This project is about creating a better web interface to Usenet groups. The place I decided to start was to look at forum software which has a much more developed feel and look when comparing with existing Usenet web interfaces, and then look at building a fully featured Usenet interface on top of that.This left me with two options, vBulletin and phpBB, both of which are very developed and capable forum applications, and both already have hacks available to interface with newsgroups.In the end I opted for vBulletin as the core of the interface, as I felt its development is very active, has the most advanced features of any forum and a great api for developing and extending the software. It also has a very enthusiastic following with many hacks available at vBulletin.org and a pretty stable newsgroup hack.
The downside is it costs for each licence, and I will need a lot of licences.
One of the principles is to bring similar usenet newsgroups together into one collection, as opposed to one site for ten thousand different newsgroups. e.g. bring together all the Chess related groups into one site, such as ChessBanter. This can then focus on just this aspect along the idea that if you use or are interested in one of the chess groups, there is a fair chance the other groups might work for you as well.
This will give me a core platform on which to build, and I have already made significant progress on improving the interface and adding new features and I will talk about these more in the coming weeks and months.
In February 2001 Google acquired Deja.com and promptly renamed it Google Groups. It’s been in Beta ever since.It had a much overdue upgrade last year to Google Groups 2 (although I have noticed that Google have now dropped the ‘2′) with some significant improvements in usability and speed over the original version, and has moved beyond just Usenet newsgroups, but for me the interface is still clunky and the layout is not easy to understand. Google’s approach to using Beta tags for its product is becoming legendary, but this must be a record for them as it approaches 5 years with that title.
The rapid advance in other Google products suggest that Groups does not have the same development priority as other areas within Google. My guess would be that G consider Usenet not to have the potential to deliver the big $$$. The inability to make any return from Usenet has seen the demise of many companies in this field. There has been a trend for ISP’s to outsource or even abandon offering a news feed to it’s customers with AOL discontinuing its service in February 2005.
As someone who is trying to better what G is doing in the newsgroup area (and specifically with web-interface access), I do admire what they have achieved. Working efficiently with that volume of data is impressive but they have the skills, infrastructure and resources to support it. I still believe I can develop a more intuitive and feature packed interface than Google Groups (in time!), and maybe by the time their product comes out of Beta I might have an offering that can match it on usability 
In an announcement on Giganews website, Giganews will sponsor access to the Mozilla Foundation’s Usenet newsgroups hierarchy.From the announcment:
“The Mozilla Foundation was created to support the development of the best quality software and services to people looking for innovation and choice on the Internet. We know that the Mozilla community has high expectations of us, and we felt that choosing Giganews to host our Usenet capabilities would allow us to continue to adhere to our high standards and offer an excellent service to our developers and other members of our community,” detailed Frank Hecker, Director of Policy at the Mozilla Foundation, when asked about the partnership with Giganews.
Jonah Yokubaitis, CEO of Giganews, says, “The Giganews and Mozilla partnership is a natural fit and we’re glad to offer this free service to their valued developer network. Mozilla’s reputation for developing some of the Internet’s leading browser and e-mail applications has attracted the same type of customers who demand the high quality Usenet service that Giganews provides.”
Anything that helps and supports the Mozilla Foundation is good in my books.
This will be the home of NewgroupBanter where I will be sharing my thoughts, hopes and actions of the network of websites that I operate that make up NewsgroupBanter.