Newznab

[HouseCrowd]

I'm considering adding a forum section dedicated to Newznab: Somewhere that those who are running their own Newznab indexers (or thinking of doing so) can discuss their experiences, but also somewhere that existing, public Newznab sites can be listed, compared (retention, price, groups, etc) and discussed.

I thought I'd put this out to a public vote first ....

Comments are not just welcome ... they're compulsory.



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For anyone who doesn't yet know what Newznab is; it's essentially web server software, written in php, that allows anyone to run a newsgroups indexing site, with relative ease. It indexes newsgroups content automatically (no human intervention necessary), determining post titles and creating NZBs (it can even create thumbnail images, if configured to do so, for some content automatically). Some people are using it to build new public newsgroups indexing websites (hence the multitude of new, similar-looking indexing sites appearing recently), while many are using it to build their own private (Intranet/LAN-based) indexing servers.

Typical Newznab releases listing page:

Spoiler: show

[ejonesss]

yes lets have a forum about it maybe people can find ways to get it to work on all platforms without it being just a web browser based thing.

[HouseCrowd]

It can already work on any platform - not natively, but via a httpd (web server) running on any platform.

I'm presently running it on a Windows 7 Virtual Machine under XAMPP.


I won't go into the details right now though; I'm just gauging the interest first to decide if it warrants dedicating a forum section to it.

[MrFredPFL]

dammit, apparently not enough people respect compulsory comments flags

[HouseCrowd]

I know. How hard can it be to force people to have an opinion? ...

Did I mention the free iPad for the one millionth comment?

[bmh67wa]

Make it a non-Apple product and I'm in!

[HouseCrowd]

Did I say iPad?

Sorry, I meant a genuine non-Apple iPatch.


I may even throw in the earring too.

[Inksaver]

I just voted for option 1
There was no obvious way to link your vote to a compulsory comment, just click and submit.
Perhaps that is why you are not getting as many comments as you would like.
I would like to set up my own LAN server for myself and children. An idiots guide would be great. (I am running Win7 Enterprise)

[HouseCrowd]

Thanks, but I was just joking about the compulsory comments

I may make a guide, if I have time, but Newznab can be run on most operating systems in many different ways - it would be difficult to cover all the options. There are already quite a lot of guides and tutorials online though, so it may be better to link to some of those instead and provide information and personal experience about each of the different installation methods.

In the meantime, here's an example of one of the many guides on the subject. This one one takes the XAMPP approach to run Newznab under Windows:

http://www.tiag.me/installing-newznab-w ... n-windows/

That's also the method I'm using, but additionally I'm running it in a Virtual Machine. If you don't have the space or a spare PC to dedicate to running Newznab and you have a reasonably powerful desktop PC/server with plenty of RAM, I'd recommend running it in a VM. Using a VM not only allows you to experiment without affecting the physical 'host' computer but it also makes the job of transferring everything to new hardware later very quick and easy.