Adding a web interface to an existing news server
If you already have another news server set up, such as the NNTP services within IIS, you can use MPNews to add a web interface to your newsgroups.
There are two methods of doing this:
a.. Import your existing newsgroups and articles into MPNews and replace your existing news server entirely.
b.. Keep your existing news server and set up a feed to duplicate messages between that and MPNews.
Importing your existing newsgroups and messages
Whichever method you go for, you will have to get your existing list of messages into MPNews. To do this, set up a "pull feed" in MPNews. This will connect to your existing server and download each message it can find.
To set up a pull feed, log in to the main MPNews adminstration site and select the "News feeds" option. Click on the "Add New Feed" link to start creating a new feed.
On the screen that appears, enter the details of your existing news server that you want to download messages from, including any username and password you might need to access the newsgroups. Click on "Save", then the "Edit pull feed" link next to the new news feed to select which newsgroups you want to import.
On this screen, you will see a list of the newsgroups that are available on your existing news server. Select the newsgroups you want to import by checking the box next to them.
To make the selected newsgroups available through MPNews, you must associate them with a virtual server. To do this, go to the "Virtual Servers" area and select all the virtual servers you want to add the newsgroups to. Click on "Save" to save the pull feed settings.
Your pull feed will now start downloading all the messages in the newsgroups you have selected. This may take some time if you have a large number of existing messages, so please be patient. You can monitor the progress of your pull feed by going to the "Status" area on the "Edit pull feed" page.
Now MPNews has a copy of all the messages from your existing news server, you can read them via the web at http://<servername>/. If you are using MPNews to completely replace your existing news server, this is all you need to do. However, if you want to keep your existing server running as well, carry on to the section below to make sure both your servers stay in synch.
Keeping MPNews up to date
You now have a web-accessible archive of all your existing messages, but what happens when someone next posts a message to your existing news server? Or someone posts a message direct to MPNews using your new web interface? You need to create some additional settings to make sure any new messages are immediately passed on to the other server.
To set this up, you will need to create a "push feed" on both servers to direct new messages on to the other server. Please consult the documentation for your existing news server to see how to create the push feed to your new MPNews server - the rest of this page will describe how to create the feed in MPNews to send new messages to your existing server.
To create a push feed in MPNews, log in to the main MPNews administration site and go to the "News feeds" item again. You should see the news feed you created earlier to download messages to MPNews - click on "Edit push feed" next to this news feed.
On this screen, you can select which newsgroups you want to send to the other news server. You can enter * for this option to send messages posted to any newsgroup to your other server.
You do not want your push feed sending articles back to the other server which it has just send you. To prevent this, enter the "UUCP" or "Path" name of the other news server in the "Loop Prevention" option.