NewsgroupBanter

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.