Mark Carrington [MPS]

I am pleased to announce the release of MPNews version 5.
 
This new release represents a huge improvement over the previous version in terms of usability, performance and features.
 
You can download the new version from our web site as before - http://www.mutantpenguin.co.uk/mpnews/
 
Existing customers with a valid Software Assurance subscription will receive their free upgrade licenses over the next few days, while other customers will receive details of special upgrade pricing. An upgrade tool is included as part of the installation to help convert existing MPNews 4 installations to MPNews 5.
 
The main changes in version 5 include:
 
Simplified administration using new web-based administration sites
 
The old MPNews Management program has gone, replaced with a simple to use administration web site. You can use this to quickly and easily adminster your server from anywhere, with no need to install any special software, making it possible to change settings while away from your normal PC.
 
New web interface to your newsgroups
 
The web interface has been completed overhauled, including two new templates to give your users a more professional, powerful and easier to use way of accessing your newsgroups.
 
The new web interface is also written in ASP.NET, making it much easier to customize to your exact requirements than ever before. You can also take advantage of the huge number of third-party components produced for this powerful system to add on extra functionality to your web interface.
 
Better performance and administration simplicity with message storage options
 
The way MPNews stores messages has also been overhauled, giving you much improved performance especially when reading large newsgroups in the web interface.
 
As well as the existing options of storing messages in virtually any SQL-compliant database, you can now choose to store messages directly on disk without the need for a database at all. This gives you even better performance without the need for complex or expensive database systems, and makes it exceptionally easy to perform administrative tasks such as backup and restore.
 
These are just a few of the highlights - download the new version now to check out all the new and improved options for yourself.
 
As always, please let us know if you have any questions or problems.