchange of USENET Messages

To install PHP News Reader, please check the Requirements, and then read the Installation Guide.

PHP News Reader has nothing to do with the user registration. It is designed to work with the EXISTING authentication system. PHP News Reader supports several flexible authentication interface modules, which let administrator easy to control how to authenticate users. There are various built-in authentication modules.

• POP3 - authenticate user using the existing POP3 server.
• Mail - authenticate user using multiple POP3/POP3S servers.
• LDAP - authenticate user using LDAP server.
• FTP - authenticate user with the existing FTP server
• MySQL - authenticate user existing in MySQL database.
• PostgreSQL - authenticate user existing in PostgreSQL database.
• NNTP - authenticate user using NNTP server. (version >= 2.2.1)
• NNTPS - authenticate user using NNTP over SSL server. (version >= 2.4.0)
• POP3S - authenticate user using POP3 over SSL server. (version >= 2.4.1)
• FTPS - authenticate user using FTP over SSL server. (version >= 2.4.1)
• CAS - authenticate user using CAS. (version >= 2.3.0)

The support for MySQL and PostgreSQL also makes it possible to authenticate through the accounts of many PHP products, for example: phpBB.

And it is easy to write your authentication module to be used by PHP News Reader.

The login prompt can be configured as HTTP (as a popup window) or FORM style.
Besides, if you already login on phpBB, one can also utilize the session without login again.

PHP News Reader supports multiple interface languages, including English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Français, Finnish, German, Italiano and Slovak. The preferred language can be switched any time and any where.

PHP News Reader also supports the on-the-fly coding conversion between Traditional Chinese (used in Taiwan) and Simplified Chinese (used in China).

But the PHP iconv() function may not work on some old systems and it also has problems of handling Chinese words. So PHP News Reader use a self-implemented conversion system. The conversion between Chinese charsets (BIG5, GB2312 and Unicode/UTF-8) is natively supported. The charset of article is auto-converted to the preferred one while the selected charset of interface is different from the charset of the news articles. This conversion also effectives while posting, replying, forwarding and cross-posting articles. The posted articles will also be converted to the charset of the original article in the news server.

PHP News Reader's development started around August 2001. I wrote this software in my leisure time, mostly in the weekend. Although PHP News Reader still lacks many fancy features, it works fine to meet the basic requirements - Reading Netnews.

This is PHP News Reader v2.6.3. Here is the release notes since v2.6.0:

PHP News Reader v2.6.3 (2005/09/22)

• Fixed for array_shift() as a return value in PHP 5.0.5

PHP News Reader v2.6.2 (2005/05/30)

• $CFG['html_header'] and $CFG['html_footer'] are displayed when reading articles.
• The HTTP request header 'Accept-Language' issued by browser is now considered as the default language.
• MODE READER must be issued again after authentication on some news server.
• Fixed HTTPS handling in IIS.
• Fixed the possible loss of double quote in Subject input field under multi-bytes charsets.
• Add $CFG['auth_deny_user'] to deny certain users from login.

PHP News Reader v2.6.1 (2005/01/01)

• Fixed the bug which perform invalid MODE READER before authentication.
• Attachment is now cached if $CFG['cache_dir'] is enabled.
• Fixed the bug which cause all attachment(s) not downloaded in v2.6.0.
• Fixed the downloading of attachment with filename contains special characters (again).
• $CFG['html_header'] or $CFG['html_footer'] can be a PHP script.
• Add a new feature to show all articles of current thread in one single page.
• $CFG['show_article_popup'] is deprecated.

PHP News Reader v2.6.0 (2004/12/25)

• Experimental threading support ($CFG['thread_support'])
• Added $CFG['confirm_post'] and $CFG['confirm_forward'] to enable the confirmation for message posting.
• Fixed the wrong version-checking codes when enabling nntps.
• The line length limit of 'newsgroups.lst' has been expanded from 512 to 4096.
• Fixed the downloading of attachment with filename contains special characters. (by ogekuri)
• Clear session variables and reload the config file when switching between different instance.
• Bug fixed for posting article when a line begin with period. (by ogekuri)
• $CFG["show_newest_top"] is deprecated.
• Fixed the problem of attachment uploading in PHP 5.
• The line which exceeds the page width will be wrapped.
• Multiple 'group' directive are allowed in one category.
• All language strings ($strXXX) are renamed as $pnews_msg array.
• Hierarchical directories are used for storing cache and thread data.
• read-art.php/post-art.php/reply-art.php/forward-art.php/delete-art.php are renamed (trimming the '-art')
• Rewrite NNRP functions as a class object.

You can also browse the whole change logs by clicking here.

PHP News Reader applies GPL license, click here for a reference.

You are free to use or modify PHP News Reader under the GPL license.
And I am very appreciated if you share your comments and modification with me.

Acknowledgement

Many people help the development of PHP News Reader, click here to know their contributions.

Since January 2003, PHP News Reader hosts itself on SourceForge:

Project Home:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pnews/

Demonstration:

http://www.csie.nctu.edu.tw/~cdsheen/enews/ (in English)
http://www.csie.nctu.edu.tw/~cdsheen/news/  (tw.bbs.*, in Chinese/BIG5)
http://webnews.giga.net.tw/  (tw.bbs.*, in Chinese/BIG5, with url_rewrite turning on)
http://webnews.giga.net.tw/group//soc.culture.taiwan  (threading support)

Download the latest version from SourceForge:

Source downloads

Installation Guide:

PHP News Reader - Installation and Configuration Guide

Checking out the latest source from CVS Repository (read only):

# cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/pnews login Logging in to :pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:2401/cvsroot/pnews
CVS password: (Press Enter)
# cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/pnews co pnews
cvs server: Updating pnews
...

CVS is also available online:

View CVS Repository on the Web
Nightly CVS Tarball (pnews-cvsroot.tar.bz2)

Forum:

https://sourceforge.net/forum/index.php?group_id=71412

Donation:

If you like PHP News Reader, and think it useful for your work, or even making profit from PHP News Reader, you can support me by donating money. But this is *NOT* required. Even without any donation, you can still use PHP News Reader under GPL license.

Make a donation: http://sourceforge.net/donate/index.php?group_id=71412

Author:

Shen Cheng-Da
Taipei, Taiwan

http://www.csie.nctu.edu.tw/~cdsheen/