DNewsWeb News Server Manual

• Installing DNewsWeb
• INI File Settings
• Templates Settings
• Input Forms
• Frames
• FAQ
• New Features in 4.7
• How to use DNewsWeb
• Example DNewsWeb Sites

Installing DNewsWeb

DNewsWeb is a web to news gateway, it lets you merge your web pages and your news groups. By displaying usenet and local news groups on your web pages, users can read and post news directly using their favourite web browser.

DNewsWeb is provided FREE with your DNews News Server and is quick and simple to set up.

You will have recieved the following DNewsWeb files when you downloaded DNews:

dnews\dnewsweb.exe
dnews\dnewsweb.ini
dnews\dnewsweb.txt
dnews\web\*.tpl (directory of template html files)

templates d:/dnews/web

You must install DNewsWeb on your WEB server, in a directory that you have already set up on your server as containing CGI programs. You must read your server documentation if you don't currently know how to set up a cgi program. Typically you would copy the files to a directory like:

SERVER_ROOT\cgi-bin\

Two files should be copied to this directory

copy \dnews\dnewsweb.exe \SERVER_ROOT\cgi-bin
copy \dnews\dnewsweb.ini \SERVER_ROOT\cgi-bin

In some instances you will have to place the .ini file in a different directory. This is dependent on your server software, sometimes the 'SERVER_ROOT' is the right directory. (DNEWSWEB will give an error if it can't find this file, in which case just try moving it somewhere else.)

Now edit dnewsweb.ini and define: your news host, templates directory and news groups to display on your web page.

Example:

notepad \SERVER_ROOT\cgi-bin\dnewsweb.ini

Syntax: Parameter Value

Now copy the tpl files from the distribution directory to the directory you have defined for templates in dnewsweb.ini

	cd /dnews/web
	copy *.tpl /dnewsweb

If you wish, you can tailor the template files to give DNewsWeb the same look and feel as your own web pages. It is assumed you know how to edit raw html files, in addition there are some variables that you can use. The list of variables depends on which page DNewsWeb is showing. For example the %%h_subject%% variable only works when displaying an item, or directory listing.

Note: If you leave the template files in the /dnews directory, then they will be over-written next time you upgrade DNews, so it is best to move them if you wish to tailor the appearance.

Here is a list of the template files, and a brief description of each. In some cases alternate files have been included in the distribution, you may want to try one of these for an alternate layout, simply copy the alternate file over the top of the original.

Template Variables

Here is a list of the variables that you can use in these templates

%%ifgroup%%comp.*%%

The %%ifgroup%%ListOfGroups%% can be used to change the appearance of pages based on the news group being displayed. (e.g. you might want to use a background image of little cars for a newsgroup devoted to cars)

%%include%%advert.htm%%

Useful for displaying adverts, you would setup a cron job (or program that runs every 10 minutes) to change the advert file, thus displaying a new advert each time someone reads the group. By only changing the advert every 10 minutes you avoid the problem of people turning off the images because they are too slow.

%%lastxhdr:header:group.name%% (5.5f2 and later)

This variable can be used to display the contents of a header from the last message in a given group. This is useful if you want to display information about the last post. E.g.

%%lastxhdr:date:comp.lang.c%% - Display the time and date of the last post to comp.lang.c
%%lastxhdr:from:comp.lang.c%% - Display the sender of the last post to comp.lang.c

Table Layout

See the file items_t.tpl (or copy it to items.tpl) to see how a table can be used instead of the standard list format for news items.

DNEWSWEB.INI settings

Extended Form Feature

With DNewsWeb you can define a posting form with required and optional fields. These will be used to force the user into giving you specific information with every post, for example with a newsgroup that is used for technical support you would require that the user tells you what version of the software they are using, etc. To try this out start switch to the example forms:

	copy post_form.tpl post.tpl
	copy postit_2.tpl postit.tpl

Then try posting a message.

In the post.tpl there are two hidden fields to tell DNewsWeb what fields it should look for and which ones are required.

	<input type=hidden name="required" value="os,version,reg">
	<input type=hidden name="optional" value="keywords"> 

And then you can use normal form input fields to ask for the extra data, e.g.:

	Operating System <input name="os" size=50 > (Required)<br>
	Software Version <input name="version" size=50 > (Required)<br>
	Registration Number <input name="reg" size=50 > (Required)<br>
	Keywords <input name="keywords" size=50 > (Optional)<br>

And finally you need to define a file called postit.tpl which DNews will use to construct the actual layout of the message that will be posted to the news server, e.g.

	Operating System: %%os%%
	DNews Version: %%version%%
	Customer Registration Code: %%reg%%
	Keyword: %%keywords%%

	%%message%%

Using frames just like a Windows news reader.

The following example (frame.htm) can be used to run DNewsWeb inside frames, the http address below needs to be changed to match your server.

	<html>
	<head>
	<Title> DNewsWeb using frames </title>
	</head>
	<frameset rows="50%,50%">
	<frame src="http://your.web.server/cgi-bin/dnewsweb.exe" name="items">
	<frame src="empty.htm" name="item">
	</frameset>
	</html>

Then in the templates items.tpl and item.tpl define the targets for buttons that should switch forms, for example the 'show item' href in items.tpl must point to the 'item' frame, e.g.

<li><a href="%%b_item%%" target="item">%%h_subject%% </a> ...<br>

Make similar changes to the href buttons in item.tpl that should jump back to the "items" frame. (see items_f.tpl and item_f.tpl for examples.)

<td><a href="%%b_related%%" target="items">Related Items</a>
<td><a href="%%b_recent%%" target="items">Recent Items</a>
<td><a href="%%b_topgroups%%" target="items">Standard Groups</a>
<td><a href="%%b_allgroups%%" target="items">All Groups</a>
<td><a href="%%b_follow%%">Post Followup</a>

This will display the directory of a group in the top window, and the actual items in the bottom window, just like a regular windows based news reader. This is totally implemented via the flexibility of DNewsWeb templates.

DNewsWeb - FAQ

HELP, It asked me where to save dnewsweb.exe?

This means you have failed to tell your web server that the directory cgi-bin/ contains CGI programs and not WEB pages. Go back to your web server administration window and look for help on CGI directories. (This is the single most common question we get !!)

On NT it doesn't work, "DNEWSWEB.EXE - DLL Initialization failed

If DNewsWeb doesn't work try running it by hand, e.g.

	cd cgi-bin
	./dnewsweb.exe

That may give a better indication of the problem, if you get the DLL Initialization failed error that means the process DNews is running as (your web user code) does not have read access to the winsock dll's. To fix this change the security on your winnt and system32 directories.

Apache for NT has a fault with environment variables, basically it doesn't define them and that stops winsock from working, check the apache web site for a patch.

Do I have to use it with DNEWS?

It will run with other news servers, however it is much faster with DNews and the 'list all newsgroups' function will only work with DNEWS.  Also the buttons 'Related items' and 'Search' will not work.

Full text search engine

To enable the full text searching button you need to add

	search true

to dnewsweb.ini (as well as installing the xmit process to build the indexes, see the manual for details on doing this, NOTE: the FTS database is resource intensive, especially if you try and index your entire news spool - plan on doubling your RAM if you want to set this up).

The threading doesn't make sense, is it faulty?

If you are looking at a large news group, then the threading will 'break down' because all you can see are parts of many different threads. You can increase the page size to reduce the extent of this problem. Also news groups which come from mail clients will not thread properly - for these use the 'subject' based sorting instead.

Alternate template set

ftp://ftp.netwinsite.com/pub/dnews/tpl.zip

Version DNewsWeb 4.7 Features

• New example templates, giving a uniform appearance, and buttons instead of links for most functions.
• User Authentication for protected / private news groups
• User Authenticatoin for posting (optional) via any POP server
• User Subscribed news groups
• New Search mechanism for finding a specific news group
• Config settings per user, (Sort order, signature, reply-to, full name)
• New sorting orders (Thread, Subject, Date), Use Subject for mailing list gatewayed groups.
• Improved handling of multi part and ecapsulated mime messages.

New ini settings:

New Templates

Upgrading DNewsWeb

Copy DNEWSWEB.exe into your cgi-bin directory.

Particularly with Version 4.7 you may want to try out the new templates provided.   To do this copy your existing templates first, then copy *.tpl into your templates directory

5.2 latest.tpl - Latest Articles Page

The latest.tpl template allows you to present a single web page which displays the latest few articles for several newsgroups you specify with optional links to the newsgroups or articles themselves. 

An example latest.tpl template is provided, to use it you setup a cron/at job to run DNewsWeb like this once a day:

    cd \inetpub\scripts
    .\dnewsweb -latest latest.tpl >d:\toppage.htm

This will generate a web page 'toppage.htm' which you can then use to hook users into your local disucssion groups.  This command is run like this because you may use this page for your top web site page and you don't want that to be running a cgi and reading multiple news groups, in this way it's extremely efficient.

If you require logins on your server then to get the latest process to login with a specific user so it can read the groups etc do this:

Add to latest.tpl at the top:

    %%auth_username%%fred%%

And in access.conf add a line:

    2.2.2.2:read,post:fred:fred:*

And in dnewsweb.ini add

    tellnews_pass xxxx (where 'xxxx' is from the tellnews.pass file in the DNews workarea)
    latest_ip 2.2.2.2

New latest.tpl template variables.

Item Formatting

If you don't wish to include <pre> tags around %%body%% in the template then you should set 'format_html true' in dnewsweb.ini to ensure articles are formatted correctly.