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support.typo3.org / NNTP reader

Categories: Community Created by Steffen Kamper + ben van 't ende
As maintenance of support.typo3.org slackened and the Jive software that provided the connection to the mailinglists could not be used anymore, another solution had to be found. The need for support.typo3.org is there because users are not familiar with the use of mailinglists or prefer forum style communications. From the start of the mailinglists there have been questions now and again whether or not TYPO3 should not have a forum.

Now there is a solution that works both ways. Steffen Kamper followed the discussions in the mailinglists about problems with support.typo3.org, Jive, and the search for an alternative. After doing research on all existing solutions, Steffen wasn't satisfied with any of them so he decided to make a new solution called NNTP Reader. NNTP stands for Network News Transfer Protocol

mm_forum, the first and most likely alternative support replacement had some disadvantages

  • tables don't fit to newsgroup mail fields

  • need to rewrite complete pi1

  • no cache

Steffen decided to start a complete new project for that and got into contact with Bernhard Kraft, who started to write a solution some time ago. Bernhard's solution looked quite good, but it was a administrative-orientated solution. At the end of the research, it was found that the easiest way to start, was from the beginning. The principle problem is the complex structure of messages. They are frequently encapsulated in parts and very difficult to parse a message to get all relevant parts. Per Steffen, ?there are some solutions out using fsockopen, but I decided to use PHP IMAP-functions, and because of rare solutions with IMAP I had to gather my own experiences.?

Message parsing was the biggest part of the reader. Following that, front-end (FE) rendering is easy with using templates.

Per Steffen, there are some tasks left:

  1. enable posting (and composing proper IMAP-messages)

  2. delete relevant parts of cache after fetching new mails

  3. more views, more newsgroups

  4. enhance FE-views with AJAX

  5. rating threads (with possibility eg to create a FAQ out of best rated threads)

Steffen and TYPO3 proudly present the beta-version of the web-based NNTP Reader for the TYPO3 Mailinglists and Newsgroups

Please use the bugtracker for requesting features and posting bugs on the ?tx_nntpreader? extension.

Steffen has already put in two weeks of time in developing this extension and estimates for the extension to become a fully fledged newsreader in another four weeks of work.

* tHNx to Michael Cannon for proofreading

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